POOR Armagh. It is all so unfair. How dare the camera man capture one of their players eye gouging an opponent. Does that cameraman not realise the eye gouger has a family? How dare people watch it. How dare they comment on it. When a game is played in front of 80,000 people and another three quarters of a million watching at home, it is a strictly private matter. The player’s privacy has been invaded. It is “a witch hunt”.

The public are going to track the eye gouger down to his home, drag him out, lift him onto a pyre of wood, tie him to a stake and burn him to death. That’s where this is all going. For God’s sake, think of the little children.

James Morgan should have been sent off before half time. He tortured Shane Walsh. Right in front of us, he struck him a heavy blow knocking him to the ground. He wrestled with him repeatedly. When Walsh wanted to run upfield, he tried to make circular runs away from James but still got hit. Pádraic Joyce was enraged, constantly remonstrating with the linesman. But on it went. At one point, Rian O’Neill was jogging out past Paul Conroy, who was standing minding his own business. As Rian drew level with him, he raised his hands and was lucky not to be sent off.

The first Armagh red card was well-deserved and the Galway man was lucky he didn’t get seriously injured. Not all of the Armagh players were involved in the constant goading and hitting and over the line tackling, but enough of them were to create a deeply unsavoury atmosphere. It is the third time this season an Armagh game has boiled over into an all out fracas. One melee is unfortunate. Two might be a coincidence. Three looks like a cultural problem.

The manager’s aggressive reaction to the journalists’ questions afterwards (like Joe Pesci in the pub scene in Goodfellas) suggests that this is a culture that is tolerated. “What would you do if somebody pushed you? What would you do? What would you do? What would you do?”

What he should have said was, “What happened out there was unacceptable. Our senior team has a responsibility to the game and to the people of this great county. There was a breakdown in discipline and in the standards we expect of ourselves. A number of our players have brought shame on the jersey, and I will be sitting down with them over the coming days to get to the bottom of it.”

The GAA contract was broken by Armagh at the weekend. We do not assault opponents. We do not goad and act maliciously. We are a worldwide family. We look after and respect each other. We travel the same road. What happened on Sunday was corrosive and depressing.

I remember Oisin McConville saying once his Armagh team never forgave Tyrone for the sending off of Diarmaid Marsden in the 2003 final. Philip Jordan feigned injury, Marsden was wrongly sent off and some of the Tyrone players applauded as he left the field. Marsden himself said later it was the worst day of his life and he still feels shame at having been sent off in an All-Ireland final. “How do I explain it to my son?” he said. The fact the red card was later rescinded was neither here nor there. What Tyrone did was malicious and broke the GAA contract. This is why the Armagh men never forgave.

After Tyrone had dragged Meath down methodically in their 2013 Qualifier in Croke Park, enraging the crowd and the Meath group, I went into the tunnel and bumped into the Meath players and management. After the games then, the teams went into the players’ lounge together for a post-match meal. I asked the Meath lads why they weren’t doing that. The answer? They were too angry after what had happened. Instead, they were getting the bus home straightaway.

Many of these Armagh players conduct themselves with honour and integrity on the field. But there is a hardcore who do not and this is now an established pattern. It is a rotten culture and in the end, management is responsible.

The most important thing we have is the GAA contract. More important than me or you, or winning or losing. It is the glue that binds us, from Antrim to Kerry, from Galway to Chicago. As US soccer star Megan Rapinoe said last week, “Sport is not the most important thing in life. Life is the most important thing in life.”

READ MORE – Armagh need a slice of luck insists Kieran McGeeney. Click here…