KERRY STAR KIERAN Donaghy faces an anxious wait before discovering whether or not he’ll face retrospective action for an incident during yesterday’s All-Ireland senior football championship quarter-final victory over Galway at Croke Park.
Donaghy scored a cracking first half goal but after fisting a point, he tangled with defender Declan Kyne, and grabbed the Galway defender around the neck.
David Coldrick opted to take no action against the pair but members of the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee may ask the referee to review the incident, and to consider whether he would have acted differently in the light of video evidence.
That course of action is within the remit of GAA disciplinary chiefs and if Coldrick deems that it was a red card offence, the CCCC could propose a one-match ban.
That would rule Donaghy out of an All-Ireland semi-final against Roscommon or Mayo on 20 August.
The incident was discussed on The Sunday Game last night, with comparisons drawn between Donaghy’s incident and the flashpoint that saw Dublin’s Diarmuid Connolly suspended for 12 weeks.
Former Donegal All-Ireland winner Rory Kavanagh said: ”There’s two things – Declan Kyne didn’t really need to go in with the shoulder but you’d have to say this, here, when Donaghy gets him into a sort of a stranglehold, doesn’t look good.
I can just imagine the Dublin supporters looking at the TV, wondering if it was the likes of a (Diarmuid) Connolly, what would have happened.”
Ex-Tyrone star Brian McGuigan defended Donaghy, insisting that Coldrick was right to take no action at the time.
“Declan Kyne started it after he (Donaghy) got the score, and if you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take it. I think the referee done right not to take any action.”
Presenter Des Cahill responded: “But what about Rory’s point that if it was Diarmuid Connolly?”
And McGuigan replied: ”Yeah, well Diarmuid Connolly does it time and time again, whereas with Kieran, this is his only incident we have picked out for him.”
Cahill asked: ”Is it not the same thing whether you do it once or 20 times, no?”
And McGuigan countered: ”It probably is, you know, but this is the rough and tumble of the quarter-final of the championship.”
The final word went to Kavanagh, who said: “Once you raise your hands and put them around an opponent’s neck, you’re going to always run into dangerous, dangerous territory. He opens himself for investigation, like tonight.”
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