Last night's Leinster minor championship match between Offaly and Kildare ended in a major brawl with one Offaly player alleging that he had been bitten on the ear.
Kildare won a tense encounter on a scoreline of 0-14 to 0-13. After the game, their bench invaded the pitch to celebrate with the players who finished the game. The Mirror's Pat Nolan reports that the brawl started after some of the Kildare goaded the losing Offaly men on the pitch after the game.
This claim has been backed up by tweets from Offaly's Shane Tierney.
Kildare won fair play.But the actions at full time were a disgrace! 3 players laughing in my face! Starting a brawl.. Let your county down
— @Shane Tierney (@TierneyShane) May 6, 2015
Nolan spoke about the fracas on Midlands 103 and Newstalk, in which he reported that one Offaly player is claiming to have been bitten on the ear during the fight.
The player in question apparently tweeted a photo demonstrating the aftermath of the bite. He deleted this tweet shortly afterwards.
Nolan said the bite wasn't in 'the Evander Holyfield category'. The ear was not severed.
Judging by Nolan's account of the fight, it definitely inched more towards the 'shameful scenes' category than the 'mass brawl' category. Listen to Nolan's summary of events here:
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/204322845" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]