The GAA and straight forward maths have never been easy bedfellows. For example, next year there will be two quarter-finals in the hurling championship, while there will be twelve in next year's football championship.
Antrim's Matthew Fitzpatrick learned of another strange numerical trick in the GAA yesterday: how does a one-game ban become a 48-week one?
Fitzpatrick has twice had a one-game ban overturned by the CHC relating to an off the ball incident during the ill-tempered league game with Armagh in March.
Following the emergence of new evidence, however, Fitzpatrick was this week banned for 48 weeks, with the CHC explaining the decision in a statement released yesterday afternoon.
On the 15th of May the Central Hearings Committee decided that at a hearing on the 4 May that Matthew Fitrzpatrick gave deliberately false evidence and deliberately misled the hearing, a breach of rule 7.3.
The CHC imposed a suspension of 48 weeks.
Antrim manager Frank Fitzsimons and selector Pat Hughes were warned as to their future conduct arising out of evidence they gave at the same hearing.
All parties have the option of appealing against the decisions of the Central Hearings Committee to the Central Appeals Committee.
The fall-out from the incident had previously raised great tension among the Antrim playing staff. The CHC had written to the Antrim County board asking them to review video footage and identify a player. The county management team and two members of the county board agreed that the player could not be identified with 100 per cent certainty. However, the county board subsequently identified the player as Matthew Fitzpatrick, which led to the players circulating a letter critical of the county board.
Fitzpatrick and the Antrim county board will appeal his 48-week suspension, as Declan Bogue confirms in his column in today's Belfast Telegraph. He also confirms the identity of Fitzpatrick's counsel:
A little bit of hard news for you at the top of the column; Antrim will be appealing Matthew Fitzpatrick's suspension, having lodged the appeal on Tuesday night.
The man heading it up, will be no less than...drum roll here...Joe Brolly!
An intriguing case went nucelar.
When not punctuates the times between newspaper columns lamenting the state of Gaelic football with the serious business of being a barrister, so it falls to Brolly to help fight Antrim's way through what Bogue describes as a "two-tier justice system".
It's a fabulous column, which you can read here.
