Last year's All-Ireland quarter-final between Monaghan and Tyrone featured an incident which has entered GAA infamy. In injury time, Darren Hughes tousled the hair of Tiernan McCann. The Tyrone player hit the deck, feigning excessive contact. Hughes was shown a red card by Marty Duffy.
McCann received abundant criticism for the dive, some of it - especially on social media - going too far.
On the Sunday Game's analysis of the incident on that August weekend, Ciaran Whelan suggested it would be best for McCann to apologise.
If I was in his shoes, I’d come out, sweep it under the carpet and apologise and say 'listen, yes it's bad sportsmanship, I shouldn’t have done it, somebody got sent off as a result of it'.
And hold your hand up, show a bit of honesty and integrity and say ‘I was wrong’.
Mickey Harte, speaking to Orla Bannon at yesterday's Ulster football final media event, questioned Whelan's analysis of the McCann incident in contrast to how he scrutinised Aidan O'Shea's dive against Fermanagh on Saturday.
Harte believes that Whelan took a soft stance on O'Shea in comparison to how he judged the incident involving his player.
The person who made those comments is the person who has to take a look at himself and decide why was he so adamant in one case about what ought to be done - and how it ought to be done immediately - yet that's not on his radar on this particular incident.
Only he can answer that. Why would he get so animated or agitated about one thing and be conciliatory towards the other, whenever there's not a lot of difference in the two things that happened?
On the weekend's Sunday Game, Whelan called some of the abuse of O'Shea on social media 'scurrilous'. He also suggested that the Mayo man will be aware of his misdeed.
He made a huge mistake. He has to realise he made that mistake and eradicate it from the game. We don't want to see it in the game. People have to be careful. We have a duty to protect players - the GAA and the GPA. People should think before they make scurrilous comments. He'll know he's done wrong; put his hand up and accept it.
Presumably, what Harte is suggesting, not for the first time, is that there is a bias against Ulster teams in the GAA media.
Photo by Oliver McVeigh/Sportsfile
