https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMS4dGtVdmc
Yesterday, LiveGaelic.com put up this video of an extended melée from a match between South Tipp rivals Ballingarry and Killenaule.
To be honest, we don't know a great deal about the match in question, but from the kits and spectator fashions on display, it looks to be from around 1998 or so. We'd love to hear more from anyone with information on the date, the punishments dished out (or not), or whether any of the protagonists went on to less shameful things.
It's unclear from the footage what caused the fight - it cuts from a fairly terrible sideline ball to two lads having it out on the ground. To be fair to both teams, it's a fairly honest and manly dispute - there isn't a hurley raised in anger (except possibly at 1:11), and aside from the original pair, nobody attacks an opponent on the ground - unlike this messy mill-up from North Kerry a few years previously.
A favourite, alomst tender moment comes after the affray, when a salad-dodging Killenaule man goes into the Ballingarry horde to retrieve some grounded weaponry, to no opposition from his rivals.
The referee then called both sides together to give a general 'cop yourselves on' lecture and the game continued as if nothing had happened, at least until the footage ends.
Manly or not, it's still pretty horrible and unnecessary, but its impact is diluted somewhat by the passage of time and the hilarious comments from the sidelines.
The video's title - "Schemozzle becomes melee" also raises of what should perhaps be called the 'Croke Park Criteria on the Terminology and Grading of On-Field Incidents'.
We've previously visited the schemozzle-(fracas)-melée-shameful scenes progression here, here and here.
