When Meath goalkeeper Paddy O'Rourke took the decision to start retweeting some less than positive opinions on Sunday evening, he may not have known quite how big the reaction would be. Sure, O'Rourke obviously wanted to shine some light on those that hide behind a username but extent of the reaction has been quite extreme.
Colm O'Rourke wants the police involved and Conor Cusack has pointed out the effects such abuse can have on players' mental health. It's turned into the hot button GAA topic of the week and quite a few figures in the game have had their say on it.
One such figure is former Laois footballer Colm Parkinson, however, he has taken a slightly different angle on things. Writing in the Irish Independent, the Off The Ball presenter has said that suggestions that the Gardaí should get involved are 'way over the top'.
It seems to me like Paddy searched his own name on Twitter because some of the critical tweets didn't include his Twitter handle so he shouldn't really have been aware of them. His team just suffered a humiliating defeat and he was sent off - what did he expect to find, compliments?
For the most part, Parkinson has a point. The vast majority of the tweets were the kind of criticism that would be tame compared to a lot of what was said in pubs up and down Meath on Sunday evening. Saying things such as 'he needs to cop on and stop being so full of himself' is not exactly 'abuse' in the most severe sense of the term.
However, there's also the matter of that one idiot who did threaten to 'knife' O'Rourke. As Parkinson points out, there was more than just O'Rourke that was being threatened by the same individual on Sunday. However, the fact that he is just a sad individual on the end of a keyboard shouldn't mean that such behaviour is normalised.
These may be big hardy GAA players, as the assumption goes, but Cusack is certainly correct to point out the possibility that seeing someone threaten to knife you can have an adverse effect on your state of mind. If that means directing the Gardaí towards such behaviour then that's hardly a waste of time.
[interaction id="55911e639903ebaf495962e6"]
