Dooher Decision Wrong!

Saturday 30.04.2011

Club

I was very surprised to hear the news that Brian Dooher’s appeal against his red card was unsuccessful. The Tyrone captain’s appeal was very harshly dealt with in my view and following Thursday night’s decision he will now miss at least three games for his club.

While I realise that committees have jobs to do and they must act within the laws of the game I believe that in this case they got it wrong. I was standing less than ten yards away from the incident that led to the red card at the time and what contact there was incidental to say the least. If what Brian Dooher did that day was a sending off offence I believe we will see most games from now on finish five a side.

Indeed since this incident I have watched at least six other matches and in every one of these games there were situations much worse than the one that led to the Clan na Gael man’s suspension but none of these resulted in a red card. I have said it before and I will say it again we can’t have games played without rules but common sense seems to have gone out the window and natural justice would appear to have no place in them either.