The GAA was in danger of taking on a rather dubious role assigned by the legal system in the past to the Defence Forces, if a certain District Judge in County Mayo had got away with some recent comments, writes An Fear Rua...

Eighteen years old Thomas Collins is a settled traveller living in Claremorris, County Mayo. He was sentenced to a month in jail by the District Court for head butting another traveller and was fined IR£3,000. Collins went before the District Court to appeal his sentence and - with somewhat unfortunate timing - did so on the same day he was up before the judge for another offence under the Public Order Act. The result was, Judge Harvey Kenny sentenced Collins to another three month term for these offences, fined his father IR£100 for being drunk in a public place and proceeded to give the hapless young lad one of the most scathing tongue lashings ever handed down by a District Judge. And, given the type of verbiage dispensed by some luminaries of the District Bench over the years, that's saying something, avers An Fear Rua.

The judge called Collins 'a thick fat fool'. He claimed he had 'a head like the front of a mallet'. At this point, bewildered readers might be forgiven for enquiring what is the connection between all this and the GAA. Well, not content to verbally roast the unfortunate teenager, Judge Kenny ordered him to sign up with Claremorris GAA club to train and lose weight, before appearing before him for further sentencing on 1 May. He told him: 'You are fat and overweight and it is time you stopped taking on fellows half your weight ...'.

What an insult to the GAA! An Fear Rua well remembers that, years ago, it was the practice of some District Judges to offer a defendant a choice between a prison sentence or no sentence at all if he undertook to join the Army. Many a defendant gladly opted to join up, served with the United Nations peacekeeping forces and preferred to face the wrath of Baluba tribesmen in the former Belgian Congo, rather than face the vagaries of the 'screws' in an Irish prison. Some Army veterans also contend that the reason the same Balubas were more frightened of the Irish than of other UN contingents like, say, the poor Swedes, was because of this leavening of 'hard chaws' in their midst. Indeed, at one stage, only the French Foreign Legion could probably claim to have more criminals or ex-criminals among their ranks. However, after protests over the years by senior military personnel the judges adopted a more sensible approach, but now Judge Harvey Kenny has sought to make the GAA take over the punitive role.

An Fear Rua is not clear what connection the learned judge saw between possession of a 'mallet head' and playing GAA. However, AFR's old pal, the distinguished journalist Cormac McConnell (a decent Fermanagh man and a fine writer on GAA matters from time to time), pointed out in the pages of 'The Examiner' newspaper that the judge had shown himself a 'lively' performer on the rugby fields of Munster in the skull-and-crossbones jersey of UCC. On that basis, An Fear Rua ventures to suggest the learned judge might consider that a 'mallet head' was more useful to some of his rugby-playing prop forward acquaintances, than to a hurler or a gaelic footballer. Isn't there an old adage somewhere about rugby being 'a gurrier's sport played by gentlemen …'? Indeed, although he does not follow the fortunes of teams engaged in 'foreign' games, An Fear Rua understands that the current Connacht rugby team could do with more than a few 'mallet heads' in its front row!

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that a judge got sentencing policy badly wrong. I mean, if you want to punish criminals there are far worse things they could be forced to endure than playing for Claremorris GAA club. Why not sentence them to sharing more than a hundred nights training with the Carlow senior football team, only to see them eliminated once again in the first round of the championship? Really difficult cases could be forced to round up fifteen players to pull on a black-and-amber jersey to represent Kilkenny in inter-county senior football. Worse still, they could forced to play football for Kilkenny! And for really hardened criminals, the type who are constantly before the courts on charges like breaking and entering, how about three months in solitary confinement listening to repeated tapes of Ger Loughane interviews from Clare FM? The danger with the latter suggestion, of course, is that it might be condemned by the International Court in Geneva as a violation of human rights.

The learned judge in Mayo missed the point completely. Gaelic games - hurling in particular - are among the most skilful games in the world. They rely far more on brain than on brawn. So, Judge Kenny might have been better advised to point young Thomas Collins in the direction of Ballyhaunis junior Rugby club, just a few miles up the road from Claremorris. In something of an understatement, a local GAA official said it was inappropriate 'to foist a man with a criminal record on a club'. AFR couldn't agree more. Indeed, he would go further and say that anyone - District Judge or no District Judge - who believes GAA people are some kind of lesser mortals than the rugby playing fraternity of this world is sadly out of touch.

An Fear Rua ruefully admits to having a few friends among the legal eagles of the Four Courts in Dublin and many of them, God help us, wouldn't know one end of a hurley from the other! However, the GAA has had more than its share of legal luminaries in its time. Anyone watching the triumphant strut of Derry's Joe Brolly after he scores wouldn't be surprised to learn that the same Joe spends much of his time strutting before judge and jury in the ridiculous sheeps hair wig and black gown of a barrister! Dublin's Tony Hanahoe and Mayo's Seán Flanagan come to mind as examples of solicitors who were GAA stars and - of course - the recently deceased Jack Lynch enjoyed a successful career as a member of the Southern Bar while garnering a total of six All Ireland medals with Cork.

Judge Kenny is not, of course, the first nor the only District Judge to deliver himself of this type of sarcastic comment from the safety of the bench, not least directed towards travellers and the GAA. His colleague, Judge John Brophy, in the Kildare/Meath District, has shown himself something of a dab hand at this in the past as well. It's time the President of the District Court, His Honour Judge Peter A Smithwick, issued some clear guidelines to the bench about what type of language is permissible or not. The kind of verbiage directed at the young Mayo traveller was not only personally insulting to him, but - in An Fear Rua's respectful submission m'Lud (as the learned lawyers are wont to say) - bordered on a breach of his constitutional rights to a fair hearing and fair sentencing. An Fear Rua couldn't imagine the judge in the Dublin District Court using insulting language even to Charvet J Haughey on the couple of occasions the Squire of Kinsealy was arraigned recently.

In any event, the man in Mayo has offered abject apologies to both Thomas Collins and the GAA. He said his words were 'inappropriate and unnecessary', 'not befitting of a judge' and he expressed 'sincere regret' for using them. He further regretted that his remarks had caused upset to the GAA and he recognised 'the trojan work' done by the Association over the years, 'particularly at a time when no one else was helping young people in parishes'. Bedad, An Fear Rua himself couldn't have expressed it better.

In view of his earlier 'two fingers' salute to the GAA, one of the bright sparks in the Gowlnacalley-John Redmonds club had suggested the judge might change his name from Harvey Kenny to Harvey Smith. For the benefit of his younger readers, AFR explains that Harvey Smith was a well-known British show jumper of th