Ger Brennan blames ‘political dark arts’ for 12-week ban after Galway altercation

Ger Brennan will be lacing his boots again at Parnell Park on Wednesday night, but the Dublin manager still has no intention of pulling his punches in relation to the 12-week suspension that overshadowed his first season at the helm in the capital.

Brennan missed most of the championship due to a clash with Galway’s strength and conditioning coach, Cian Breathnach McGinn, during a league fixture in March.

He has been critical of the circumstances around that three-month suspension and, in June, Brennan issued a lengthy statement through his solicitor saying the controversy left him feeling “disenfranchised, undervalued and a lack of belonging to the association”.

Under the current rules in the GAA’s Official Guide, Brennan will also be banned for the first two games in next year’s National Football League – with the Dublin boss accepting there is “no mechanism” within the current rule book for him to get that ban overturned.

Dublin’s frustration at the severity of the suspension was heightened when Kerry’s Micheál Burns was the only person banned after a tempestuous All-Ireland SFC clash between Kerry and Donegal in Killarney in May, during which there was a half-time flashpoint involving players and management.

“The infraction that I was put down for was the worst of the worst infraction, compared to the other guy involved in the altercation, and obviously what didn’t happen 10 weeks later in Killarney,” says Brennan.

“A lot of political dark arts went on behind the scenes, which I was collateral damage, I would say.”

Brennan accepts his actions in Salthill deserved some penalty, but feels the punishment didn’t fit the crime.

“It’s so nonsensical that if a Martian came down and looked at what happened, it doesn’t make sense. So, it’s the association that has been brought into disrepute by the behaviour of others in the background.”

The ban also prevented Brennan from coaching his son’s underage team.

“It was such a severe suspension with a lot of political games that went on in the background; maybe there’s a book in it in decades to come, I don’t know, but there’s people who came out worse than I did from the whole thing in terms of how they carried themselves, without having to mention names.

“Ultimately, I was disappointed that I had let the players and the management team down, but on a human level, as a father, I was deeply disturbed by the association and the rules that are in place to ban somebody being involved in kids’ teams for the incident that I was involved in.”

But from the embers of a difficult season, Brennan managed to get a spark out of Dublin when he returned to the sideline to oversee wins against Cavan, Donegal and Galway.

Their summer only ended after a hard-fought semi-final defeat to Kerry in an All-Ireland semi-final. And Brennan says the stress of the suspension was not something he hid away from at the time, adding that he doesn’t view next year through the lens of it bringing less mental strain.

“Stress is important. Unfortunately, the world that we live in, some of the information that our young teens and early 20-year-olds get is that, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t be stressed’.

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“It’s supposed to be a perfect world where you go on your few holidays every year, and you pick whatever job you want, which is all the wrong information we’re giving people.

“Stress is important in life, and we need stress to be able to grow. If you think of the old analogy of how a diamond is created, a diamond is created with millennia of stress underground.

“And the same is true for human beings, whereby we need to have appropriate stress in our lives to be able to get anything done.

“In the same way, when our body becomes sick because we’re overdoing it and we need to go to the GP, similarly sometimes if you’re overdoing it mentally and you can’t handle something, you go and talk to your doctor as well, and you get the right services.

“So it is important to stress the importance that mental health is normal in the same way that you go to your GP to help with the flu or whatever.

“But to say that you should live in a world without stress is a fallacy.”

And he hopes the episode has helped him grow and improve as a manager.

“It’s always a learning curve. Every day is a school day. In terms of who I am, my values, I’m very much aware of them, and how I try to be as a person, whether I’m managing or in a relationship or with friends, I’m very comfortable in myself.

“However, you have to be open to learning from those around you, from your own mistakes, on an ongoing basis. If you stay stuck in the one spot, like a pond in the back garden that isn’t receiving fresh water, you become stagnant.

“You might look pretty for a while, but you eventually become stagnant. So you always have to be open to being critiqued and take on board the views and opinions of those around you.”

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Brennan was suspended under Rule 7.2(c) Category IVa of the Official Guide. The regulation deals with misconduct at games by team officials. Brennan was sanctioned under “any type of physical interference with an opposing player or team official”.

The minimum suspension is a 12-week suspension in all codes and at all levels, plus a two-game ban in the same code at the same level, applicable to the next games in the same competition.

As the Galway match was Dublin’s last game in this year’s league, under the current rule, Brennan has to serve his two-match ban at the start of the 2027 league. He believes the rule is draconian and needs to be amended.

“Derek Kent (president-elect of the GAA) I think is going to be very positive in that part of his tenure in seeking to bring about common sense change to that part of the rule book,” adds Brennan.

Brennan says the core of his management team will remain the same next season – with Dean Rock, Denis Bastick, Stephen Cluxton and Niall Moyna set to return in 2027.

But Brennan will be on the pitch as a player rather than on the sideline as a manager on Wednesday night when Dublin face Meath in a charity match for Focus Ireland.

Among the Dublin players on show will be Ciarán Kilkenny, Brian Howard, Bernard Brogan, Kevin McManamon, Dean Rock, Niamh Hetherton and Sinéad Wylde. The Meath squad will include Donal Keogan, Eoghan Frayne, Ciarán Caulfield, Seamus Lavin, Joe Sheridan, Shauna Ennis and Jenny Rispin.

Graham Geraghty and Tommy Dowd will be managing the Meath team while Paul Clarke and Paul Casey will be in charge of the Dubs.

“There’s always been a lovely, healthy rivalry between Dublin and Meath over the years,” says Brennan.

“I’ll be putting on the jersey and the boots again. It’s exciting, and it’s obviously for a great cause as well.”

The GAA declined to comment on Brennan’s remarks.

The Throw in for Focus charity match, in association with Staycity, will see Dublin take on Meath at Parnell Park on Wednesday at 7.30pm. Proceeds from tickets and every donation will go directly to Focus Ireland’s No Child Without a Home campaign.