SHANE McGRATH: There’s no smoke without fire when it comes to flares – and it’s not just a problem for football, the Government need to tackle this dangerous craze before it takes root in the GAA as well…

EVEN hurling’s facility with hyperbole struggled to do justice to what happened in Páirc Uí Chaoimh on the night of Saturday, May 11, 2024.

Patrick Horgan’s injury-time penalty gave Cork victory over Limerick in a Munster championship match that went beyond the ad men’s hype.

The final whistle triggered a pitch invasion, red legions bleeding across the grass.

The match was a classic, a first championship defeat in over a year for mighty Limerick, and a win that inspired Cork all the way to the All-Ireland final.

The match reports were dispatches from dreamland, hurling’s laureates delighted to commit another classic to print.

But it was the images which helped illustrate them that have assumed more significance now.

As the young Cork fans celebrated on the pitch, one held up a flare that belched red smoke into the fevered night.

There followed no widespread condemnation, no warnings about the dangers of an object that has no business being near a sporting venue.

The reaction to the win was so overwrought that the enthusiastic Rebels could have ritually disembowelled a Limerick panellist in the middle of the pitch, and it would have been approvingly noted as part of the occasion.

It was reported the following week that 16 people had been thrown out of the ground on the night, in most cases for lighting flares and setting off smoke bombs.

The Munster Council said alcohol had also been confiscated, but a number of items were smuggled into the stadium.  

This was after several spectators suffered injuries in the pitch invasion after the final whistle, while a woman also said she had been hit on the head by a flare thrown during the match.

The organisers said stewards trained in dealing with pyrotechnics were on duty on the night.

The short-lived plague that Minister Patrick O’Donovan visited on the League of Ireland on Monday morning wouldn’t have cut it in the Old Testament; milk has a longer shelf-life than the Minister’s threats.

This isn’t a problem which suddenly blazed up in Oriel Park nine days ago

It wasn’t that it felt disproportionate, but rather utterly inadequate. Because this isn’t a problem confined to domestic soccer, as the example above shows.

There have been issues with flares at other GAA grounds in the past, and that the Munster Council were employing specially trained stewards two years ago shows that this isn’t a problem which suddenly blazed up in Oriel Park nine days ago.

The minister’s intemperate response drew all the focus in the aftermath away from the rotten damage done by flares at the ground. 

The most serious were the injuries suffered by match-goers, including a 12-year-old child.

However, there was too little attention paid to the fact that people can smuggle pyrotechnics into matches in the first place. 

This can only be addressed by stewarding and also policing through the enforcement of existing laws.

There were some feeble attempts at contextualising the presence of fireworks as part of a vibrant climate at games, with mention of football cultures in other countries and the atmospheric emphasis added by flares.

Even if they weren’t potentially deadly weapons with the capacity to maim and cause life-changing damage to people, to excuse fireworks because they might confer an edgy continental ultra backdrop is cringe-inducing.

There were some feeble attempts at contextualising the presence of fireworks as part of a vibrant climate at games

Sustainable popularity requires firmer roots, and the growing appetite for domestic soccer owes nothing to smoky backdrops.

As the Páirc Uí Chaoimh case showed, pyro is a problem beyond one code or culture.

It’s hardly an uncrackable case. 

This is mostly handfuls of eejits causing trouble, motivated not always by malevolence but likely fuelled by drink, although the desire of an element of Drogheda fans to destroy Dundalk’s new surface is thought to be a factor in what happened at Oriel Park.

The response of the league and the FAI to the controversy was thorough, and politically it had to be (even if the minister’s bellicosity was pricked by contradictions from the Taoiseach and other Fianna Fáil ministers).

It now behoves the minister to ensure those standards apply across Irish sport, with support given to organisers so they can be consistently applied.

This was an issue for those governing Irish soccer this week, but it’s not just their problem. Even hurlers get smoke in their eyes.