Down boss Tally sees touchline ban reduced

Down boss Tally sees touchline ban reduced

17 February 2021

DOWN senior football manager Paddy Tally will be back on the sidelines sooner than he anticipated.

Tally was originally handed a 12-week ban for breaching the GAA’s Covid-19 protocols, but that has now been reduced to eight weeks on appeal.

The GAA’s Central Hearings Committee heard Tally’s case last Tuesday evening and took the decision to slap the Down boss with a two-month suspension.

The ban is effective from the meeting, meaning that it will expire on April 5. It had previously been though the ban would only start when inter-county training resumed.

Down had already accepted another punishment which sees them forfeit home advantage for one National Football League game.

Tally was found to have breached the GAA’s Rule 7.2e which involves behaviour deemed to have discredited the association.

On January 7, following information from a member of the public, the PSNI was called to a gathering of the Down squad at Abbey CBS in Newry.

A police spokesperson later confirmed no lockdown protocols had been broken and that no action was taken.

However after investigating the matter Croke Park decided that the GAA directive which expressly made clear that teams could not train collectively during this period had been breached.

Down GAA officials had always maintained that the team meeting had not breached any coronavirus restrictions and that no organised training session had taken place.