The glory of a good punch-up!

So I was driving home the other day and a thought occurred to me: in my 21 months as sports editor of the Limerick Leader I have never seen a decent all-in punch-up in a GAA club game.
This strikes me as strange. I’m from Tipperary and melees regularly feature. In Tipp the idea is that if one of your playing colleagues starts fighting with his opposite number then it’s up to his teammates to get involved - that way the referee can’t be embarrassed into sending the original wrong doers off.
So why doesn’t that happen in Limerick? The clubs tear into one another alright, but I’ve never seen a game boil over.
Now the do-gooders, those insane people who po-go around the place with an annoying smile on their faces, will tut-tut this blog. For a lot of people GAA violence has all the appeal of a terrifically bad smell - every time a game gets out of hand high horses everywhere are straddled with wild abandon. But for the likes of myself the glory of a good punch-up is second only to the thrill of winning a match with a last-minute goal.
Some people need to realise that most of us can watch an on-pitch punch-up without feeling the need to go on a rampage - as Nick Hornby observed in Fever Pitch a good ruck can add spice to a dull game.
I’m not suggesting that club hurling in Limerick has gone soft, but something is definitely amiss.

Brian McDonnell