EDITORIAL: Racial abuse perpetrator will probably still get into games, unfortunately!

Wexford hurler and this year’s team captain Lee Chin was racially abused during a challenge match between Wexford and Tipperary over the Easter weekend.

Lee is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet and did not deserve to be subjected to such an horrific incident . He is a role model for thousands of young people right across the country.

The facts of the incident are that the Premier County’s senior hurlers played Wexford on Saturday afternoon in a senior hurling challenge hosted by the Carrick Swan club.

Tipperary GAA said that unfortunately as the game entered the closing stages, “a member of the public who is not connected to either Tipperary GAA or the Carrick Swan club made racial comments which were directed at a member of the Wexford team”.

This is a shocking incident at a charity challenge match in Páirc na nEalaí - which was raising funds for a Carrick-on-Suir man who sustained horrific injuries in a car accident last summer.

Tipperary GAA stated clearly that this “kind of behaviour is totally unacceptable and has absolutely no place at our games or in our society”.

Both Tipperary and Wexford GAA County Boards have been in contact with each other in relation to this incident and are fully committed to having the incident investigated fully.

The conclusions of the investigation should be straight forward.

There’s no place for this in the GAA. This is an opportunity for the top brass to lay down a marker, but do the rules and punishments go far enough? In Congress last February, a new anti-racism rule was passed.

Any act, deed, word or gesture of a racist nature, now carries a 48-week suspension.

A repeat infraction carries 96 weeks.

Ask Lee Chin if that’s enough for how he was made to feel in Tipperary over the weekend.

A life-time ban for the perpetrator is the only just punishment. But the individual will probably still get into games, unfortunately.