John Mooney's knee-jerk broadside at Maggie Thatcher's death was poor judgement by any standard, but it is hardly a hanging offence and hopefully lessons will be learned by Twitter and email posters who seem to think they can write what they want without rebuke. The furore left in the wake of Johnny Boy's nationalist rant has incensed many people and understandably embarrassed his employers-Cricket Ireland.
However, worse things have been said and written about Baroness Thatcher, who was not named the "Iron Lady" for nothing. She was loved and hated all over the world, from the living-rooms of Surrey to the coal pits of Yorkshire, from the Falkland Islands to Argentina and from President Regan's parlour to North County it seems. Mooney's outburst may have been a misguided personal salvo for the great Republican cause, but as a sporting role model he let a lot of people down, not least his family, his fellow cricketers and himself. If he was a run-of-the-mill cricketer with no international profile there would have been little or no interest in his rant, but in the glorious electronic age his fingers had barely left the keyboard when the full impact of his disrespectful comments was splashed all over the world. How embarrassing for Cricket Ireland and although Chief Executive Warren Deutrom put on a brave face to the media, he must have been seething with embarrassment at the damage done to the Cricket Ireland brand.
Mooney apologised and removed the offensive posting after Deutrom pointed out the error of his ways, but disciplinary action seems inevitable given that the posting was a direct affront to the Code of Behaviour within the player's contracts. There will certainly be no character assassination as Johnny Boy has done the job himself and the stigma of this dreadful incident will stay with him for the rest of his life. Whether that means much to him outside the potential financial punishment only he can confirm, but he will have his work cut out to win any respect from the many innocent people affected by the Troubles and deeply hurt by his comments. Cricket is an All Ireland sport and Cricket Ireland has worked tirelessly to move away from regional and sectarian issues and present a united front going forward. Mooney has damaged the image, but he hasn't destroyed it because at the end of the day Cricket Ireland will be judged separately on how it handles the affront.
Like most people I couldn't give a dam about Mooney's political views, but he has been a great servant to Irish cricket on the field, even if he has been a loose canon off it. He's also the father of a young family and earns his living from cricket so let's hope the punishment takes everything into consideration. After all, he's not the first person to breach a contract and in the difficult political environment that Cricket Ireland operates perhaps an outburst from one sectarian voice is not unexpected.
Contrary to what some website pundits would have us believe northern armies are not about to march on North County and although many people have been disgusted by the comments, Cricket Ireland needs to deal with the breach and move on to the bigger challenges that lie ahead. Johnny Boy should be punished but not hung, drawn and quartered.
Let's get on with it and get back to cricket.
Clarence Hiles
Editor
