Clare and Galway have received a boost in advance of Saturday’s All-Ireland hurling quarter-finals with the collapse of the cases against Clare players, Rory Hayes and Peter Duggan and Galway’s Cianan Fahy at Wednesday’s meeting of the Central Hearings Committee.
The three players had been found to have cases to answer after the Munster and Leinster finals with the Clare duo proposed for one-match suspensions and Fahy for a two-match ban on the basis of video review.
Galway’s hearing came first and they challenged the procedural basis of the Central Competitions Control Committee meeting that had deliberated on Fahy’s alleged stamp on Kilkenny’s Richie Reid. The matter was eventually dismissed on those grounds.
Hayes’s and Duggan’s hearings were also dismissed for similar reasons. All three are now available to face Wexford and Cork, respectively, on Saturday.
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The outcome is a severe embarrassment for the GAA’s disciplinary system.