Brolly: GAA must take the lead on All-Ireland Senior Club fallout

GAA pundit and former All-Ireland winner Joe Brolly says the GAA should take responsibility for the fallout from Sunday's All-Ireland Senior Club Football Championship Final.

Dublin's Kilmacud Crokes edged out Derry and Ulster champions Glen Watty Grahams 1-11 to 1-9 in Croke Park. But the result itself has been overshadowed after pictures and footage emerged of Kilmacud having 17 players on the pitch, rather than the normal 15.

While one of those players wasn't involved in the play, the 16th man was stationed on the Crokes goal-line as Glen took a stoppage-time '45 with the final play of the game. Malachy O'Rourke's side need a goal to win, but the ball ended up whistling past the post to signal the end of the match.

Glen have confirmed they have received clarification from the GAA that the club need to lodge a protest for the governing body of the sport to launch an invesitgation.

They have until Wednesday afternoon to lodge that protest.

However, Brolly says it's the GAA themselves who should take the lead on the issue.

"There are very limited options here. Clearly, a fine isn't appropriate when a 16th man is on the field defending a critical last play of the game," Brolly says.

"Otherwise what kind of precedent are we setting? We take it away from the Wattys, we take it away from Kilmacud Crokes and we do the correct thing.

"It's nothing to do with the individual teams. This is to do with the GAA protecting its own rules, protecting its own reputation and its own integrity. That's what I'm concerned about," he adds.

"Watty Grahams are fierce rivals of my own club Dungiven. I'm not concerned about individually with the Watty Grahams situation. They had many chances to win the game, they should have gone on and won it. That's not what I'm interested in.

"I'm interested in us (the GAA) becoming a laughing stock."

"It seems to me like the only honourable option is for the GAA to order a replay and its most disappointing, I think it's a total act of cowardice, of abdication of their responsibility to now say they are not doing that."