For Tomas Freeman this Saturday is another gut wrenching experience as he sits out the game against Derry in the All Ireland qualifiers, the second game he has missed following the imposition of an 8 weeks penalty for an alleged incident in the game against Derry on May 24th. To say that Tomas Freeman is a victim of bureaucracy would not be an overstatement by any stretch of imagination as his efforts to gain some measure of justice have been thwarted at every turn. The final avenue of appeal in all matters in the GAA now is that the DRA but Freeman was even denied that, his appeal not even heard and deemed out of order as "all avenues within the GAA system had not been exhausted". He availed of the initial hearing after the proposed penalty had been notified to him, that failed while the case of the two Derry players succeeded, he appealed that decision and won the appeal but did not benefit from the victory as the technicalities on which he won the appeal were deemed to be "administrative errors" and the matter was sent back for "reprocessing" with the result that the penalty stood. Having gone that route the only other avenue available was to go directly to the DRA. That hearing took place on Friday night last but following an objection by the Central Appeals Committee regarding his rights to go to the DRA at this stage, his appeal was ruled out of order and he is now the victim of the system that was put in place to supposedly avoid what has happened here in that he did not even benefit from either the rules of the Association or natural justice. Tomas Freeman's 8 week suspension expires on Saturday week, July 18th at 12 midnight which means that should Monaghan progress against Derry he will miss the following game as well. The injustice will be felt even more when he sees two Derry players in action that were suspended for something that actually happened while his was an "attempted" incident. It really does take some understanding. Tweet

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