Joe hits out at County Board

[durra1]

How bad does this look:-

“F&*k ye – ye were threatening to have our cars towed from the car park”.

“ F^&k ye too – ye bullied a load of u-12s off the field”.

Christ.

[Plain of the Herbs]

Just spotted more . . . http://www.independent.ie/sport/hurling ... 75034.html

The shut-out on Saturday morning came after some players were denied access to O'Connor Park ahead of their scheduled time and a member of the backroom team was warned that a vehicle he had parked close to the gates for the purposes of transporting equipment more efficiently would be removed if he didn't remove it himself.

James Rigney, an Offaly player who broke his hand recently, was put off the pitch by a member of the ground staff, as he attempted to do laps of the field around the perimeter in a pair of runners. The rest of the management and players subsequently packed up and left.

(Michael) Duignan said the incidents "saddened" him.

[blue74]

dont post often here although i do read the posts a lot.
anyway my take on it is there seems to be a power struggle between the hurlers who want to move back to birr and the county board who dont want to loose face.
there is a lot more to this that hasnt come out yet.
for instance do we know that the hurlers had booked oconnor park on saturday or did they just turn up?
did they specifically request o connor park knowing it would cause difficulties and if it was booked was the groundsman told beforehand that they had the use of the pitch?
the statement from Michael Duignan/Daithi that all hurling must return to Birr is stirring things up more...they know right well that birr cannot accommodate the big hurling games despite the improvements and that league games that accommdate no more than a few thousand is all birr can hope for.
what is the revised capacity of Birr?
and as for the fact that they cant play hurling properly if its not in Birr as thats their homeland?
how is hurlling going to be promoted in Tullamore/Edenderry etc and the rest of offaly if this attitude of take it all back to Birr is allowed to get its way?
how will it all be sorted? well I dont know.. someone will have to give in or compromise on both sides.

[townman]

dont post often here although i do read the posts a lot.
anyway my take on it is there seems to be a power struggle between the hurlers who want to move back to birr and the county board who dont want to loose face.
there is a lot more to this that hasnt come out yet.
for instance do we know that the hurlers had booked oconnor park on saturday or did they just turn up?
did they specifically request o connor park knowing it would cause difficulties and if it was booked was the groundsman told beforehand that they had the use of the pitch?
the statement from Michael Duignan/Daithi that all hurling must return to Birr is stirring things up more...they know right well that birr cannot accommodate the big hurling games despite the improvements and that league games that accommdate no more than a few thousand is all birr can hope for.
what is the revised capacity of Birr?
and as for the fact that they cant play hurling properly if its not in Birr as thats their homeland?
how is hurlling going to be promoted in Tullamore/Edenderry etc and the rest of offaly if this attitude of take it all back to Birr is allowed to get its way?
how will it all be sorted? well I dont know.. someone will have to give in or compromise on both sides.

but sure how many went to watch offaly again Dublin this year 1000 or last year again Antrim 200 or 300 its not that the hurlers are getting big support
Birr would have held the Dublin game or the Cork game for that matter. as for not booking o'connor park what else is going on there its not like they are
playing the football or hurling club championship at the moment thats on a 8 or 9 week break. i think it was just a shower of gobshites thinking they were
something or someone thats all it was they should have got a kick up the arse and told to cop on.

[Monday Manager]

Firstly everyone involved with hurling would like to see some games in St Brendan's Park and considering we are back in Division 2 next year, capacity shouldn't be a problem.
But that has nothing to do with what happened last Saturday. The County Board should clarify the facts and if they did it would be cleer that the letter sent to all the national media was over the top.
What it was was a falling out between individuals on power trips in O'Connor Park. That's all. The hours of radio and newspaper coverage just make us look like eejits again.
The facts as Ive been tols was that there was an event on already in O'Connor Park on the field. The hurlers were supposed to be watching a video first until that was over but one player went out for a run. Here I agree that him being asked to leave the field as he was just going around the edges was stupid.
But the line about the cars being threatend to be towed seems to be exadurated. It looks as if one car parked across the gate was causing an obstruction and that was asked to be moved. Not exactly a fleet of tow trucks on the way but never let the facts get in the way of a good excuse......
The real problem that no one seems to mention is that Offaly haven't produced a minor team to challenge since 2000. Worrying about where the senior team plays is a waste of time and effort when we can't coach up a team to challenge.

[blue74]

I would say Mr Dooleys time as hurling manager is coming to an end...and he knows it..

[uibhfaillian]

I heard Daithi Regan talking about this on Newstalk last night. He was saying it's all to do with money. The County board want to pay the debt on O'Connor Park by putting on as many fixtures as possible and they want to keep the pitch in good nick and looking good when Dublin play Galway there. This is the reason why they don't want the hurlers training on it. It's daft, they're turning Offaly GAA into a national laughing stock.

[joe bloggs]

This is not the first time something like this has happened to a county hurling team.
Last year in the week before the minor hurlers were due to play wexford they were not let in to train in OCP.
Later on it the year they had a challange with dublin pencilled in for the week before they played kilkenny in June, but when a qualifier football fixture was put in again the minors were forced to go elsewhwere, instead of letting the minors in to play early in the day. It is hardly as if it couldn't take two games in June!

[uibhfaillian]

http://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/championshi ... ,flash,257

Very cutting remark from Michael Duignan about the county footballers "going on the beer" and generally slacking off in the middle of that interview.


Are the footballers being given preferential treatment over the hurlers to train at OCP?
Or is the case that the footballers just don't give sh*t anyway and don't really want to train?

[blue74]

what people are getting is a very one sided view at the moment.. once the county board speak on the matter a lot more will be clear and a lot of what was said will be answered in detail.. that dosent excuse some of the county board actions over the years but wait until then...

[KingLurk]

what people are getting is a very one sided view at the moment.. once the county board speak on the matter a lot more will be clear and a lot of what was said will be answered in detail.. that dosent excuse some of the county board actions over the years but wait until then...

Sounds like you know more than the rest of us Blue?

[Plain of the Herbs]

It seems to me from the evidence from the manager’s statement countersigned by the rest of the management, 3 senior players and the team secretary on the one hand and the board’s source’s claims in today’s Irish Independent on the other hand, that the team were NOT prevented from training on the pitch and that the pitch was open to them for the appointed 1 pm time slot.

Note there are no de facto contradictions between the manager's statement and the board's source's claims.

It seems to me that training was cancelled at the whim of the manager who then proceeded to spend his time drafting his strongly-worded letter. What a waste of a whole day. I wonder how many, if any, players travelled a long distance for this ‘non-event’?

[KingLurk]

...at the whim of the manager ...

At the end of his tether more like.

[the bare biffo]

...at the whim of the manager ...

At the end of his tether more like.

Lads either ye havent seen the extract from the Independent that POTH has posted or else ye are just chhosing to ignore it because sounds more realistic and less sensationalist.

If the piece in the indo is correct then

1. The hurlers were booked in to train at 1.00pm.
2. They were scheduled to watch a video under the stand at 11.30.
3. There was a skills competition booked on the field that was due to finish at 12.00
4. One or more hurlers tried to get on the pitch before they were scheduled.
5. Joe Dooley cancelled the training session.

Whatever gripes there are with the county board and I'm sure there are lots of genuine ones, this particular incident does not appear to be one of them.
That said, whatever gobshite went about threatening to remove cars needs to have his sheriffs badge taken away.

[KingLurk]

4. One or more hurlers tried to get on the pitch before they were scheduled.

Seems it wasn't quite as simple as that from what I've been told just now. They weren't tryign to gain access to play on the the pitch, they weren't even allowed cross the pitch to get to the video room. They got annoyed. Caretaker got more annoyed and threw a lot of abuse and it was a slippery slope from there.