Captains’ boycott threat won’t force board’s hand on UCD

UCD’s participation in next year’s Dublin hurling championship seems all but assured, despite the threat of a player boycott by seven club captains earlier this week.

The statement handed to county secretary John Costelloe said that “the players of the clubs in question will give serious consideration to their non-participation in the 2006 Senior Hurling Championship should any third-level institutions be reinvited.”

However, yesterday chairman John Bailey made it clear that there is no motion for this year’s county convention on the matter and there’s no procedure in place for the board to make an amendment or a late motion.

Bailey also pointed out that the players should have made their grievances known through the proper channels - ie their clubs.

Assistant county secretary Noel Murphy backed his comments yesterday evening. “What we have here is a group of people going off and holding a meeting among themselves. Why not go to their clubs and put forward a motion that can be brought to the county convention?”

Murphy said the matter would be discussed at the next management meeting which is fixed for next Monday, but that the county board would be making no statement on the matter in the meantime. “The county board won’t be doing anything about it,” said Murphy. “If a club wants to enter a competition and they are affiliated to Cuman Luthcleas Gael in Dublin, well then they’re perfectly entitled to do that. There’s nothing to stop them.”

Murphy was also anxious to clear up the issue that UCD and other third-level institutions are ‘invited’ into the county championships.

“It is not an invite. Let’s get that straight. It’s their right under existing regulations. UCD haven’t just arrived all of a sudden. They won county titles back in the 40s and 50s as well.

“UCD were the first football club to win the AIB Club championship as we now know it back in the 70s. This kind of thing cropped up before in Limerick when people were giving out about Thomond College.”

However, both Murphy and Bailey accepted that the issue is a controversial and potentially divisive one and Bailey has mooted a compromise to limit the number of UCD players who are given clearance to play in the county championship.

“I realise that people are unhappy about things as they are and maybe they have a point, maybe they don’t,” said Murphy.

“Things have changed in recent years with the issuing of scholarships but that doesn’t change the fact that there is a system there for people to go through if they want that changed.

“My honest opinion is that UCD are helping to improve the standard of Dublin hurling. If you want to be the best then you’ve got to play the best. As it is, we have a lot of Dublin clubs going down the country to play teams and here they have a very good one in their own county.”