Offaly’s guide to the rules of engagement
But last week, with the dawning of a fresh hell in Offaly hurling — the senior team being ordered off the main county ground in Tullamore, threats that parked cars would be removed and what appears to have been the most crowded playing area in Ireland somewhere in Birr, we found ourselves on the shores of familiarity.
A county board-player stand-off? Draw up a chair and let the light music of whiskey falling into glasses form the background music while we offer those involved a brief guide as to what is expected...
For the players, expect to hear plenty of smart cracks, and not-so-smart cracks, about car keys and gates being locked and motors being moved, for the next few years. Even when you’re in the right you have to put up with such slashing. Take it in the spirit in which it’s offered. Remember everyone thinks they’re the first to say it.
One good point, though, is that they have their manager on their side.
All too often the manager was the bone of contention in these problems in other counties, whether it was a revolt over pushing cars around a car park at training or having warm-weather sessions abroad that degenerated into games of five-a-side (soccer, rather than the game of the Gael for which the board had forked out).
Indeed, Joe Dooley has outflanked his opponents by adopting what we veterans call the Noel Browne approach: nothing puts your opponents on the back foot faster than releasing the relevant documents into the public domain.
Frankly, the county board concerned may as well paint targets on their back now, because if history tells us anything, the county board is the organisation that carries the can in these matters.
Sometimes they deserve it, of course.
When the Offaly board suggested they’d hang on until their own senior hurlers are out of the All-Ireland championship before addressing any issues it was the kind of public relations disaster that, well, only a county board could commit.
At times one would wonder why these executives don’t throw their hands up in the air and go the whole hog, hiring an actual PR company to give them the benefit of some direction (surely at some stage in one of these stand-offs a county board will bite the bullet and actually hire public relations professionals to put across their side of the story, though they’d have to weigh the negative reaction from hard-pressed club delegates when they learn of such expenditure).
As it stands county boards stand a fair chance of being cited on PR courses as an example of how not to conduct your business.
One oft-forgotten sector — the silent victims, if you will — is the commentariat.
Those brave enough to pontificate about the rights and wrongs of situations with which they have a vague acquaintance run the risk of castigation if — to take a random example — they oppose players in one county’s stand-off and then side with obstreperous players in another county’s imbroglio.
The ground can become even more treacherous than that: pundits invite ridicule when their diametrically opposed positions involve their own counties, and you know an analyst is on the run when he hints that there are elements of the situation which people outside the county are unaware of.
Within the profession this is known as the Sumatran Defence, after Dr Watson’s comment about the tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra: namely, that there were aspects of the story for which the world was not yet ready.
There is also what the CIA refers to as collateral damage.
If we can be allowed, let us to share one incident from a bilious stand-off with which we are very familiar.
In the middle of one particularly poisonous phase of the whole shebang, one of the tangential participants tiptoed downstairs in the middle of the night to discover an intruder in his house: a drunken student curled up like a dozing baby. Members of the gardaí were called and the offending item was removed.
When a detective landed in to take down some details, he flicked open his notebook and asked the most pressing question of our shaken householder.
“Do you think the county board had something to do with this?”
Good people of Offaly, enjoy the journey.
* Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie; Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx
