Kerry and Tipperary County Boards fined €5,000 for match withdrawals

KERRY and Tipperary County Boards will face sizeable losses for their withdrawals from the All-Ireland senior championship in hurling and football respectively.

Both counties were hit with €5,000 fines for their indiscretions but, more important, the two Munster sides will also miss out on monies from the All-Ireland qualifiers series. Kerry hurlers refused to participate in the qualifiers after suffering a heavy defeat by Cork in the Munster SHC, while internal wrangling led to Tipperary pulling out of their football qualifier date with Fermanagh.

Tipperary have also been directed by Croke Park to take disciplinary action on the matter internally.

“The notice only came through late on Wednesday night. We will have to discuss the letter in more detail at county board level over the coming days. As a result we cannot comment on the matter,” Tipperary PRO Ed Donnelly explained last night.

Their counterparts in Kerry are set to accept the punishment without challenge.

“We will pay it without any qualms,” chairman of the Kerry County Board Sean Walsh said yesterday. “Obviously we are very disappointed with how things turned out on the hurling front. We had high hopes for the hurlers at the start of the year but then we hit a slump in the league and then we had a fall off in training. After all of that we made our decision to withdraw.

“Now we must accept our punishment for that.”

Despite the disappointment, Walsh is confident that the future of the game in the county is not overly bleak.

“We have structures in place and we have a great band of players in place. So hopefully we can work with that.” Meanwhile Armagh have received a €1,000 fine from the GAC for emerging late for the second half of the Ulster SFC final at Croke Park. The Orchard County were two minutes late coming out for the second half of their provincial final showdown with Donegal. As such behaviour has become something of a trait of this Armagh team, Association chiefs were left with no choice but to impose the fine.

The Ulster champions pleaded innocence at a GAC meeting in Croke Park insisting that they had a medical reason for the delay.

The 2002 All-Ireland champions have been late onto the field after the interval on a number of occasions in the past, with observers claiming that they deploy a deliberate tactic of unsettling their opponents by making them wait on the pitch.

County Board secretary Patrick Óg Nugent said: “While we’re disappointed about the decision, we’ll abide by it and pay the fine without protest.”