Cork trio apologise for actions in Thurles saga but then let fly

“AS everybody knows, we as players have had differences with Mr Murphy in the past; however we want to thank him sincerely for the way he represented us over the course of this process.

He, along, with Gerald McCarthy, Dr Con Murphy, Jerry Wallis and the rest of the Cork management team and county board, showed amazing loyalty to us, a loyalty we appreciate very much and will not forget.

“From what we saw of his representations, at every level, they could not have been unsuccessful if justice had been done. However — and whether Nickey Brennan or Liam Mulvihill or any other parties so concerned about discipline like it or not — there was no fairness involved in this from the beginning, in our view. Furthermore, to patronise members of the GAA by saying that the emergency meeting on Saturday next is unrelated to our recent disciplinary dealings is incredible and fools nobody.

“To make matters worse, the threat that more draconian disciplinary measures will have to be taken if people don’t quietly accept the flawed and unwieldy system currently in place is downright insulting, especially to players who now give up so much of their lives at all levels. Surely the fixture crisis — which affects players at all level, club and inter-county — would be a more pressing issue for an emergency meeting.

“We have seen the frenzy in the media about this matter. The comments of many ill-informed people, published without hesitation by sections of the media, about how we behaved — while not having even seen the evidence and how we ‘were looking to get off’ and ‘not man enough to take our punishment’, etc — have to be taken as genuine.

“It is generally good to see people animated about and interested in hurling matches. However, this business had nothing to do with hurling, and everything to do with window-dressing for the public and settling scores within the GAA in our opinion. Over the years we have made enemies both in the GAA and sections of the media through some well-documented — and some undocumented — situations. It would appear that these people saw an opportunity for retribution and took full advantage of that opportunity. This did not surprise us, even though we must accept that we put ourselves in this position.

“We are proud to have represented Cork at the highest level for many years, and happy to have trained many thousands of times over those years to achieve this honour. We want to say, however, that the media/GAA cannot continue to have it both ways — ie on one hand treating us akin to professional sports-people, and on the other hand, treating us as amateur when it suits. People may not be aware of the effect which this level of media glare can have on players. In recent weeks, we have been subjected to harassment, intimidation, racist and defamatory abuse and comment, as well as having our characters publicly questioned.

“Because of what happened, the fact that we were unfairly treated, and mostly because we wanted to play for Cork, we went through the entire disciplinary procedure.

“This we have now done and we intend to put the matter behind us and wish to get on with being Cork players. We will continue to do our best for Cork hurling and Cork hurling people, whatever the views of the GAA, the biased sections of the media, or any hastily convened meeting.

“Corcaigh abú.”