Rebel casualties

WELL that was a costly one. Cork GAA Board’s decision to remove the right of a manager to pick his own selectors has ensured one thing — it won’t be repeated elsewhere without paralysing consultation with everybody involved.

In fact, let’s revisit that sentence. It won’t be repeated again. Ever.

Other issues will also take time to settle. If we’re going to start handing out blame vouchers and revisiting decisions made and not made (we’re not), there’s plenty to go around.

However, it’s easy to see how the GAA could be still dealing with the after-effects of this dispute for many years to come. And not just in Cork.

The GAA’s new Director General, Paraic Duffy, had face-to-face exposure to a particular player issue during this 95-day stand-off, and he didn’t like what he saw. Duffy has always been regarded as a forward-looking moderate, and his time as Croke Park’s player welfare officer ensured he was accessible to most player concerns around the country.

However, the depth of bitterness and intransigence in Cork shocked him as principle gave way to personality. And he must have left the Rebel county wondering how often during (his contract term of) the next seven years he’s going to be dealing with ‘player welfare and issues’, in all their manifestations.

Was this merely “a local issue”, as Kieran Mulvey has suggested; or is the ‘memorandum of understanding’, introduced as a basis for talks, already being pored over by ever county board officer in the country? Winners? Nil. Casualties? Any number you can think of. For instance, in spite of their public support of the Cork hurlers and footballers, it’s hard to conceive of the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) being comfortable so closely linked by association with the Cork crisis. Going forward, Mr Duffy’s attitude to player issues will be an interesting study in itself. One suspects the sunshine days of Dessie Farrell and Sean Kelly are behind us.

That aside, the County Board in Cork must take a serious look at itself and its structures after this. If the delegate votes on the change in management systems was an exercise in GAA democracy, then fine. But God help democracy. And if the executive of the Board thought they were doing a good day’s work changing the selectorial system, and appointing a manager to coach a team without players, well...

That’s not a dig at Teddy Holland, the biggest loser and most wounded victim in this shoddy episode. It’s an indictment of the Board’s thought process. And at no stage did they feel the need to come out and articulate their support of Teddy Holland the coach and explain to the public why they felt he was the best man for the job of driving Cork football forward (Saying he was “democratically elected” doesn’t count). If the players have no problem with the individual concerned, it was incumbent on the Board to call a press conference and publicly back Holland’s football credentials. In doing so, they might have convinced a sceptical public that he was, in fact, their first choice.

Yes, the executive made extraordinary concessions to the players thereafter, and through the dint of Bob Ryan’s efforts, held their own in the PR war. But the irony of Kieran Mulvey’s arbitration yesterday is hardly lost on the Board’s top brass — a management system even further out of their control than before all this nonsense kicked off.

The fact that the players now have two representatives on a committee to appoint Holland’s successor seems like representation gone mad. Throughout the players have insisted they’ve no interest in picking the manager — they even ended up with stuff they didn’t want!

Ah, the next football manager. For those who believe this tortured process would finish last night with the Board telling Holland and his selectors at Páirc Uí Chaoimh that it was in the interest of Cork football that they step aside, God bless your innocence.

However difficult it was going to be to fill Billy Morgan’s shoes, this public dirty linen-washing has made it nigh impossible. And I can’t imagine too many candidates buying into the notion of players deliberating on their suitability either.

However, too much hand-wringing won’t get any League or Championship games played. Ultimately, Kieran Mulvey made the decision no-one wanted to make on Holland. Clearly it was not within his remit to instruct the coach to stand down, nor the Board to tell him so, but a manager without players and now seemingly shorn of the continued support of those who hired him has no choice left. Ditto his selectors, one of whom, Mick O’Loughlin, will continue with some of the Cork players as an Under 21 selector.

On the issue of potential future strikes, the erroneous impression has gone out that the Cork players have been given a finger-wagging and told never to strike again. In fact, the Mulvey verdict is calculated to ensure the players can never go down the “nuclear route” again if the terms of the arbitration are adhered to by the Board.

The Cork players were meeting last night but have already bought into this. One is left wondering what was the catalyst for their leap of faith in the process. Mulvey’s final personal intervention on Thursday may have been decisive; getting both parties into “cordial” talks in the boardroom of the Rochestown Park Hotel certainly was. Clearly the trust he enjoyed on both sides was fundamental, though some of the aims in his arbitration findings are possibly aspirational.

“There should be no recriminations by either side arising from the history of this dispute and all should work together to rebuild the damaged relationships between the parties for the betterment of Cork GAA,” Mulvey said.

That one falls into the latter category.