Regan blasts Offaly board over hurlers’ treatment

OFFALY legend Daithí Regan has blasted the county board for their treatment of the county’s hurling teams.

Regan lifted the lid on a number of incidents in recent weeks and claimed officials “have no interest whatsoever in the future of hurling in Offaly.”

His most damning claim was that the senior side were forced to cease training to allow the Offaly minor footballers a kickaround the night before they faced Kildare in the Leinster Championship.

Regan’s revelations come after the Irish Examiner yesterday exclusively revealed senior manager Joe Dooley wrote to county secretary Martin Boland expressing annoyance at the scene which greeted his squad at a training session at the refurbished Tullamore stadium on Saturday.

Dooley wrote: “As a result of the way we were received, from gates being locked all over the place, to players and mentors being asked to leave the field, to not being allowed walk across the field, to the threat of cars being removed from outside the ground, we had no choice but to call off training.”

It last night emerged the Faithful County’s minor hurling management have also sent correspondence to GAA chiefs in the county expressing dismay at the way they and their players had been treated at the Tullamore venue.

A furious Regan last night lashed out at officials within the county. He said: “It’s disgraceful what’s being done to Offaly hurling and people have to answer for that, the people in power, they’re the ones with the responsibility. I’ve seen the problem myself, first-hand. I’m involved with Birr U16s and on the Tuesday night before Offaly played Dublin in the championship we were having a training-session in our own pitch when we noticed a group of players starting to build along the sideline. It was the Offaly senior team, with nowhere to train, so they had come to Birr.

“We stepped aside, gave them the pitch, but to see the Offaly senior hurling team five nights before they played Dublin, looking for a place to train — we were embarrassed for them.

“Our young fellas should be looking up to these fellas but to see them like this, waiting on the side of our pitch because they had nowhere else to go was terrible. Tullamore wasn’t available to them, again.”

“They were training in O’Connor Park one night and the Offaly minor footballers were playing championship there the following night against Kildare. The hurlers were ordered off the pitch because, they were told, the minor footballers needed to have a kick-around. A f**king kick-around. The senior hurlers ordered off the pitch for that,” said Regan.

“When I think of the service that Joe Dooley has given Offaly hurling! I spoke to Joe that Thursday and my heart went out to him. He’s a very deliberate man, would not do something like this unless it had reached intolerable levels.

“For a county that between 1980 and 2000 won four All-Irelands, nine Leinsters, a National League — New York or London are better treated.”

Regan claimed that the reasoning for the board’s stance is financial.

“The feeling locally — and I’d feel very strongly about this — is that the Offaly County Board is interested in one thing and one thing only, and that is servicing the debt on O’Connor Park.

“The big thing for them this week isn’t that Offaly beat either Cork or Laois in the hurling qualifiers, it’s that they get 15 to 20,000 in O’Connor Park this Saturday for Galway and Dublin (Leinster senior hurling semi-final).

“They have no interest in Offaly hurling. I’m not saying that lightly, they have no interest whatsoever in the future of hurling in Offaly.

“I have a copy of a letter which is even more damning than Joe’s letter. It was written by the Offaly minor hurling management to the same individual in the Offaly County Board, pleading and begging them to play the minor hurling championship game against Westmeath in Birr.

“They are two smart men, a brilliantly-written letter, a very true letter, but it was disregarded completely by the county board, wasn’t even brought up at the meeting. Nothing ever came of it. We’re all very sick at what’s happening, we’re all very disappointed at what’s happening.”

In that letter, dated May 16, five days before the Leinster quarter-final against Westmeath, the manager and selectors expressed their “extreme disappointment at the non-consultation and lack of communication” regarding the fixing of that game (subsequently lost) for O’Connor Park. They go on to bemoan the “current perilous state” of underage hurling in Offaly and point out that, “The Birr venue is a very familiar setting for many of the players as they play their club hurling with south Offaly-based teams. Couple this familiarity with the fact that Birr is the centre of Offaly’s hurling support base — alas, the Tullamore venue fails to meet any of these considerations. We are strangers in the mist (sic) of our own people”.

Regan revealed that Dooley and the players have the full support of clubs in the south of the county at least.

“Joe has already been contacted today by about 10 clubs in south Offaly offering their pitch, their facilities — those clubs are giving him their full backing. Hurling isn’t wanted in Tullamore but it is wanted in Birr. South Offaly will give that its full backing.

“Three hundred turned up to the Westmeath game, 1200 turned up for Offaly/Wexford — you’d have had 4,000 or more in Birr. We have full-length terracing now, a renovated stand, a new pitch in pristine condition — it’s fantastic what’s been done. But, the county board are terrified about letting Birr back in as a county venue, their whole focus is on servicing the debt on O’Connor Park. I spoke with the chairman of the county board, Pat Teehan, and I actually have a lot of time for Pat.

“I asked him if he had an issue with me raising the question of Offaly playing their home hurling league games in Birr; he said he didn’t disagree with everything I was saying, that maybe they would look at the possibility next year of getting some games back to Birr. But I said: ‘No Pat all games must come back to Birr.”

The media pundit is unsure how the matter will be resolved.

He continued: “I know Pat Teehan has issued a statement, ‘No comment, it will be dealt with internally’; the people I’ve spoken to this morning, however, have said, ‘no way, enough is enough, this can’t be brushed under the carpet’.

“It has to be sorted, openly, and what’s got to happen is this — Offaly hurling teams have got to be given a pitch on which they can train, that’s surely a basic requirement. Hurling in Offaly needs to come back to Birr, a fantastic facility now, and all of south Offaly would like to see that. If it’s not sorted quickly, agitation will occur. I’ve been approached by two different clubs already in south Offaly to know if I’d head up a separate group to lobby the county board on this.

“I have declined, on the basis that I know Birr have already been lobbying themselves to try and get games back down there.

“What I would like to see is that people start to boycott games in Tullamore, or at least have a demonstration outside the gates, to let the county board see the depth of anger in Offaly.

“Good hurling people are sick and tired of it. They are sick and tired of a blind eye being turned to what’s been happening to our hurling teams, at every level. This just can’t go on — that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Statement from Offaly management

THE Offaly GAA Management Committee met last night and decided they will issue a full and frank response to the issues concerning the senior hurlers when, and only when, the county complete their current Liam MacCarthy Cup campaign.