Nugent: Munster Council to blame for Thurles crowd trouble
Hundreds of fans streamed across the pitch from the New stand side to the Old Stand before the Limerick-Waterford rematch got underway nine days ago.
The provincial body later issued a statement admitting “inadequate stewarding” was to blame for the problem. However, Nugent insists the Munster Council only have themselves to blame. He revealed a number of voluntary local stewards, with passes, were refused entry to Semple Stadium by Munster Council representatives when they showed up for duty at the Cork-Tipperary IHC final the previous Friday. Because of the incident many of those volunteers made themselves unavailable for the minor tie. This led to a chronic lack of bodies available to deal with what was described by the Munster Council as “patron behaviour.”
And Nugent is “very unhappy” with the implication in the Munster Council statement that Semple Stadium officials were to blame in some way for what happened before the minor replay. He said: “We were very unhappy with the statement which appeared to point the finger at Semple Stadium. I refute there was any fault in the stadium in that regard. They have a tremendous record there of hosting games over a long, long number of years and the treatment of voluntary stewards was responsible for what happened at the minor replay.”
Semple Stadium top brass met with Munster Council representatives last night to put plans in place forWednesday’s Munster U21HC final between Tipperary and Clare. The Munster Council is anxious to avoid a repeat of the minor final replay episode. Nugent confirmed: “A number of stewards were refused entry at the intermediate final. Some of them paid then, some of them went away and some of them didn’t come in on the following Tuesday because of the way they were treated. It shows a lack of appreciation for voluntary stewards and that wasn’t a decision by Semple Stadium or Tipp county board – it was a decision by Munster Council to restrict the number of stewards and had a knock-on effect on the Tuesday night. We have to address that with Munster Council.”
