‘A one-line statement was all that was required’

The last week wasn’t a great one if you were a Limerick hurling fan.

Cork native Donal O’Grady, an All-Ireland medal-winner as a player 30 years ago and as a manager with the Rebels ten years ago, departed as Limerick senior hurling coach and joint manager last weekend.

It was an unexpected exit but is easily summarised: O’Grady was unhappy with the county board’s tardiness in clarifying suggestions that he and fellow manager TJ Ryan had apologised for the Limerick hurlers’ performances, as outlined in a brief statement released to this newspaper last Sunday evening.

Since then there’s been the media storm one might have expected after such a high-profile departure.

O’Grady gave an interview to the Irish Examiner on Monday afternoon in which he stressed the centrality of supporting the Limerick players, and the fact that that had been compromised by recent events: “When allegations like this are made, and when they’re not withdrawn — as we were promised they would be — then it undermines all the work that’s done to support players and to develop them . . .”

The Cork man named other counties who had not criticised under-pressure managers: “In all those cases you didn’t have county board officers coming out and undermining players in public. In those instances the boards supported the players and management.”

The Limerick County Board went on to meet on Monday evening but, oddly, it didn’t issue a press release until the following day.

At that point O’Grady’s comments were in the public domain, and the officers’ statement stressed that the Limerick team and management would have their full backing (“Every support required to prepare for the Munster Championship will be made available to the management and team,”), in a fairly pointed echo of O’Grady’s remarks.

The only light relief to be found at this point was in the suggestions from wags that O’Grady’s departure had come at an eerily fortuitous time when compared to another departure, this time at Old Trafford.

If the controversy proves one thing, it shows one huge problem with counties which bring in an outside manager.

First, despite all the celebratory noises which are customary when these appointments are announced, a county board which brings in a non-indigenous manager is already on the back foot when it comes to dealing with dissent within its borders.

A board in this situation can’t plead the fifth amendment because it’s already incriminated itself: an outside man is a de facto indictment of the coaching talent within a county.

The only conclusion to be drawn is that nobody local is up to the task according to the most influential people within the county, a diagnosis which never sits well with some delegates and club members.

The appointment serves as a handy stick with which the disaffected can beat county officers. Hence the tendency for the rumour mill to crank up in the immediate aftermath of an unscheduled departure such as O’Grady’s; the usual complaints and rumours teemed and boiled within the county as soon as the story came out.

The players didn’t like O’Grady’s style of play, and it was a style of play that didn’t suit Limerick, anyway. He didn’t get on with TJ Ryan, his co-manager. He’d lost the dressing room.

Surprisingly few of those assertions stand up to scrutiny, though.

Dealing with them in reverse order, players responded quickly to O’Grady’s e-mail to them last Sunday night outlining his resignation, which is hardly a sign of disaffection with the manager.

What O’Grady and Ryan had lost was almost the entire forward line from last year’s successful Munster championship campaign. The absence of players like Declan Hannon, Seamus Hickey and David Breen to a variety of injuries, long- and short-term, crippled the Shannonsiders.

At the other end Limerick missed their most influential defender: Richie McCarthy was an All Star last season but hasn’t figured much for the county in 2014. His lack of playing time was an issue raised at a county board meeting but a leg injury was slow to heal for McCarthy earlier in the year, which meant he was slower achieving full match fitness. The roll call of injured absentees lends credence to O’Grady’s suggestion the board “lacked perspective” when it came to the league performances.

As for O’Grady’s relationship with Ryan, the latter’s comments on Wednesday landed a hand grenade into Shannonside conspiracies which aimed to paint O’Grady as overreacting to the county board.

“I firmly believe that Donal O’Grady and I acted correctly in pursuing a retraction from Co board in connection with comments concerning an apology regarding league performance,” read the Garryspillane clubman’s midweek statement. “The Co board have only now corrected this. We were both fully involved together in this situation and it is unfair to point the finger at Donal O’Grady, as we were not to blame for this. We both felt that arbitration was unnecessary. All that was required was a simple one-line statement.”

The issue of the team’s style of play is a good deal more involved.

Influential figures within Limerick were unhappy with the team’s approach as seen in the league campaign — only this week Limerick’s most successful manager of the last 20 years, Tom Ryan, said in these pages during the week that: “O’Grady’s style doesn’t suit Limerick and that was obvious from before,” but the team had managed a draw away to Cork, All-Ireland finalists last year, in their 2014 league opener, despite being down to 14 men for much of the game.

There’s a natural inclination to view Limerick’s league through the prism of the team’s final, disastrous outings against Offaly and Galway: nobody seems willing to revisit its positive opener.

Ryan’s remarks crystallise a deeper issue with Limerick hurling, though, in that it points up an obvious question that should be asked about the county’s approach to the game: if the county’s style of play has yielded one All-Ireland senior title in 70 years, then surely a different style is needed? The only problem is that introducing such a change in a county’s approach requires a difficult period of conversion, one in which a strong-minded manager is necessary. The Limerick County Board had the perfect candidate on hand for that task, but now he’s gone.

Limerick have been in this position before, and often, ironically, when things are going well.

Tom Ryan’s experience in the past provides an obvious example of how this kind of storm plays out. When the Shannonsiders lost the 1996 All-Ireland final, Ryan was presented with a list of 20 questions from the county board which tried to establish the reason Limerick lost the game (one of those questions asked if the selectors accepted responsibility for losing the game — what is this Limerick obsession with accountability?).

More recently there was another manager-county board controversy when Limerick icon Joe McKenna resigned as senior hurling manager hours after a Munster championship defeat by Clare in 2007; Richie Bennis and Gary Kirby took over and led Limerick to an honourable All-Ireland final defeat at the hands of Kilkenny.

Just three years after that Limerick panellists refused to play for then-manager Justin McCarthy, leading to a seriously under-strength side representing the county in the championship — and, ultimately, McCarthy’s departure.

What must grate most of all with Limerick hurling supporters is the timing of this latest controversy.

Last year Limerick won a first Munster senior hurling title in 17 years. On the same day their minors delivered a storming draw with Waterford, and were good enough to win the replay.

Schools like Árd Scoil Ris have been providing a steady stream of promising young hurlers. Bright signs. Green shoots.

And now this.

Since last weekend there’s been a wearying sequence of guesses and conjectures, not to mention a mind-numbing focus on the exact sequence of a series of draft statements.

However, in his comments during the week TJ Ryan cut to the quick of the issue, rendering obsolete a good deal of the boilerplate issuing from those sympathetic to the county board’s position.

A one-line statement was all that was required, said Ryan. He was right.