When anonymous anger goes from irksome to ‘right, I have to deal with this’

Galway senior and minor hurling managers Micheál Donoghue and Jeff Lynskey are the latest to reveal they too have received hate mail, with Lynskey having contemplated contacting the gardaí, such was the abuse recently directed at a board official over a player not being included in his minor panel.

All-Ireland winning senior boss Micheál Donoghue doesn’t hold onto the anonymous letters which drop into his postbox.

Since Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s revelation on Saturday evening that he has “a box full of anonymous letters” at home, Limerick boss John Kiely, former Dublin and Clare manager Anthony Daly, former Mayo football manager James Horan, and now Donoghue and Lynskey, have echoed the words of the outgoing Kerry manager.

Horan, speaking on Newstalk’s Off The Ball on Tuesday, admitted to getting gardai involved after receiving hate mail during his time in charge of Mayo. Lynskey almost did likewise following an incident a couple of weeks ago.

“Some of the stories I have are funny, some of them are less so,” Lynskey began. “Board officials would have been attacked, and that was only about six weeks ago. [They were] verbally attacked over stuff that I would have done regarding panels and not picking lads. And you’re thinking, ‘Right, is this the time now to go to the guards with it to protect myself?’.

“The incident a couple of weeks ago did [lead me to contemplate going to the gardaí] because of the vitriol that was there, the angst that was there and the toxicity of it. It was an uncle of a lad. So I said to myself, ‘Right, if I hear another thing here, I’m going to move on this’.”

Lynskey, who is into his fourth year as Galway minor manager and oversaw the All-Ireland final wins of 2015 and 2017, is not afraid of a disgruntled parent showing up on his doorstep, but does feel the need to protect himself and those around him.

“In our school where I work, the principal protects everyone in the school, both staff and teachers. So, for me, the board officials need to protect what we’re doing.

“So, when people like Éamonn Fitzmaurice come out and the level of abuse that he got, that’s wrong. It’s not nice. When you have a young family at home that I have and he has, we’ve young kids.

“Now, God help them if they come to my door. It would be sorted out fairly quick! But you just have to protect yourself and shield yourself. As someone said to me when I became minor manager, ‘You’re now public property and you need to realise that, you just have to deal with it’.”

All-Ireland winning senior boss Donoghue doesn’t hold onto the anonymous letters which drop into his postbox. He believes most inter-county managers would receive such mail at one time or another.

“I’ll always open it and take it out, but I recycle it pretty quick. You can recognise some of the handwriting. It’s regular,” said Donoghue.

“I think every manager will experience it. When you’re looking in from the outside, Éamonn [Fitzmaurice] seems to have gotten a fair doing down there. We’re in a society now where some things are acceptable and people just go with it.

“People think they can just knock whenever they want. That’s just society, unfortunately.”

Donoghue is adamant the negative commentary which inter-county players are subjected to does, on occasion, cross the line, but he’s thankful none of his charges have been the recipients of the hate mail which has dominated GAA discourse in recent days.

“Criticism is part and parcel of it. It’s the unfortunate side of it but look, it goes with it. But some of it goes over-the-top, in fairness.

“You’d want a thicker skin alright. I don’t even open some of the letters now. Straight into the bin.”

The letters which have arrived into the Lynskey household tend to coincide with the finalising of the county minor panel as the season begins to gather pace.

“What tends to happen with us is when we pick the panel, there’s a huge attention drawn when someone makes a Galway minor. There’s a status to it. The family name goes up,” Lynskey explains “There’s a term there, it’s called ‘FOMO’ — fear of missing out. Or a ‘helicopter parent’ or the ‘lawnmower parent’. So, they will contact the county chairman, the bishop, the priest, local councillors, TDs; all that stuff that I’ve had for the last four years.

“Funny enough, if I’d a letter now I wouldn’t read it. You would have letters from time to time. You’d get text messages, you’d get irate parents on the phone.”

The Galway minor boss admits the one time a priest rang him to direct his attention to a talented young hurler, the priest was vindicated as the player was subsequently called in.

“There’s other stuff, parents not coming to functions after All-Irelands are won because their kids didn’t make the 26. The big thing is to have the name in the programme and the picture. That’s huge for some parents. For some of them, it’s the be all and end all. But I’m trying to educate them that this is only a step on the road.

“Some of them will listen to you, they’ll absorb it. You would have parents ringing you the night before a match, at 10pm, wondering how come their son is not on the 26, why is he not on the team?”