Banner players stick to their guns
Tuesday November 17 2009
CLARE hurlers are sticking to their guns and have not backed down in their effort to oust their management team.
The players have now submitted a document to the county board outlining, in detail, their grievances with the current management and they have agreed to sit down with board representatives in the next 48 hours to discuss it.
There is speculation that this meeting will take place tonight but it is more likely to be tomorrow night.
Despite reports that all of the players would be present whenever they went face to face with officials for the first time, it appears more likely, however, that the players will be represented by a sizeable delegation, which will represent a cross-section of the squad's experienced and younger members.
A week ago, county chairman Mike O'Neill set a 10-day target in which to try to solve the impasse and declared he would set up a three-man committee -- consisting of himself and two, as yet unidentified, independent mediators -- to hear their complaints.
The players have twice written to the county board expressing their lack of confidence in the management but the board, and clubs, still backed manager Mike McNamara to serve out the second year of a current two-year term.
The players came in for heavy criticism at last Tuesday's county board meeting because their submission -- a brief 84-word statement outlining that they had passed a vote of 'no confidence' in the current management -- gave no details as to the exact nature of their complaints.
The team have attempted to address this now by detailing their grievances.
They met last Thursday night when they, reportedly, individually wrote down their grievances before compiling a composite list of their complaints before meeting again on Sunday.
consensus
The fact that they needed a second meeting has raised questions about exactly how united last Thursday's meeting was, but the fact that they have now submitted a representative document indicates that there is consensus among them.
Just how far they are prepared to go in their opposition to the current management will only emerge in the coming days and weeks.
One surprising twist last Sunday was the sudden retirement of former All Star and 10-year panellist, Tony Griffin, who is only 28.
Griffin cited his dissatisfaction with the current management as just one of his reasons for quitting inter-county hurling -- he is also developing a business -- and admitted that the players themselves had to take some responsibility for their disastrous 2009 season.
One of their complaints that he articulated was the type of heavy training they were doing and he singled out a two-hour training session they did the day before they played Waterford in the National League last February.
"We were doing the same things we were doing in 2000, which, even then, were starting to crumble; the long slogs, the two-hour sessions, the long sprints at the end of training," said Griffin.
"We were overloading in training, overloading in duration to the point where fellas were wide open to injury."
Griffin stressed that he had nothing personally against the management or county board, but significantly said: "I don't think the board have performed brilliantly in all of this.
"They said they weren't aware after the season ended that the players were unhappy with the set up. They knew, but they took the view 'if we leave it, it'll blow over'. And that's still the view."
- Cliona Foley
Irish Independent
