GAA say Cork board did nothing wrong Cork players' strike

CORK player's strike:The GAA have directly commented on the Cork crisis with a press statement affirming the right of the county board to appoint Teddy Holland as manager.

But association president Nickey Brennan also expressed his hope that facilitator Kieran Mulvey might yet have a further role to play in breaking the deadlock and averting the prospect of Cork dropping out of both National Leagues.

In the release from Croke Park, the president's position was summarised as follows: "The president said that while he understood the emotive environment that currently prevails in relation to the appointment of the Cork senior football team manager, it had to be accepted that the Cork County Board had the authority and was within its rights under the rules of the association to effect the appointment made."

Commenting further at the launch of the Allianz National Leagues yesterday, Brennan added: "We don't want to antagonise anyone. I'd like to encourage everyone to stay with the process and to keep working on it."

Although there was no reconvening of the parallel meetings, such as those chaired by Labour Relations Commission chief executive Mulvey at the weekend, it was revealed that both parties to the dispute, the county board and senior players, had been in touch with Mulvey.

Brennan also said that Croke Park would, through its Competition Control Committee (CCC), try to give the parties a bit of space ahead of the county's scheduled start in this year's NFL next Saturday in Navan, which is virtually certain not to happen.

"Obviously, with the Cork County Board meeting (tonight), which is a scheduled meeting, we want to afford every opportunity to all sides to come to an amicable arrangement. But, clearly, the CCC will have to make the final decision.

"After the Cork County Board meeting we have to give Cork a little bit of breathing space. Kieran Mulvey has promised to come back - he's out of the country this morning - at pretty short notice and deal with the matter once he's of the view that there's something to come back to. They have his phone number, and since they broke up on Saturday I know that both sides have been talking to him on various clarifications.

The official statement also paid tribute to Mulvey's work as a facilitator and his success in securing a measure of agreement between the sides. "The president said that great credit is due to Mr Mulvey for providing a memorandum of understanding which achieved the broad agreement of both parties.

"Brennan added that this memorandum, which is now in the public domain, charted a course into the future in terms of the relationship of its players with the broad Managerial process."

Part of the disagreement concerns a players' proposal that they have a representative on the county executive, an undertaking the county board were unable to give any commitment on because it would require a change in the Official Guide. Asked whether such an initiative might be considered nationally, Brennan was cautious.

"That may very well be the case, but I don't want to get into anything specific now because any comment I may give might be seen to be specifically referring to Cork, so I'm not going to do that.

"But if there are issues that might emerge from this, issues that Kieran Mulvey feels are for the wider association, he will be able to tell me about that and we have a forum to deal with this, whether it's management, central council or congress."