Irish camp clash on Sydney failures

A row has developed between the Irish athletics team manager at the Sydney Olympics and the Athletics Association of Ireland (AAI) over how the sport is being run and the poor performances of so many Irish athletes at the Sydney Games.

The Irish team manager, Mr Patsy McGonagle, has claimed in an interview in today's Sports Saturday supplement in The Irish Times that his job in Sydney has been seriously undermined by interference from within the AAI, which he also claims has censured him over his comments on the problems besetting Irish athletics.

"In the last few weeks the sniping from Athletics Ireland has become a significant part of my life," he said. "I don't know the agenda, I just know it's there. And they have let it be known they are unhappy with what I have said to the press. I just want planning. We are dealing with elite sport; this is a serious business, we represent our country here. I see things wrong.

"We in Athletics Ireland need to get more professional in every respect. We need a chief executive. We have to lead it in, be professional."

The AAI has rejected Mr McGonagle's claims that he was told not to give his views on problems in the administration of Irish athletics or the performance of the Irish team in Sydney, where the silver medal run of Sonia O'Sullivan over 5,000 metres has been the exception to a sub-standard display.

"He has called for a root and branch investigation into the structure of the sport but that is already happening," said joint national secretary of the AAI Mr Dermot Nagle. "I don't disagree with him there. Patsy McGonagle is himself on the coaching task force which has been put in place to develop the best way forward. We're as frustrated as anyone that a lot of the Irish results didn't go so well, but I did tell him that some of his comments were being taken out of context and spun against us in a very negative way.

"If we have issues to face after the Games, then we will do that but not with something that is fabricated."

Mr McGonagle, the press relations officer for the AAI, also referred to an occasion in recent weeks when certain officers within the organisation have reduced colleagues to tears.

"We had a selectors' meeting on the night before we left Dublin to pick the Olympic teams. It was a farce . . . After the vote was taken that night, a certain individual became very abusive at the end of the meeting. One man was reduced to tears."

Eamonn Coghlan, the former world 5,000-metres champion and among a panel of athletics analysts working with RTE during the Games, has said "it's gone beyond the time" for a change in the faces running athletics in Ireland.

"The people running the association have been there too long," he said. "It's become too stale and too stagnant. Any voluntary board needs to change quite regularly to keep it fresh and enthusiastic and vibrant. That does not happen in Irish athletics."