Sir, - I am greatly concerned about certain comments in Tom Humphries's interview with Joe Brolly of the Derry Senior Football Team in, the Sports Section of The Irish Times (May 4th).
The clear implication from the words of Joe Brolly in that interview is that I espouse a "win at all costs" attitude to my sport and that I would encourage players to do "whatever you have to do" to win.
I find this implication offensive in the extreme as it totally misrepresents my attitude to sport.
Throughout my sporting career I have never encouraged any player with whom I played or who came under my influence as a team manager to adopt mean and negative attitudes or to do "whatever you have to do" to win a game or get the better of one's sporting opponent on the field of play.
I have always as a player and manager advocated and practised a positive and sporting approach to the playing of Gaelic football and indeed to the playing of any game or sport.
I have spoken to Joe Brolly and voiced my concern to him about the implications raised against me in the interview. He accepts fully that they convey an unfair and misleading impression of my philosophy on the way Gaelic football should be played and on the way players should conduct themselves as players on the field.
He has assured me that he has never believed that I have in the past encouraged or do now encourage the use of unfair and unsporting tactics to get the better of an opponent.
I accept that any misleading impress ion contained in the interview was innocent and unintentional but nonetheless I felt compelled to correct the implicit misrepresentation of my lifelong philosophy on the game and how it should be played.
Yours, etc.,
Adelaide Park,
Belfast.
Tom Humphries writes: Joe Brolly has contacted me to assert that Sean O'Neill has been a lifelong opponent of foul play. The quoted comment was intended to illustrate an approach to modern forward play. No other inference was intended.