Austin denies leaking story to media

Liam Austin, who resigned as manager of the Cavan football team on Wednesday, has said that he did not disclose details of an internal rift to the media.

It had been suggested that Austin, who quit in the face of what he perceived as "unwarranted interference and manipulation of players" by chairman Brendan Keaney, had been responsible for forcing the discord into the public arena through a phone conversation.

"I did speak with a journalist from the Star newspaper last Wednesday about Cavan football and management, but I kept the conversation low-key, I did not refer to the internal problems which were simmering at all and I know that the journalist in question was extremely annoyed at the inference that word had been leaked through him last weekend," said Austin yesterday.

Meanwhile, members of the Cavan County Board will meet this evening in an attempt to alleviate the management crisis. Although Austin, the former Down All-Star, feels that both he and his management team (Hugo Clerkin, Michael Reilly, Barry Tiernan and Martin Lynch) were pushed into an untenable position by a few key personnel in Cavan football, he declared that the experience has not soured his view of football management in general.

"No, I'll admit it has forced me to reflect on the business, but it certainly wouldn't prevent me from taking a similar position if the right opportunity presented itself. I was always hugely enthusiastic about the Cavan job and was very excited about what we were trying to do.

"To be honest, it's one of the most frustrating aspects of this whole sorry story, that our results haven't been disastrous and that I really feel we were on the verge of shaping up nicely.

"Okay, we lost heavily against Fermanagh for a variety of reasons that we (the management) felt could be dealt with before we moved on in a positive frame of mind. We had beaten Fermanagh in three previous championship outings and it was only natural that they were very motivated for the game. It was a bad result and definitely problems began simmering at that point. But it was one game in November, the position was far from irredeemable."

He also stressed that he had nothing to do with organising the players' meeting which led to a vote of no confidence in the management on a count of 20 to three.

"People perceived that I organised this meeting, but what happened was that we had been talking about a number of other issues and it was getting late in the evening so I said `tell ye what, get together yourselves and discuss things', thinking that the players would air their views and come out in a positive frame of mind. That was a meeting organised by the lads themselves and I was astonished by this vote they took."