Cork failed to learn from Holland precedent

The Cork County Board and Gerald McCarthy will sooner or later have to accept that without the players' support the manager's position is simply untenable, writes Seán Moran

IT’S HARD to imagine a weirder opening to Anthony Daly’s tenure as Dublin hurling manager than what’s about to unfold this weekend. The former Clare captain and manager had to conjure up a range of motivations when leading out teams to face Cork at various points in that relationship but he could hardly have imagined taking Dublin down to Cork in the National League and seeing his team go in at 5 to 2 on.

The strangeness of the situation from Dublin’s perspective is scarcely noticeable when compared to Cork’s predicament. Unlike last year there is no straining against the deadline of a league campaign to try to resolve the conflict between players, management and county board. It has been accepted on all sides that the county’s first-choice players may play no role in the campaign at all.

That this has been the latest instalment in a sequence of administratively dysfunctional episodes has contributed to the general indifference outside of the county and whereas that attitude has caused resentment, it also reflects the fact that nothing can be done to resolve the problem without a major climb-down or capitulation on either side.

Even Croke Park’s tentative efforts at intervention are accompanied by the acceptance of that pessimistic reality.

Yet there are genuine national interests at stake. Hurling has such a thin cast of championship counties that the loss of any would be a setback and the loss of one as important as Cork is a serious blow. For all that the current team, halfway between the twilight of great careers and the dawn of others, can’t be regarded as All-Ireland contenders in the era of the current, exceptional Kilkenny side they have that elusive, box-office quality.

Although there was never any real doubt about how the counties’ All-Ireland semi-final collision would work out last August, the match was Kilkenny’s toughest of the campaign and the only one in which their superiority on the scoreboard was restricted to single digits. Cork continue to attract great support with over 70,000 in attendance for the above semi-final. In a year when a decline in gate receipts is expected the GAA can ill- afford to be losing a crowd-pulling presence of this magnitude.

Just about everything that could go wrong with this crisis has gone wrong. The genesis can be traced back to the resolution of last year’s stand-off over the appointment of Teddy Holland as manager of the footballers. Although that fiasco concluded with the players winning on all counts and Holland being dismissed by the very board that had heedlessly appointed him just a couple of months previously, the victory would prove pyrrhic. The only reason the county board agreed to be bound by mediator Kieran Mulvey’s arbitration was they believed they would win the argument. In the event Mulvey did what all professional arbitrators do – picked the simplest and most deliverable resolution and Holland was gone.

Part of the arbitration dealt with how matters within the county might move forward. Some of it makes for wistful reading a year later: “Future disputes should be resolved by mediation and, if unresolved, by agreed arbitration,” and “There should be no recriminations by either side arising from the history of this dispute and all should work together to rebuild the damaged relationships between the parties for the betterment of Cork GAA.”

At the heart of the current impasse is Gerald McCarthy’s reappointment for a further two-year term. Under the structures proposed by Mulvey the appointment was made by a committee that included two players.

This was a gallant attempt to establish best practice on a structured basis. There can’t be a county in the country that doesn’t informally take soundings from senior players before making an appointment of this nature. The problem here is the county executive evidently understood the appointments committee to be another theatre of war in which to re-engage in hostilities with the players.

By simply using their inbuilt majority the officials bludgeoned through the reappointment of Gerald McCarthy, again recklessly indifferent to player reservations and by extension the future of hurling within the county. It’s not known why McCarthy decided to stay on in defiance of the wishes of those he would be expected to manage. It has been argued on his behalf that he was genuinely unaware of player hostility and that even the appointment after last June’s Tipperary defeat of facilitator Cathal O’Reilly – advanced by the players as proof that the wheels were coming off the management – was intended to address onfield concerns rather than a crisis in that core relationship.

Whatever the reason for accepting reappointment, it’s no secret why McCarthy dug in his heels. The old combative instincts, which to many observers seemed to have drained away from the manager by the time of the Tipperary defeat, were reignited by the public criticism of his management by players as the dispute escalated last November.

What has passed between the parties, with the county board apparently happy to let the manager engage in slagging routines with the players, makes rapprochement impossible despite McCarthy’s bizarre insistence after each fusillade that his door remains open to the 2008 panel. Right now the smart money is on a great deal more damage being done before any settlement takes root, in which case Croke Park’s intervention will have to be aimed at controlling the possibilities of further eruptions in the years ahead.

A year ago Mulvey’s arbitration diplomatically noted the provocative appointment of Holland: “The board was entitled to appoint a manager in accordance with their rules and procedures and, in this respect; they have acted in a legitimate fashion. It was unwise, however, to proceed to do so in view of the players’ stated opposition and their view of the ‘understanding’ the players believed they had obtained in relation to future management/selector appointments, arising from the outcome of the ‘2002 Dispute’.”

Same situation. Same solution. It’s only a matter of whether McCarthy and the county board accept that reality sooner – in time to salvage something from this season – or later – perhaps after relegation to the Christy Ring Cup.smoran@irishtimes.com