GAA apologises for empty-seats fiasco

Championship 2005: The GAA has blamed an "administrative error" for the fact about 1,200 seats were left empty for Sunday's sell-out All-Ireland hurling final at Croke Park.

An internal investigation was launched in the immediate aftermath of the game and yesterday drew a simple conclusion: the tickets were still in Croke Park.

According to the GAA, all the tickets in question had been inadvertently packaged as "Football Final" tickets and were thus awaiting distribution with the other allocations for the clash between Kerry and Tyrone on Sunday week.

In a brief statement explaining the outcome of the investigation the GAA admitted "the problem was caused by an administrative error". It said it "deeply regretted" a mistake such as this should occur and reiterated its apology to supporters and to the county boards of the participating counties.

"The problem that arose has never happened previously and steps have already been taken to assure that there is not a reoccurrence," said the statement.

Siobhán Brady of the GAA press office added that issue of a refund didn't arise.

"These tickets hadn't in fact been sold," she explained. "All the tickets allocated to county boards were distributed as usual, but these tickets were part of thousands of other tickets meant for other circulation.

"Part of the problem was that the football-final tickets were arriving in at the same time, and that's where the confusion occurred."

The tickets for both the football and hurling finals are all issued from the office of the association's director general, Liam Mulvihill.

Meanwhile, the football managerial hunt in Limerick is set to be directed towards former Kerry and Westmeath manager Páidí Ó Sé. The Limerick football board have confirmed approaches will be made to Ó Sé after he admitted he wasn't ruling himself in or out of such a position for the coming year.

Ó Sé resigned as Westmeath manager after their championship exit to Clare. The Limerick manager Liam Kearns stepped down after his side were beaten by Derry. Although Ó Sé has yet to be contacted by the Limerick selection panel, it is understood he is prepared to listen to their offer.

Limerick hope to have their new appointment in place within a fortnight, and among those also in the reckoning are former Kerry players Mickey Ned O'Sullivan and John Kennedy, who recently stepped down from the Clare job. Under-21 manager Ger Lawlor is another candidate.

Other counties attempting to find replacement football managers include Wexford (for Pat Roe), Roscommon (Val Daly), Mayo (John Maughan), Louth (Val Andrews), Clare (John Kennedy) and Kildare (Pádraig Nolan).

Elsewhere, details were announced yesterday of the 33rd annual Kilmacud Crokes All-Ireland Football Sevens, which take place as usual on the eve of the senior final, September 24th. For the third year O'Neills are the event sponsors, with 48 clubs participating.

Among them are current All-Ireland club champions Ballina of Mayo, while the All-Ireland finalists will be represented by Castleisland Desmonds from Kerry and Omagh St Enda's, St Davog's and Clan na Gael from Tyrone.

Finally, voting has concluded on the Guinness Hurling legends team, where fans were asked to selection their best 15 players from the current era. Results will be announced on Friday, September 30th, with the awards ceremony being broadcast live on TG4 from the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.