Sport

Match booklet lights Morrison anger

LEITRIM JOINT manager John Morrison has launched a stinging attack on the match programme produced for Sunday’s Connacht football…

Tue Jun 02 2009 - 01:00

LEITRIM JOINT manager John Morrison has launched a stinging attack on the match programme produced for Sunday’s Connacht football championship quarter-final with Roscommon.

Morrison said the programme highlighted Leitrim’s poor record in their home patch at Páirc Seán MacDiarmada and other negative results down through the years.

“Who put those articles in the programme? ‘Leitrim never win at home’, ‘Leitrim have never beaten Roscommon’ and so on. They might have just said ‘lie down there until we whip you again’.

“Outside our dressingroom plenty of people might have thought we were beaten before we went out, but inside the dressingroom we believed we could do it. But the mindset and perception has to change in Leitrim and the likes of that programme do little to change attitudes,” he said.

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Under the heading “Seán not a happy hunting ground for home team”, the programme highlighted a string of poor results for Leitrim which Morrison felt added fuel to the “lack of self-belief” in the county.

Leitrim have won just seven of the 49 championship games played at the Carrick-on-Shannon venue, and have not won at home since 2005.

“A record of seven wins, three draws and 37 losses hardly inspires confidence,” the programme article concluded.

Connacht provincial secretary John Prenty said that match programmes are produced by Dublin-based publishers DBA.

“The records over the years and the results at a particular venue are included in each of the programmes. We cannot help it if the results have been poor for one team,” said Prenty.

Mayo forward Conor Mortimer, meanwhile, will be fit for his county’s Connacht senior football championship semi-final against Roscommon on June 21st.

Mortimer returned to club football with Shrule/Glencorrib on Sunday, coming on for the last 15 minutes of the Mayo senior football championship victory against Burrishoole.

Mortimer broke two bones in his hand against Tyrone in April’s National Football League clash between the two counties and was sidelined for six weeks.

CORK (Under-21H v Tipperary, tomorrow):C Cronin; K Murphy, J Herlihy, C O'Sullivan; A Walsh, P O'Sullivan, S White; L Desmond, W Egan; B Corry, L McLoughlin, R White; R O'Driscoll, P Horgan, A Walsh.