Vard turns down request to return

Equestrian Sport NewsShowjumping's chairman of selectors, who resigned after a controversial meeting in Offaly at the end of last month, has rejected an offer to return to the post.

Taylor Vard walked out of the November 24th meeting in Tullamore when the new team management structure, which had been agreed at a meeting a fortnight earlier, was called into question. Vard tendered his resignation in a strongly worded letter to the Show Jumping Association of Ireland (SJAI) national chairman, Charles Hanley, the next day.

Vard was also unhappy that three members of the committee were in possession of a letter from the proposed team manager, Robert Splaine, addressed to the association's solicitor, Mark Killilea. Vard stated in his November 25th letter of resignation that neither he nor Hanley had been given a copy of Splaine's letter, and that a phonecall to Killilea confirmed that he had not received the letter either.

At another meeting on the same night, the SJAI executive decided to dispense with the services of director general Robert Joyce.

A week later, the Equestrian Federation of Ireland secretary general Dan Butler wrote to the SJAI threatening to withhold funding until the association had put their house in order.

Following a meeting of the selectors on December 1st, chaired by Hanley in Vard's absence, Hanley wrote to Vard asking him to reconsider and requesting him to stay on until the end of the year.

Vard responded yesterday with a single sentence stating "My letter of resignation still stands".

Hanley was not available for comment when contacted by The Irish Times last night.

In a separate development, members of the SJAI's Leinster region are expected to call an emergency general meeting in response to a letter from chairman Patricia Furlong in which she states that results of the regional election, which had been declared null and void at the Leinster agm on December 7th, will now be upheld.

The controversy hinges on a three-day extension for the return of ballot papers, which was declared unconstitutional at the agm on procedural grounds. Claims that members had been notified in the media and on the SJAI website were successfully challenged at the agm.

Furlong also admitted on the night that there had been no emergency meeting to ratify the extension, only a series of telephone calls.