Wednesday, March 11, 2009
AMONG his contemporaries, fellow selector Ger Fitzgerald and GAA President Nickey Brennan, the immediate reaction last night to Gerald McCarthy’s resignation as Cork hurling manager was one of sadness for what he has had to endure over the last few months.
And former team-mate Denis Coughlan said the executive of the Cork County Board have a lot of questions to answer.
"Before we look at any consequences or where it goes from here, the first thing I want to say is that I feel for Gerald McCarthy and his family this evening," said GAA President Nickey Brennan. "I met him in recent times, at the funeral of his mother and on another occasion and I spoke to him. That man has been through hell and back.
"He only ever had the interest of Cork GAA at heart and I think he has had to put up with an unbelievable amount of stress. And for a man who has given so much to Cork, I think it was terrible what he had to go through.
"He has taken a course of action and he can walk away from this with a feeling of pride that he did everything for the best interests of Cork, but for his own sake I think he made a wise decision. I hope Cork people will appreciate what he has done. He only took this role on for the betterment of Cork hurling, not for any gain on his part."
In terms of the next step, Brennan said this is "entirely" a matter for the Cork County Board, stressing Croke Park are not going "to get involved": "There is a meeting of the board on Thursday night and it will be a matter for them now to take this matter forward."
Ger Fitzgerald, Cork’s 1992 All-Ireland captain and one of McCarthy’s selectors, said that apart from the feeling of "huge disappointment", it was a very sad way for it all to end. "Obviously it was never going to be a pretty ending the way the whole thing developed. Some very serious things are said in Gerald’s statement and they don’t reflect very well on people involved.
"It’s sad not so much for ourselves but for Gerald, to see a man who was under so much pressure and to bear it so well and then to see the way it ended is very, very disappointing. Gerald expressed his gratitude to the players who did play for him and we as a management expressed our collective gratitude to them. Not only were they brave but they showed tremendous strength of character to make independently-minded decisions and come and play for us."
Denis Coughlan was also "very sad" for McCarthy’s sake — and for the sake of Cork hurling in particular, commenting: "There are no winners as a result of all of this. The outcome was inevitable. The players started the ‘war’ so to speak and the clubs finished it, really.
"I don’t know under what circumstances he resigned, but up to now he had the full backing of the Cork County Board executive. I think they have questions to answer too in terms of their own credibility. In my opinion having got the encouragement and backing of the executive to operate for the last five months — when he was democratically elected in October — the executive have to question themselves and come to serious decisions about their positions."
Brennan: Gerald McCarthy has been to ‘hell and back’
ADMITTING that he had been ‘on McCarthy’s side’, Babs Keating made it clear that in the prevailing circumstances he and ‘his generation’ would have supported any former player who was involved.
"It was a question of respect and authority number one and next to that it would be the point of view that if you take the present Cork team from centre-field to any other position in the forward line, there is not any one of them who would be capable of lacing Gerald’s boots.
"That’s why Gerald had such an uneasy time, to see a man of his calibre questioned by such inferiority.
"It must be very hard and awful difficult that so many clubs turned against him. I don’t mind the people who walked down Patrick Street because if the Cork County Board or Cork GAA was depending on those people to put their hands in their pockets they would have a lot of poor days in Cork."
Keating argued that whether people ‘liked it or not,’ the system in place in Cork since the GAA was founded had delivered more All-Ireland titles than any other county in the country.
"Those people from the junior clubs wouldn’t have any idea of what it’s like to go into a Cork senior hurling or football dressingroom and prepare to win an All-Ireland.
"And if you happened to be a player like Gerald was — to face somebody like Mick Roche, Ger Henderson or Noel O’Dwyer — are you telling me that a junior club in West Cork would have any knowledge of that.
"Or, for the eight years that I was managing Tipperary would anybody tell me that a junior club like Skeheenarinka or Ballyporeen or any of those interfere or want to interfere with the running of Tipperary hurling. The junior clubs have enough to do to run their little corner."
He maintains that the next management team — if they are to be sincere — will have to ‘clear out’ 12 or 13 of the ‘08 squad.
Basing his view on their performances wearing the Cork jersey in the past and playing for their clubs, he feels that another seven or eight players would need ‘to win their place.’
"There’s another group that when you ask them to present medals at juvenile level or to schools, they say ‘contact my manager’ and look for exorbitant fees.
"That is a knife in the heart of all our generation. These fellows have forgotten fairly quickly that they were lucky to have people do it for nothing for them!"
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