February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
There’s certainly little enough point putting in the colossal effort required to play sport at that level when you are being treated worse than the average junior soccer team.
A group of players who were (in theory anyway) expected to compete for Sam Maguire this year were also warned not to swap jerseys with opponents at the end of a championship match, were often told of the venue for training by text message hours before the session was due to begin, and were ignored when they offered to help set up an official county supporters’ club to raise money to fund improved preparations. Which all begs the question as to whether the Offaly county board has any serious interest in their team performing to the best of their ability.
It has been proven time and again in recent years that counties usually get back out of these teams more or less what they put in. Since the Cork hurlers’ downed hurleys in protest, the aggrieved players have reached two All-Ireland finals and won one. Although it should also be pointed out that the county’s footballers — who were far less militant at the time of the impasse — haven’t exactly replicated that success since the winter of discontent at Pairc Ui Chaoimh, the general rule seems to be that the better players are looked after, the more likely they are to perform at the optimum level.
After disposing of New York in the first round of the Connacht championship, Mayo took their entire squad for a training week in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. We’re not privy to the minutiae of their expenses, but it was hardly cheap. Now, look at what they’ve got back in return. A summer of wonder, and a trip to Croke Park next Sunday for an All-Ireland final that has electrified the whole county. Tommy Carr took the Roscommon footballers to La Manga in Spain to work on their preparation around the same time and they ended up having a fairly decent campaign too.
That the Kerry footballers are properly looked after, and almost always have been, goes without saying. At the Gleneagle Hotel in Killarney last Saturday night, a table of 10 at their fund-raising banquet cost a handy