Off The Ball Official Thread <Mod Note - Post #1, #533, #6651>

Abel Ruiz wrote: »

As bad/annoying as most of the offtheball team are, wooly was nothing special either. He was always trying to be the funny man, and failing in my opinion. And constantly acting stupid and would play ignorant on football and rugby.

That was part of his shtick to play the simple eejit to more serious learned colleagues etc.
The present lads are not able to act the eejit in a humorous manner.
They are so wrapped up in thier own self importance at times, that when they do try to be funny it comes across as 'Look how witty I am listeners'.
It rarely if ever works.

If there was a person with a bit of life in him or her, they would be a great pairing with Eoin Sheehan.
Someone who is off the cuff opinionated and goes off script would be ideal.
Kudos to Sheehan he plays the dull, uninspiring, uncontroversial, moribund type persona excellently.
Put a bit of a 'head the ball' beside him and it's radio gold in the making.

Is it Nathan that was running the show tonight? Whoever it is they have an awful habit of when they get an email in they disagree with they read it out but stop at almost every line to throw in their opinion and basically how the emailer is wrong or some smart comment. Even if the emailer is wrong it seems very childish the way it is done.

sightband wrote: »

Was there anything particularly slanderous said? If there was, I’m sure the on air grovelling would’ve already taken place. If not, I’d say he was doing well to get an informal private apology. I’d also imagine if Leahy had been outright slandered he would’ve demanded them by now.

It was more references to "player welfare issues" and "player safety" and those issues being referred to as "too personal for the player to talk about", rather than any direct accusation. But that is what is most cowardly about it. Cora has created all this smoke without naming anybody, so it just casts question on all the management team.

It's shameful the way that OTB now want to bury the story since the Peter Leahy. They aren't man enough to admit that they were wrong or at least now cover the story with some balance. AFAIK, they haven't even mentioned Mayo Ladies since that Peter Leahy interview. Not even when Cliona Foley was on last night speaking about Ladies football

Can you imagine the situation:
Peter Leahy: "Cora, you've been away in Australia for the last six months, so we have had somebody else taking the frees. I'd like to keep them on the frees for consistency".
Cora: "I feel that my personal safety may be in jeopardy and must leave the squad."
:-)

Patww79 wrote: »

Looks like they have some new information as it's top of the bill this morning and there's no chance they're climbing down off that high horse.

Well that's shut me up then Pat :pac::pac:


I think the Sean Cavanagh interview is probably the one that they said they did last week.

UPDATE: They are calling it "departed Mayo ladies talk". Peter Leahy said that there were only two girls essentially that had a problem with them so I wonder who they have. It's on at 7:50am so that is right now in as much as I know about clocks.

Just watched it. Nothing very new or exclusive?

anthonyjmaher wrote: »

"We weren't given feedback, one girl was told she was lazy".

The girls need to grow the f**k up. The ladies game is gonna suffer because of this, as no male manager or coach is ever gonna want to put himself in this position again.

If women want to be treated the same as men, then they need to toughen up.

I read the article on this press conference and tbh, I'm still none the wiser!

I wish to God someone would tell us what the hell happened, who said what to who, why they felt undermined, unsafe.

Throwing phrases like "it has affected our mental health" is strong stuff, and we need to know what happened that caused such harm?

I thought the one line "someone was called lazy" was a bit trivial. For it to be included made me think there is a bit of straw clutching going on. Every player in every level of Gaelic games is probably going to be called lazy at some point in their life. Get over it ffs.

Yeah, too many people now are playing the big card too easily.

The Mayo ladies playing the mental health card.
Serena playing the racist card last week.

It devalues some peoples real struggles.

BPKS wrote: »

"One girl did not make the starting 15 for the Connacht final and during an individual meeting she had after the final, she was given feedback as to why she wasn't starting and the feedback given was that she was lazy."



FFS.

Are they serious? They think that is being undermined or intimidated.

And then they play the mental health card.

Absolutely ridiculous.

Going by what we’ve seen over the last few weeks I’d say the manager had some job dealing with these prima donnas

Most managers, especially in top level sports, are authoritarian surely?

And they shout at people too ffs !!
And they might call you lazy and tell you to get your finger out!

If this has a negative effect on your mental health, maybe you shouldn't be playing sport?

What this sounds like to me, and I can't understand whats happening in all this, is something along these lines : a player was shouted at or dropped or called lazy or whatever, she took the hump, rallied her friends around and then they sat down and decided if they could do anything about it. So one of them had the bright idea to play the biggest card they had: H&S, mental health, player welfare, call it what you will.

Then issue vague statements that Joe Public can't make head nor tail of, and some even might think sexual assaults or approaches were made. Then the can of worms was open and more vague statements made the situation worse, and they can't take back what they said.

elefant wrote: »

Seems a bit strange that the most decorated and experienced players in the squad were all the most brittle ones. Something in the Carnacon water?

More a case of 'One Out, All Out'.

Tell me how wrote: »

Listening to the audio from the press conference one of the following seems to be the case.

Either the girls were soft and couldn't take criticism or,
Peter is an authoritarian, doesn't like being challenged and is unaware of the impact negative criticism can have on people.

I'm guessing no matter how long this goes on, there will always be some who say it was one or the other.

This is it in my opinion. Could well be a bit of both.

Im not even into womens football but this case is interesting. Before the press conference i thought the players were hamming it up a bit and blew the whole thing out of proportion but now im not so sure.

If what they were saying is right then the manager seems like hes a bit of a bully. Surely phoning a player and giving them abuse is a bit of a no no? Or tearing strips off another player and then having a good laugh about it to another player? FFS if stuff like that was happening in a workplace there would be serious consequences. Sport seems to be the last place it's acceptable to dole out insults and abuse with no blowback.

It'll be interesting to hear his reply