Clare GAA Discussion part 2 , No Purple Jumpers Allowed !!

Feenie wrote: »

"loughnane lowered the blade again today"
what exactly does that mean?

Figerty wrote: »

Have you ever played hurling Feenie? Read the paper that Loughnane writes for.

Clareman wrote: »

Would 4 lights (1 at each corner) be enough? I always thought for GAA that you'd need 1 at the the middle as well because of the size of the pitch but I'm open to correction, if 4 was to be enough you'd probably be able to put them in but how high would they have to be?

Personally, I think there's been way too much money wasted on Cusack Park, when it was last done up it should have been done properly but there's no point in going down that rabbit hole. It's fine for what it is, which is a county ground that'll fill out maybe twice a year for the Munster championship league matches. The fact that the pitch is deemed unplayable for vast amounts of the year makes me wonder if evening matches would be any good for it

On the first Sunday in November, a week after Clare lost by ten points to Limerick in the Munster championship, the hurling panel gathered in Ennis for a full-on training game. The mood in the county was sour. The gates in Cusack Park were locked. Permission to use the field had been sought and given, but nobody from the county board was on hand to let them in. So, eventually, they broke in: a lock on one of the gates was forced with a sledgehammer.

It captured a year of recurring awkwardness between the Clare county board and its flagship team. Within weeks of Brian Lohan’s appointment as manager in October 2019, problems surfaced. In December he chased the board for money owed to the team’s strength and conditioning coach and ended up paying the money from his own pocket, four days before Christmas; in mid-January, Lohan was reimbursed.

In the early months of last year, Lohan reportedly sent 29 emails to county secretary Pat Fitzgerald about team affairs, each of which went unanswered. A meeting was arranged to thrash out this breakdown in communication; in this arena there was no shortage of back-and-forth. At the heart of Fitzgerald’s response was his insistence that the work was being done, regardless of the emails.

Gaps continued to appear. The away League match against Wexford was targeted as a key game by the Clare management and they stayed in a hotel in Waterford the night before. The bill, though, was not settled on their departure, and Lohan took it upon himself to chase the payment with a series of calls and emails.

The post-match meal was not covered either. The hotel manager discreetly pursued Lohan to the team bus and politely explained the situation. Lohan settled the bill on his credit card. A few days later, he was reimbursed. The county secretary had not been present at the team meal.

Attempts by the Clare management to trim expenses were also met with curious resistance. For the past few years the team had been renting a 10-year-old GPS tracking system, comprising 18 pods that could not produce real-time data during matches or training sessions. It had reportedly cost about €18,000 a year.

Lohan and his management team, however, sourced a state-of-the-art system from Statsports, similar to the one used by Liverpool football club and the German national football team. The package included 40 pods, a laptop, an iPad, heart monitors and the critical capacity to deliver real-time data. The deal would cost €15,000 a year for three years, after which the equipment would be owned by Clare. When the proposal was brought to the board, however, they were slow to break ties with their previous supplier. The deal was done, but the Clare management could not understand the delay.

Returning after a long lockdown changed nothing about the mood. When Clare resumed training on September 15, they started at Caherlohan, Clare’s €5m centre of excellence. According to those present, the pitch was “like a meadow,” and completely unsuitable for hurling.

After that the hurlers ditched Caherlohan, and approached five clubs who gave them use of their facilities for the rest of the season. Clare struggled to the All-Ireland quarter-finals, carried there by Tony Kelly’s genius, and were eliminated by Waterford. Along the way Clare beat Wexford in the qualifiers, a game that crystallised again the long-standing acrimony between Lohan and Wexford manager Davy Fitzgerald, son of Pat Fitzgerald. After the game Davy Fitzgerald criticised the verbal abuse aimed at him throughout the game by a member of the Clare backroom team “who was sent there to do it.” Lohan denied any such strategy.

Sourcing training gear was not a problem and post-training meals were provided without trouble. Pat Fitzgerald was also generous in his appraisal of Clare’s season in his 2020 report to annual convention.

“I would say I’m getting on reasonably okay with Brian Lohan,” he told the Clare Echo before Christmas. “I have treated him with the courtesy he deserves and I think, to be fair to him, he has done the same to me. There is a view out there that I wouldn’t be supporting team managements, and that is the opposite.

“It is no state secret that people would think I would not support Brian Lohan, [but] as far as we can, as a county committee, without putting ourselves into difficulty, we will support Brian, and the same with Colm Collins (the football manager).”

But the mood remained uneasy. The abuse aimed at the Fitzgeralds on social media intensified. Rumours and half-truths were dressed up as facts. Seven years after their last All-Ireland hurling title, and five years without a championship victory at under-20 level, with Limerick surging ahead and other competitors modernising their business, frustration came to the boil.

At Clare GAA’s annual convention, Éire Óg of Ennis proposed a motion inspired by a letter distributed to clubs in October by club member Niall O’Connor — son of former Clare joint-manager Gerry O’Connor — outlining the declining state of Clare GAA on all fronts and seeking a new, independent committee to perform a root-and-branch strategic review. Although the letter avoided directly criticising Pat Fitzgerald, the implications were clear: Clare needed to think again.

The board’s response was four committees focused on finances, managing the Caherlohan facility and one each for underage hurling and football. A list of names linked to the committees subsequently appeared in the local media, prompting some of those mentioned to distance themselves from the committees or walk away entirely. Most significantly, Davy Fitzgerald was included on a list of potential candidates to join the hurling committee, privately prompting an angry reaction from Brian Lohan. It reignited talk of Fitzgerald being gradually reintroduced to Clare, and forced Clare chairman Joe Chaplin to deny suggestions that Lohan had resigned as manager.

Last Friday week, Éire Óg pitched a seven-man-committee filled with Clare-born business leaders to undertake the review. The motion was slated for debate last Tuesday night and billed within Clare as a seismic moment. A motion described by Éire Óg “as a once in a lifetime opportunity,” was seen by many others as Fitzgerald, the long-standing figurehead of Clare GAA, facing off against the reformers. Everyone knew something would have to give.

ON THE LAST lap into Tuesday night’s meeting, Éire Óg felt they had enough support to get their committee over the line. Opponents of the proposal had argued hurling would become the committee’s sole focus, not a comprehensive examination of every aspect of Clare’s business. Others framed it as a power-grab and a push against Pat Fitzgerald. None of those arguments gained traction.

“This is a brilliant motion,” Christy Murray, the delegate for Sixmilebridge — Fitzgerald’s club — said at Tuesday’s meeting. “We decided if there had been some input from the county board we’d back it 100 per cent . . . there’s a lot of work gone into this and we need to move forward. But there’ll have to be some input from the county board or otherwise we’re wasting our time.”

On the night, county chairman Jack Chaplin had already confirmed the committee would require a board representative with backing from Éire Óg delegate Rory Hickey. As the debate unfolded into an unchallenged show of support for the Éire Óg plan, Niall Romer, Kilmaley delegate, aired a rumour circulating all day in Clare, asking whether any member of the Clare executive had reached out to Éire Óg before the debate.

Jack Chaplin: “I know nothing about it, a call being made to any Éire Óg club . . .”

NR: “So there was no call made? I want that placed in the minutes please.”

JC: “Not by me anyway.”

NR: “By someone on the executive.”

JC: “I know of nobody.”

The suggestion of a meeting made some clubs uneasy as the week unfolded. Had the committee’s independence been compromised before they even began?

“We were made aware before Tuesday night that the board accepted the motion and would be recommending the motion,” Éire Óg chairman Jimmy Cooney says in response to whether a meeting took place. “That’s all I’ll say on it. We were asked would it be okay if the chairman makes a statement to that effect. Our position and only concern was that the motion be put to the floor and passed. If the executive supported the motion, that would be a help in that regard.”

Some officials insisted the committee couldn’t proceed under GAA rules without a county board presence. In practice, most clubs sided with the need for a board presence if the committee was to make any tangible progress.

“The hang-up seems to be on the word ‘independent’,” Cooney says. “If there is representation from the county board or contact [with the county board], that doesn’t dim the committee’s independence. The independence we had in mind was independence of thought and ideas, that the thrust of whatever plan is put in place at the end of this period is from independent minds. But that can’t happen without some input from the county board. An independent committee cannot submit a report without some support from the executive in terms of fact-checking and data.

“You can’t have a situation where a totally independent group works on its own without any contact with the body to whom it will present its report. That’s not to say the county board will have a majority voice or anything like it. We want to avoid at all costs a report produced by a group so connected and dyed in the wool in the GAA that it’s incapable of independent thinking.”

In his Irish Daily Star column on Wednesday morning, former Clare manager Ger Loughnane captured some of the concerns still lingering after the night before. “The county board are not brave going with this,” he said. “They just sensed the tide had turned against them — the game was up. This was a fight the county board couldn’t afford to lose and it’s the first time they’ve backed down. This will give courage to everybody but watch as the board tries to delay this new body at every turn and ensure change comes at a pedestrian pace.”

He also described Clare GAA as “firmly in the grip of the Fitzgeralds”. Pat Fitzgerald, he wrote, had “lost touch with what was required” to keep Clare competitive and “supervised the collapse in standards on and off the field in Clare.”

To many GAA people in Clare, Fitzgerald’s 31 years as secretary bear comparison to Frank Murphy in Cork before him. Both men held the office for decades and continued well into their 70s. The terms of Fitzgerald’s employment have also been subject of speculation within Clare for years. In response to the latest question about his contract, from Éire Óg delegate Rory Hickey at December’s convention, Fitzgerald’s answer was pithy.

“My first contract was in 2009 and the second one was in 2016,” he said. “That will answer your question, you are an intelligent guy.”

In response to further questions from The Sunday Times about Fitzgerald’s employment status last week, a Clare GAA spokesperson confirmed Fitzgerald’s wage is paid entirely by Clare GAA and his current contract expires in 2023. Croke Park have made no contribution to Fitzgerald’s salary since 2016. An extension to that deal also hasn’t been ruled out.

“It may well be that the county board would canvas Pat Fitzgerald to stay on,” replied Clare PRO Michael O’Connor. “I’m not saying that they will but they might. Whoever are the officers of the Clare County Board at that stage might well decide to do that. I cannot comment. Should they do so, it would be a matter for Pat Fitzgerald as to whether he was interested or not.”

The Éire Óg committee has committed to delivering recommendations within six months of being appointed with the county board also setting up committees governing finance and Caherlohan, as required by GAA rules. Although the board have yet to fill the underage hurling and football committees, Brian Lohan is reportedly receptive to joining the hurling committee.

Winter despair gave way last week to a hopeful spring, but the mood is tempered with caution. Approval for the new strategic committee is viewed by many in Clare as a potential watershed. Others wonder if the clubs were given their moment last Tuesday night, with the board ready to dictate the terms of engagement from here on. Tonight, members of the new committee will join a Zoom call with representatives of Éire Óg to begin their work. Everyone seems on board, within the committee and beyond. For now.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup wrote: »

and second article (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wexford-hurling-manager-davy-fitzgeralds-rates-bill-clash-may-prove-his-toughest-yet-2x82g3b9k?fbclid=IwAR0KdG9RQEhTgnXG3TCIXldRTKVCZQWejKEIKYTIAjAVbbW4r6QwuNGgsAc), saying clare county coucil is sueing davy for rates. and garda investigation into claretimes facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/claresupporter/

Jizique wrote: »

Is there a suggestion that significantly more than €65k was raised?

caddy16 wrote: »

There's more than a suggestion, a lot more I would think.