CORK HURLING: Tom Humphrieson how an abject failure of administration has resulted in Cork hurlers being pitted against a revered icon of the national game

THE HURLERS of Cork are in trouble. Caught between the rock of their county board and the hardening face of Gerald McCarthy, their handling of the latest convulsion down south hasn't been as sure-footed as it needed to be.

They find themselves two points down with not long to play. Somehow, they have been waltzed into a situation where they are seen to be fighting a genuine icon of the game rather than a faceless but bitterly resilient administration. And their foe is nimble as well as beloved.

Gerald McCarthy has learned well from the debilitating vow of silence which Teddy Holland took while the last tempest broke over his head. Compared to the badly worded but overly-wordy statement which the players released during the week (in another PR mistake, to just one newspaper) McCarthy's two statements so far have been swift in dealing with the issues and have aimed their arrows well in terms of the mood of the general public.

If Gerald McCarthy or the Cork County Board (who also issued a statement yesterday to the same circulation list) are intent on breaking the as yet fissureless unity of the Cork players they are going the right way about it, reaching out the hand to encourage those who just want to play for Cork to go ahead and stand up for their right to do just that.

The trouble is, say the players, that is what they have been doing for the past two years. Just playing for Cork. When you get over the novelty of being clad in a red jersey and being recognised you want to be winning for Cork. The current spat, they say, isn't about playing for Cork. It is about winning for Cork.

Speaking after yesterday's annual general meeting of the GPA in City West, a venue where they received welcome support for their stance, three of the players, Donal Óg Cusack, Ben O'Connor and Shane O'Neill, sought to clarify a position which they appreciate very few have had the patience to unravel.

O'Connor pointed out the perception of the Cork hurlers as a ceaselessly agitating collective of Bolsheviks and pot-stirrers is a little unfair.

"Last year there was involvement from the hurlers in terms of the footballers' dispute. They had supported us in 2002 and we saw an overlap of interests and felt we owed them our support. Apart from that, everybody appreciates what we stood up for in 2002 and since then we have had six years where there has been no hurling-related issue brought before the public."

It is a reasonable point to make through the acrid smoke of a public relations war. Nobody doubts the players had something to complain about in 2002. The support for them back then was broad and generous. In the six years since then they have worked under three managers, delivered considerable success and, whether naively or otherwise, entered into the current imbroglio in good faith.

"People have talked about us escalating things or being inclined towards conflict," said O'Neill "but things like the release of the Cathal O'Reilly report will tell people a lot about how hard it would be to go back now."

The release of the O'Reilly exercise, a gathering of views wherein players were asked to write (strictly positively) about each other and their manager was a breach of faith which has been justified in the context of the criticisms which were being made of Gerald McCarthy in the first place.

The subsequent tit-for-tat of accusation and riposte has tended to obscure the key point, however. Things were so bad last season between Gerald McCarthy and his players that a facilitator was needed to get both parties through to the end of the season.

That, the players point out is the almost Kafkaesque absurdity of the situation they now find themselves in. Having accepted an appointment which they were initially sceptical about after the departure of John Allen; having got through two years with several meetings and consultations about coaching styles and having needed, in the latter part of those years, a facilitator to get them through the season, the players entered into a process of managerial selection in good faith.

"At the start," says Cusack, "at the first meeting it wasn't known if Gerald McCarthy was interested. It was felt with the way the two years had ended that he maybe wasn't. So that meeting broke up till it could be discovered, out of respect for Gerald, if his name was going to be part of the process."

A second meeting saw McCarthy's name on the table and failed attempts to force a vote there and then. A third meeting went the same way. The players' reps were consulting among the panel and coming back with feedback which they say was unanimous. The players wanted a change.

A fourth meeting dissolved into a long debate about the entire process. The fifth and final meeting went a similar way but had a vote forced at the end of it. McCarthy was reappointed as Cork hurling manager.

The players pointed out yesterday and in their statement that alternative names had been raised by Seán Óg Ó hAilpín at an early meeting which he attended as proxy for John Gardiner. None of these were considered or pursued.

"In the end the board put us together again with a manager that they knew we had needed a facilitator to work with during the championship season," says Cusack. "They forced us back together with a guy that they knew players had great difficulties working with. That's the incredible thing here.

"That is not a process. Is there any county board in the country who would force two sides back together again after all that?"

In his own statement yesterday Gerald McCarthy suggests the difficulties between himself and his players which have now become public came as a surprise to him.

"From the time of Cork's last game against Kilkenny, no player ever approached me to discuss my coaching. At no time during the period of the meetings on the appointment of the manager, did any player or player representative come to me to talk about issues with my coaching. Yet when I was appointed, I was asked to stand down. I am not going to do that."

The players point out however that the use of a facilitator, Cathal O'Reilly, (something which they willingly concede Gerald McCarthy was open to) was not the first sign of trouble at sea. It is well known players had their misgivings about McCarthy's appointment initially, particularly as the county board had appeared to ride roughshod over the claims of just about anybody the team were known to favour for the job.

There was concern in McCarthy's first year about the style and content of his coaching. A perceived obsession with practising overhead pulling in training (goalkeepers and corner backs included) wasn't helped by an inability to relate to the tenor and length of many of the new manager's pre-match speeches.

They muddled through though, accepting changes. The players concede too that, on the several occasions when problems were pointed out, McCarthy took matters on board and things would get better. The sudden deterioration in relations should not disguise the respect which grew between both parties during their time together.

" It was known that we had problems at times with Gerald and that we would have been sceptical of his appointment at first. We went with it, though," added Cusack. "We could have gone to Gerald at any time during the five-meeting process but all the time we genuinely thought that those meetings were part of a process which might lead somewhere. We didn't want to sabotage the process.

"Now we have reached a situation where Gerald's reappointment has been rammed home and even though a significant number of players have gone along personally to Gerald and said that they didn't think that things were working as well as they should, we are still being forced into that relationship."

Again and again the players point out this current strike isn't the result of some type of seasonal affective disorder or love for the smell of napalm.

The difficulties were sign- posted all along the way. At the end of last year, for instance, at a meeting among the hurlers to discuss their position vis-a-vis the footballers, it is recalled that 90 per cent of the meeting was taken up with the question as to whether the hurlers should move at that time for a change of management themselves.

"It's ironic," said Ben O'Connor yesterday, "but the fellas who would be perceived as the troublemakers now would be the same guys who would have argued at that time for the situation to be left be. It was felt there was another year. We would work with it as best we could."

That year has come and is almost gone. The Cork hurlers submitted a couple of performances for the ages this year and must have come away thinking they could smell paradise in the distance. Their manager and themselves have different ideas about why paradise was lost in the first place and how it might be regained.

The Cork County Board, meanwhile, dissembles surprise at the current troubles and backs McCarthy to the hilt in the hope that if he takes three or four senior players down with him when he goes the trouble will have been worth it.

McCarthy, a genuine icon of the game whose dignity and pride have been affronted, digs in for the long war. The public announce the same war to be a ratings turn-off. The players are in a lonely and desolate spot. Seán Óg is in America and Donal Óg heads to Zambia to do aid work on Monday.

In the end the players will suffer. The Cork County Board, living through its third outbreak of industrial relations strife in six years and having allowed hostilities to accelerate from zero to 60 in such a short space of time, ostentatiously washes its hands of any involvement.

The hurlers of Cork are in trouble. The proposed charity game to mark an anniversary in St Colman's is unlikely to proceed in a fortnight's time - at least not with a Cork senior team featuring. The Cork public grow increasingly impatient and unwilling to read the small print.

Gerald McCarthy has failings, so too do the Cork players. The ultimate failure here, though, is one of administration. Everything that was won in 2002 was won for hurling's future and not for players.That all seems like a distant and more obscure time however.

Full statement issued yesterday by Cork hurling manager Gerald McCarthy

FOR those not directly involved, and for many of us who are, this is becoming a huge bore. I have been asked by various media to comment on the Cork players' statement.

At this point, I have no intention of doing so, other than to say that each of the points raised by the players can be fully challenged by me. But in an attempt to end, for the moment, media calls to me and disruption to my life and business, I will respond in this way.

The tone of the players' statement says it all, really. The County Board is wrong, Gerald McCarthy is wrong but the players are never wrong. They have no responsibilities in all of this. This is just rubbish.

It would be helpful if those players who are driving this issue were honest enough to acknowledge that the first time this appeared in the media arose when players anonymously fed misinformation directed against me to a number of journalists.

That behaviour is fine, apparently. Yet when I defend myself in the media, this small group of players cries foul.

That speaks volumes. If I am attacked as a person or as a coach, I will defend myself. If there was a difficulty with coaching then it should have been dealt with as a coaching issue. The players themselves will acknowledge that I am quite open to talk about coaching methods.

From the time of Cork's last game against Kilkenny, no player ever approached me to discuss my coaching. At no time during the period of the meetings on the appointment of the manager, did any player or player representative come to me to talk about issues with my coaching. Yet when I was appointed, I was asked to stand down. I am not going to do that.

The great pity of all of this is that a number of interesting coaching team appointments which were to be announced by me are now on hold. Also, proposals that I wished to submit to the Cork County Board on the establishment of an academy, a centre of excellence, to radically transform coaching in Cork, to address the challenges we now have as a hurling power, to stop the attrition of talented young players, to support the clubs and to create a community of hurlers between young and former players, are now also on hold.

There is a really exciting time ahead for young Cork players, I am full of admiration for those who had the courage to speak up for their right to play for Cork at recent players' meetings and I hope they stick with it.

So much of my time - hurling time - for the past few years, has been devoted to "conflict resolution". The players have to take responsibility for their role in this and it can't go on.

They really should stop portraying themselves as victims of some grand conspiracy against them and get back to playing hurling for Cork.

My door is always open to achieve that result.

Full statement issued yesterday by County Board Chairman Michael Dolan

As chairman of Cork County Board, I am desperately sad to see Cork hurling in the news for all the wrong reasons, once again.

The knee-jerk criticisms of the county board are neither justified nor fair. The board entered into a process to select the manager of the county team in good faith, under terms agreed during the last "crisis".

I am satisfied that we carried out our part of that bargain properly and in recommending Gerald McCarthy, after five meetings, we were putting our faith in a man who not only was one of Cork's finest players ever, but someone who is knowledgeable, determined and aware of the challenges to be faced.

The players now seem to be asking us to overturn the outcome of a process that they agreed to participate in. It's a pity that the players go for broke in situations like this and demand a head or else threaten to walk away from playing for Cork.

It is not the way to do business and only makes a solution to these difficulties all the more difficult to achieve. Coaching issues, if they exist, should be dealt with in a coaching context.