Fermanagh

[liihb]

where to now for Dessi  and the GPA?
Dessie has failed to stand by his members

Have to say thats the biggest load of shite ever. No fan of the GPA or Dessie, but they couldn't be blamed for this

[Kerry Mike]

Eleven former Fermanagh players have said they are deeply disappointed at the county board's rejection of recommendations made by the GAA and the GPA.

A statement released today and signed by 11 former panel members contains stinging criticism of the management setup, accusing it of falling 'far short' of the standards needed for inter-county football.

Fermanagh are currently third from bottom in Division 4 of the Allianz Football League, with just London and Kilkenny below them, amid a dispute between players' and management which has seen a large number of players quit the panel.

Last week, the GPA and GAA stepped in to try to bring about a solution under the newly agreed Disputes Resolution Protocols.

But on Thursday morning, the County Management Committee released a statement rejecting the advice of the GPA/GAA and backed the management team led by John O'Neill.

The statement released today by the former panel members said: 'We the undersigned would like to express our deep disappointment that the Fermanagh Co Board has chosen to reject the recommendations made under the GPA/GAA Disputes Resolution Protocols.

'It is our continued contention that the current management team falls far short of the high standards of organisation and preparation which are required to compete at inter-county standard.'

The statement adds the players involved remain committed to Fermanagh football and calls on the clubs to ensure that a comprehensive and transparent review to take place at the end of the season.

The players also accuse the Board of attempting to drive a wedge between different elements of the playing group.

They add that they will not return to the Fermanagh panel while the current management remains in place and thanks the GPA and the GAA for their efforts to resolve the dispute.

The statement is signed by Niall Bogue, James Connolly, Ciaran Flaherty, Mark Little, Sam Lynch, Shane Lyons, Tommy McElroy, John Mullarkey, Seamus Quigley, James Sherry and Peter Sherry.

The statement by the 11 former Fermanagh players' in full is as follows:

We the undersigned would like to express our deep disappointment that the Fermanagh Co Board has chosen to reject the recommendations made under the GPA/GAA Disputes Resolution Protocols.

It is our continued contention that the current management team falls far short of the high standards of organisation and preparation which are required to compete at inter-county standard.


Rather than this season being a launch pad for a rebuilding process, we believe there has been a decline in standards. As a result the undersigned 11 panel members, (not 'only four' as stated by the county board) have withdrawn to date due to concerns regarding team management.

We have also received the support of a significant number of players from last year's squad who share our views on the current situation.


We would like to make it clear that we bear no animosity whatsoever to the players who remain on the panel and have at no point attempted to coerce or influence any panellist into making a decision.

However we believe the County Board have attempted to drive a wedge between the current squad and the players involved in the Dispute. Furthermore, we reject the County Board's assertion that the current squad is in 'transition'.

We believe the alarmingly high level of player turnover within the county is a symptom of deep problems which the board are currently unwilling to address.

We wish to put on record that we remain passionately committed to Fermanagh football and have not taken this course of action lightly. We hope our past service to our County will be seen as evidence of this commitment.


As the County Board has chosen to reject the recommendations made under the GPA/GAA Disputes Protocol, we now call on the clubs in Fermanagh to ensure that a comprehensive review is carried out transparently at the end of the season and to ensure that their views are heard clearly on this matter. We believe this is essential for the future health of Fermanagh football.

While we will not be returning to the squad under the current management, we would like to wish the squad every success for the remainder of the season. We would also like to thank the GAA and the GPA for their efforts to resolve this dispute.


2011 Withdrawn Panel Members:


1. Bogue, Niall
2. Connolly, James
3. Flaherty, Ciaran
4. Little, Mark
5. Lynch, Liam
6. Lyons, Shane
7. McElroy, Tommy
8. Mullarkey, John
9. Quigley, Seamus
10. Sherry, James
11. Sherry, Peter


That statement is very nearly word for word what the Cork hurlers released a few years ago. Has Sean Og gone back to his roots

[Bingo]

I find it odd that the GAA were so quick to get involved and broker a deal. In Cork they constantly avoided doing this until they had little choice. Is it a case that Cork was too big a fish to deal with, while Fermanagh was seen as something that needed sorting out.

I'm sure the GPA was acting on behalf on the players on both sides.

[mattockranger]

Interesting news for Roslea and Fermanagh

James and Peter Sherry have just asked our club secretary for his signature!

interesting news for us and possibly Louth

[sammymaguire]

Interesting news for Roslea and Fermanagh

James and Peter Sherry have just asked our club secretary for his signature!

interesting news for us and possibly Louth

Why would either of them want to quit Roslea?

[Orangemac]

Sorry state of affairs all round and will only end in tears.

County board are not going to back down so O'Neill will be there for this year at the minimum which means Fermanagh will be short at least 5/6 players who would have been expected to start v Derry.He doesn't seem like a man who will quit.

Will this row filter down to club level? With some clubs being pro O'Neill and some anti.

When is the next vote on County Board membership? Whole process of appointing manager seemed like a farce.

Also with Seamus Quigley one of the Lakes (as opposed to Oceans) Eleven and his 2 brothers on the panel what kind of discussion around football would there be in that house?

[haranguerer]

Also with Seamus Quigley one of the Lakes (as opposed to Oceans) Eleven and his 2 brothers on the panel what kind of discussion around football would there be in that house?

Seamie would have signed it for the craic if it suited him. I wouldnt think any of them would care that much about what any of the others was saying either

[Gael85]

Fermanagh put up a big score today against Clare winning 17-9,suprising result conisdering Fermanagh missing so many bodies

[ExiledGael]

Fermanagh: J McGrath, J Woods, B Owens, M Jones, C Quigley (0-1), B Mulrone, K Cosgrove, H Brady, M O'Brien, T O'Flanagan (0-2, 0-1 free), N Cassidy, R Jones (0-3, 0-2 frees), P Ward (0-3), J O'Flanagan (0-3), S Quigley (0-1). Subs: D Kille (0-4) for Woods (10 mins), B Óg Maguire for Cassidy (20), J O'Brien for Ward (60), C O'Brien for D Kille (65).

Good result but I was expecting it at home. When you look back at the league a little bit of luck or one or two more players on board and we would have been promoted. Wicklow equalised with the last kick against us, we were six up on Leitrim with 20 minutes left and missed 14 yard free to draw with last kick. Roscommon beat us with a goal in injury time, a few more experienced heads and an extra point or two would have been carved out. With London to come that'll leave us finishing on nine points. It's not great but we're certainly not the worst team in the country, second string team or not.
Hope to God things get sorted in the next month or two now, even if a handfull of players return - McCluskey and McGrath at least. Derry in Celtic Park still looks like it could be a massacre.

[Orior]

Is it true that Clare sent their hurling team by mistake?

Or maybe Fermangh sent their hurling team!

[leaveherinsir]

Would i be the only Derry man who would be worried that Fermanagh will get it together and beat us by a point or two in a dour oul battle, a la Omagh a couple of years ago?

[Emmett]

Would i be the only Derry man who would be worried that Fermanagh will get it together and beat us by a point or two in a dour oul battle, a la Omagh a couple of years ago?

I wouldn't be too worried about that. Odds of 10/1 would be too short for us for that match unfortunately

[Fermanaghfirst]

Hi all Fermanagh Gaels. Terrible goings on at the minute.  Better give you all my take on things.

I wasn't in favour of JONs appointment from the outset. Nothing has happened to change my mind. If the likes of peter and James sherry, Niall bogue and Tommy Mc elroy are walking out and giving their reasons then I know for sure there is something badly wrong. They are all good Fermanagh men who always give their best.

I hope that JON has the sense to put Fermanagh first at the end of the year and quit. We need all our best players out to have any chance, nobody can deny that.

Anybody else agree or disagree? Anyone I talk to is thinking along the same lines.

[Fermanaghandsam]

From the Irish Examiner:

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The Irish Examiner
WITH Fermanagh football making the headlines of the national media and the county side languishing in the doldrums of Division Four, it has obscured one of the league's more interesting developments.
With one game to go in the notoriously-competitive Division Two, Donegal remain unbeaten. Once the hardest-partying team in Ulster, they now pride themselves as the hardest-working one.
In Jim McGuinness, they have a progressive manager hungry for success and hungry to develop, not just his players but himself. He's studied coaching and winning from his time attaining degrees in sports science and sport psychology.
He's credible and cutting edge.
McGuinness has only one man by his side down on the touchline: his number two, Rory Gallagher. Of all the people he could have chosen, he went with a 33-year-old not even from the county, just one living in it and the owner of an exceptionally high football IQ.
Last season, Gallagher played for Fermanagh. He was not asked back by John O'Neill but if he had, do you doubt he wouldn't have voted on the setup with his feet? Nor would there be any doubt about how he'd be described, considering the perception of him during his on-off inter-county career with Fermanagh: troublemaker, too big for his boots, "one of the players who got us into Division Four in the first place".
There has been something honourable about the dissenting players' reluctance to disseminate horror stories about O'Neill's management but it has largely backfired. People don't know what they found so objectionable about the setup, leaving the vacuum to be filled with innuendo, side issues and non-issues.
The dispute has been portrayed as one featuring a group of pampered players no longer indulged with the backup and medical support they enjoyed under Malachy O'Rourke.
Undoubtedly the county board, like most county boards, are financially-challenged now, but Club Eirne, the county's supporters club, have money waiting to be called on, only to be sidelined by the current setup.
The crux of the dispute is over something that costs nothing — man management.
The dissenting players were not impressed by O'Neill's tactical awareness or his addresses and found him unapproachable.
Think of all the recent best new managers — Liam Sheedy, Anthony Daly, Kevin Walsh, Jason Ryan, Kieran McGeeney, Pat Gilroy, James McCartan, Conor Counihan, Jim McGuinness...
All the boss, but all approachable, all new school.
O'Neill is unashamedly old school. Upon his appointment, he declared his scepticism towards sport psychology.
"I was discussing this once with Cormac McAdam and he told me that when he was captain and goalie with the county he didn't need any psychologist to tell him we were losing on the scoreboard!"
A great line to draw a guffaw from your drinking buddies, but could you imagine Jason Ryan saying that?
I should declare that I'm a sport psychologist, and as it happens, the one that worked with Fermanagh, my father's native county, when they reached the 2008 Ulster final.
Space prevents me from elaborating on how we looked at scoreboards or 'losing' during games that hadn't yet been won or lost — though it's quite revealing John and Cormac had Fermanagh losing on their scoreboard.
I believe John's job is safe for this year and in many ways it's only right it is, after the team's win over Clare last Sunday. But he should be judged by the results of his team this summer, because it is ultimately the team that he left himself with. Probably O'Rourke's biggest mistake was the wild turnover of players he oversaw after 2008. Too many panel players were discarded for 2009, and again in 2010. For Fermanagh to be competitive in 2011, the team needed to enter a period of transition married with some stability in the form of the Sherrys and McElroy.
Those departing players have been dismissed as being "the same players who landed Fermanagh in Division Four". It's unfair. For starters they still managed to win their first-round Ulster championship game each of the last three years, a trend unlikely to stretch under O'Neill. Niall Bogue was man of the match on the county's greatest day, the 2004 win over Armagh. James Sherry remains the only Fermanagh man to score a goal in an All-Ireland senior semi-final and only last year was Fermanagh's best player in their Division Three campaign.
In 2008 Tommy McElroy was a near All-Star and the best newcomer in Ulster. Three years on, he might be finished.
So could the GAA-GPA intervention model; it is too crude, idealistic and unwieldy to deliver a "compromise" in a "dispute" like this; no way in the real world were O'Neill and those players going to co-exist in the same setup.
O'Neill survives because he's been backed by Barry Owens, who is desperate to play football after three long years away from the game and by a county board whose officers are the salt of the earth but have little idea as to how you coach and compete in the Facebook era, otherwise they'd have found or produced another Jason Ryan or Jim McGuinness last autumn. And until the clubs show some initiative, that's the way it will stay.

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Finally a paper is willing to say it how it is!!!!

[mattockranger]

Good article but who is he quoting in the second half of it? Gallagher?