Those Ed Sheeran figures are crazy.
Even if the top CB guys were hopelessly out of their depth, why wouldn't they engage with a commercial 3rd party to act on their behalf?.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a case of being too out of their depth to know they were out of their depth.
I know a lot of Galway's issues are related to previous incumbents but the current regime don't seem to be doing much of a job in terms of improving matters given the way the relationships with the main sponsors and management/potential management has been handled. I'm sure the last thing McDonagh wanted was to go public with matters.
You'd have thought priority number one for Galway GAA was keeping the lad who gave them €1.6 million over the last five years on-side and in the loop, especially given all the stuff related to the finances. As soon as the new regime took over they should have arranged a meeting with McDonagh and gone through what was done wrong previously and explain the steps being taken to sort things out going forward. It's hard enough to get sponsors on board, so you'd think some small amount of care would be taken with the relationship, especially given the ongoing issues.
In terms of transparency and openness, one simple small step they could take is to publish all the recent financial accounts on the Galway website and what they can of the various financial audit reports. I heard that some parts of the first report couldn't be published because of legal issues [which says a world about what the financial controls and records were like; basically they're pretty certain money went missing but their controls and records were so poor they can't legally pin responsibility on individuals] It would be a small step forward in terms of openness and signal a difference in approach instead of things being shrouded in rumour.
