King Henry of Galway (Part 1) 👑

I really hope Cunningham digs in and drags the shit out of this.

Ger Loughnane has called the players “pathetic”.

http://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/2015/1005/732453-reprots/

Incidentally, the spelling mistake in that URL :laughing:

Oh this one is going to drag on alright…

Barrel of teeth

Cunningham is digging in.

The Galway players have picked the wrong fight here.

Public perception is everything in these sorts of struggles.

The public perception of the Mayo players is that they are an extremely committed and honest group who have done everything in their power to win an All-Ireland. They’ve won five Connacht titles in a row, have been to two All-Ireland finals and been consistent contenders for the last five years. Crucially, four of those were under James Horan and not Holmes and Connelly. The Mayo players have a serious amount of credit built up with the public in both Mayo and elsewhere, and the public perception is that they would not make such a move against the management without good reason.

The controversy over the process aurrounding the appointment of Holmes and Connelly and the perception of favouritism because of Connelly’s brother being the county board chairman there also worked in the players’ favour.

The public perception of the Galway hurlers, on the other hand, is that of a squad where inflated egos and inter-club bitterness reign. Galway hurling has a long record of getting rid of managers in murky circumstances and falling flat on its face in the seasons afterwards. There’s always been a perception with the wider hurling public that the Galway hurlers are basically a shower of gutless fancy dans and the second half of the All-Ireland final did a lot to cement that again.

The perception of Cunningham is that he took over a consistently under-achieving team, organised them, instilled steel in them and got them closer to an All-Ireland than anybody since Cyril Farrell. He’s also their first manager since Cyril Farrell to reach more than one All-Ireland final. The way the public sees it is that Cunningham has made Galway contenders despite having a lot of shit to deal with, and put in place the structure and the game plan to enable Galway to be in a position at half-time in the final where they should really have gone on and won the All-Ireland, and the players, and the players alone, bottled it.

Stories like Aidan Harte’s oul’ fella bursting into the dressing room also make a laughing stock of the players in the public’s eyes and increase sympathy for Cunningham.

The timing of this heave is also disastrous, coming straight after what happened in Mayo.

All of the above means the public perception in this crisis is firmly behind Cunningham and against the players.

4 Likes
  1. Bollox
  2. Who made you the arbiter of public perception?

Is this true? @KinvarasPassion? I said it to a Galway man who upon some research of the subject swears blind Harte never his seat at half time.

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Its a great story but by all accounts he wasn’t in dressing room.

Can we name and shame the cunts on here who swore blind it to be true?

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The point is in regard to public perception. It doesn’t matter whether the story is true or not, it’s in the public domain.

Much like the Kieran Donaghy one, which is also bullshit.

Noel Treacy should hang for letting things develop to this. All he and the board had to do was hang back 1 week before ratifying AC and allow the players to thrash out their issues.

He’s had a career in spin and negotiations and that things have to come to this sits badly for him. He knew the players had issues with AC bit went ahead with the reappointment regardless.

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What story is this?

Ha.

What story is this?

It doesn’t matter if it’s bullshit.

Interesting though it was all the same.

It had sub plots, background characters, the lot. Unreal how this shit grows.

Nail on the head right there Sidney.

Excellent post.

I did. As you were @Sidney