Seán Óg: ‘I should have kept my mouth shut’
SEAN Óg Ó hAilpín admitted last night that he regrets he did ‘not keep his mouth shut’ during the bitter heave against his former manager Gerald McCarthy. Ó hAilpín revisited the third, and by a distance most pungent, of the three Cork player strikes during the noughties, on last night’s Sunday Game on RTÉ, admitting he wished he had done things differently. ‘The biggest casualty out of that was Gerald McCarthy probably one of, if not the, greatest Cork great, having to step down. ‘That’s 12 years on, and there’s not a day goes by when I think back to then, if things had have been done differently. ‘There are certain actions that would have been in hindsight. I can’t speak for the other players per se, but I know I would have said some stuff at that time that, maybe on proper reflection, I was best just to keep my mouth shut,’ Ó hAilpín told last night’s show. Ó hAilpín, along with Dónal Óg Cusack and John Gardiner, was perceived as one of the principal influencers behind the 2008 strike, which developed after McCarthy refused to step down when informed he no longer retained the confidence of the players. The Cork star
did not mince his words about McCarthy during the four-month stand-off, going public about the reasons he lacked faith in his then manager.
Specifically, he questioned McCarthy’s ability to develop younger players, claiming he had provided them with no feedback and had allowed them to drift to the fringes of the squad.
‘I know that under previous managers they would have been sat down, the manager would have went through their game, identified what went wrong, see what things they had to work on,’ blasted Ó hAilpín in an explosive interview in 2008.
‘The young fellows feel strongly that he is incapable of any further progress. Players are not going to be playing under Ger, it’s as simple as that.’
The venomous nature of the dispute was such that McCarthy was issued with a death threat – for which the perpetrator was convicted – with Ó hAilpín admitting that the county still remains divided over their actions. ‘The aftermath was filthy, it was callous, it was cold, and Cork people even now ask were you anti or pro,’ he revealed.
However the 2005 All-Irelandwinning captain, who retired in 2012, is adamant that conflict with the Cork board was unavoidable.
‘The bottom line is, you had one part of the organisation, which was the playing group, who were looking to go one way and the county board had their own views about the way they wanted the Association run.
‘And they were going that way, and we were just going two poles apart completely.
‘When you have two camps entrenched in their own beliefs, it was only going to lead to ringside tickets in Las Vegas,’ added Ó hAilpín.
However, the 43-year-old insisted that his current coaching role with the county minors under Cusack’s management is proof that Cork have ‘moved on’.
‘That was a brave move by the county board obviously to appoint Dónal Óg as the minor manager.
‘Dónal Óg has brought me inside to give him a hand, so we would have been seen as the two most militant people during that time.
‘The fact that the board have brought us in is some sign they want things to move on, and to get Cork back to winning ways.
‘We need to produce results and we need to get Cork teams competing and not alone competing, but ensure that they have the belief that they are going to win,’ added Ó hAilpín.
“Aftermath of the strike was filthy, callous and cold”