Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
NOT FARR ENOUGH..
Dessie should have held his hands up and resigned as the Dublin manager, to be Frank and honest about it
EX-DUBLIN camogie manager Frank Browne reckons Dessie Farrell should have resigned over the team’s training controversy.
Browne was personally ‘annoyed’ at what he felt was ‘two fingers’ from Dublin and the players.
A group of the six-in-a-row winning Dubs were photographed training at the Innisfails club grounds last Wednesday, against Covid regulations.
A 12-week ban for Farrell followed, though Browne told Midwest Radio’s Sunday Sports Show that he felt the Sam Maguire winning boss should have quit.
He said: “Dessie has been suspended. I personally think, and I have brilliant time for Dessie – he did huge work, and huge work with the GPA – but I think
Dessie probably should have put up his hand and said, ‘Look,
I’ve made a bad call here and I’m actually going to step down as manager’.”
Browne (inset) was in charge of the Mayo ladies footballers when they lost to Dublin in the 2017 All-ireland final and the Wexford man then bossed the Dublin camogie team in 2019.
He reckons ‘pressure’ probably came on Dublin from sponsors to act quickly and to suspend Farrell, with the county board taking just hours to act.
Browne said: “I’d say it was, ‘Kill this story and kill it quick guys because the longer this is going to rumble on the worse it’s going to get’.
“I’d imagine there were some fairly frantic phone calls going on.
“But then the (host) GAA club as well has to be called into question. They were using their pitch and their facilities.”
Browne said there was an ‘arrogance’ to the rule break which could be interpreted as Dublin saying, ‘Well, we’re the Dublin footballers, we can actually do what we want’.
He also rejected the idea that it was ‘just a bunch of lads kicking around in a field’, claiming it was ‘organised’ and an affront to those who missed events like the recent funeral of ex-referee PJ Mcgrath.
Browne said: “It annoyed me, all the people... like, we listen to the deaths on the station every morning and every single one of them the funeral is private in accordance with current government guidelines.
“Like last week, PJ Mcgrath, God rest him, a great Gael, that would have been a full military event of a funeral, a west of Ireland funeral with Fianna Fail and the GAA and yet it had to be limited in conjunction with the guidelines.
“I think the Dublin lads doing what they did kind of gave the two fingers to all that kind of stuff.”