Spinning a way out no option for board
KEEP holding the back page: Anthony Cunningham is still clinging on to his position as Galway hurling manager.
If nothing else, what the ongoing and utterly futile power struggle in Galway hurling over the past fortnight has revealed is that Cunningham is blessed with the strongest fingernails in the land.
Sadly for Galway, it is not the only thing that has been revealed, with huge question marks raised about the competence of the county board leadership as an inevitable, if admittedly somewhat brutal, resolution faces them.
But when staring at a choice between a disaffected dressing room and a hopelessly isolated manager, their instinct has been to prevaricate rather than operate.
We have lost count of the meetings; the ones with player representatives, the ones with the Galway management, the ones with the entire playing group, the executive meetings, the ‘ongoing discussions’ meetings and, on Monday night, they managed what was described as just their ‘regular’ meeting.
That’s a lot of talk but there seems to be precious little listening going on.
This is no longer about the end game, because that is a given.
Cunningham’s position is not tenable and has not been since the players voted him out, which means that he will be gone any day soon or, as we suggested this time last week, by the time you even get to milk your cornflakes.
The alternative is unthinkable; if Cunningham stays then Galway will not have a hurling team, or at least a competitive one next season. But even though the world and its mother knows how this is going to roll, the Galway board have kept the heads down, their tongues oiled and ears closed.
Worse than that, in a reminder that the GAA is just politics at play, they have decided they can ‘spin’ their way out of this hole.
Within 24 hours of last week’s meeting with the panel in Athenry, where 29 players presented a unified front in their demand for a change of management, the board claimed through a not-very-wellconcealed leak that when Cunningham was initially met by four player representatives, they did not request that he step down and, furthermore, rejected his offer to resign.
There is most likely some truth in that — it is believed that the message communicated by the players was garbled — but it is hard to believe that Cunningham would have reacted to a confused message by offering his head.
If that was the case, then it hardly tallies with his response when that message was clarified repeatedly over the last fortnight, not least after last Wednesday night’s meeting when the players made it clear they were not for turning, or for accepting any compromise regarding changes to the manager’s backroom team.
While the board leadership will argue that the mixed message Cunningham received in the aftermath of losing a confidence vote by 24-4 was significant in that it allowed him a free conscience in allowing his name go forward for ratification, events have subsequently dictated that vote of ratification is now redundant.
Dealing with the reality is the first rule of crisis management, but instead the board’s energy has been focussed on trying to massage public opinion.
That is perhaps why, despite the overwhelming nature of last month’s vote — which followed on from a similar ballot earlier in the year when 27 players expressed their concern at how the team was being managed — the player heave has been peddled persistently as one driven by a small rump of older players.
Last week’s meeting in Athenry nailed that as a lie.
And that was also why the board’s response to the players’ unified stance last week was to seek to muddy the waters even though the boat had long sailed.
They have not realised that the only opinion that matters here is not that of the public, but of those inside the dressing room walls.
In seeking to alienate rather than facilitate, Galway have ensured that the poison will linger long after Cunningham is prised free.
‘The board’s response to the players’ stance was to seek to muddy the waters’