A TOUGH ASK
Players are too ‘terrified’ to tell tales - Donaghy
KIERAN DONAGHY says he could never have brought himself to inform on his management and believes it is a tough ask to expect players to do so.
As the GPA passed a motion on Wednesday night, setting up a ‘confidential disclosure platform’ which will allow its members to report to the players body any breaches of the inter-county off-season, former Kerry star Donaghy conceded yesterday that, if he was still playing, he would be unlikely to use it.
‘I have been in a county set-up 15 years so I don’t see myself doing it. It is fine to say it is confidential but look, you would be terrified in case anything came out.
‘The whole thing about people reporting on their own county is obviously going to be a tricky one and if people do it, they will do it for their own prerogative,’ said Donaghy.
‘If they don’t they will be choosing to protect their county side, so it is a very difficult to see what’s the right thing to do with this,’ added the four-time All-Ireland winner.
LIKE a watched kettle that never comes to the boil, whoever in the GPA gets to man its confidential disclosure hotline is likely to find the phone never rings.
Less than 24 hours after the GPA had passed a motion to establish a confidential disclosure platform, which would allow players to report managers for any breaches of the off-season inter-county window, Kieran Donaghy admitted yesterday that the very idea of whispering details of covert activity in the Kingdom would jar with every instinct.
Donaghy was asked, if he travelled back in time to his 14-season Kerry career, could he have ever imagined whispering details of covert Kingdom activity behind the backs of Éamonn Fitzmaurice, Pat O’Shea or Jack O’Connor? The thought of it sent a shiver down his 6ft 5inch spine.
‘I have been in a county set-up 15 years so I don’t see myself doing it. It is fine to say it is confidential but look, you would be terrified in case anything came out. I don’t know. I can’t answer that. I won’t be in the position, thanks be to God.
‘The whole thing about people reporting on their own county is obviously going to be a tricky one and if people do it they will do it for their own prerogative. If they don’t they will be choosing to protect their county side so it is very difficult to see what the right thing to do is,’ said Donaghy, speaking as the EBS and the Federation of Irish Sport launched this year’s 2020 Volunteers in Sport awards.
It is a view that is likely to be shared among the GPA’s current playing membership, where the reluctance of ‘ratting out’ their team management is likely to be universal.
But Donaghy argued that the very presence of such a disclosure platform should be enough to finally spark the GAA into taking the kind of action in delivering the fixture reform that is so badly needed.
‘The fact that we have to bring in this motion tells you that there are major problems.
‘They always tell us that we have to get this though Congress and that through Congress, all of a sudden in the pandemic we are able to change everything at the blink of an eye because we needed to.
‘We have had a perfect template of boys playing with their clubs for seven, eight weeks and if we could do that a bit earlier in the year, maybe we could move the league, push it back or drop the provincial championships because they are outdated.
‘It needs to be radically overhauled and I think that is what most people are looking for.
‘There is a general consensus out there that the inter-county season is too long, the club season
Left behind: Donaghy before Nemo mauling is too fractured and the enjoyment is falling out of it because they are putting too much into it.’
Donaghy has only got to look in the mirror to reaffirm that having a defined and shortened season works. The 37-year-old was ready to pull the plug on his club career with Austin Stacks after last year’s Munster club mauling from Nemo Rangers, but when the whistle blew on the first round of the Kerry senior championship last weekend, he was back on the pitch to face Dingle.
He admits that a club season, as structured and as organised as that of his other great passion, basketball, hammered into shape by a crisis as it was, fitted his eye.
‘I let myself down by not performing that day against Nemo and I thought the writing was on the wall for me,’ he said.
‘I hadn’t had a break in five years, I went straight from football into basketball into football into basketball from the ages of 33 to 38 so it wasn’t ideal but I love both of them, so I did it.
‘Covid hit the end of the basketball season and it was cancelled and I got a massive break, I got time with the family. I enjoyed it at the dinner table as well, I put on my Covid stone and more.
‘Our manager Wayne Quinlivan wanted me to come back and I was carrying weight up at 17 and a half stone.
‘I was 15st 10lbs on the scales on the Saturday of the Dingle game. I got to 16st 2lbs within six or seven weeks, that showed me and the manager of the club team that I had the hunger to try and go again.’
And when the club season concludes, Donaghy’s attention as a pundit and Kerry supporter will turn to a winter All-Ireland championship.
Jack McCaffrey’s decision to opt out of the Dublin squad is perceived to open the door for others, not least Kerry, but Donaghy is dismissive of the suggestion that it amounts to a game-changer.
‘Diarmuid Connolly was out for a year, while Jack was also gone for a season a few years ago, with most teams it would be a massive game-changer but Dublin roll through these things. ‘I can’t call it a game-changer because Dublin just roll through everything. Until they don’t, I think if they don’t, then you can call it a gamechanger but as of now I can’t call it a gamechanger because Dublin just roll through it all.
‘Their decisionmaking is the best of any team that’s ever played and their decision-making in high pressure situations, all that and how good they are at all that, trumps any one player missing in my opinion.
‘I always felt with Dublin in the early noughties one of them would do something crazy at a vital time in the game and give momentum to the opposition whereas this current crop, over the last seven or eight years, don’t do that and I think that’s the biggest thing.’
14 Seasons Donaghy was involved in Kerry senior set-up
“I let myself down by not performing that day against Nemo ”