Limerick football manager Billy Lee hit his county board hard after his side lost to Clare in the Munster Championship on Saturday.
In an explosive interview with Marty Morrissey, Lee ranted about the unprofessional actions of the Limerick county board in the the week leading up to the game.
“Unfortunately, tonight we had a lad who was due to be on the bench. He togged out to be on the bench and because of inaccuracies in our administration, I couldn’t use him. I had to tell the lad afterwards he couldn’t play, he was distraught,” said Lee.
He further criticised the county board for not providing food to his players when they had travelled down for training during the week of the game.
“During the week we came here to training and brought fellas down from Dublin, Cork and Galway and there was no food provided for the players – someone f**ked up,” he said.
Late on Sunday night, the Treaty county board issued a statement in response to Lee’s comments.
The Management Committee of Limerick GAA would like to clarify the following in relation to comments made by the Senior Football team manager yesterday evening:
1.The County Board tenders for and approves caterers at the beginning of each year. Each individual team management and their support team is then responsible for arranging the team meals after training as required.
2. The team lists for this weekend’s fixtures week ending May 20th were received by the County Secretary on Wednesday evening and were subsequently forwarded in good faith to Croke Park in accordance to compliance with regulation. A subsequent email was received by the County Secretary late Wednesday night which the County Secretary did not have access to until after the 9.00am deadline on Thursday morning.
3. Any request made by the Senior football team management during 2018 was agreed and acceded to by Limerick Co Board.
Limerick Co Board would like to acknowledge the contribution of the Senior Football players and management for 2018.
Limerick GAA will make no further comment on this matter.
A host of Limerick supporters criticised the statement, claiming that the county secretary’s lack of access to his emails was unprofessional.
'Access to email' – in this day and age and in the week of 2 championship matches?
Might as well have said the dog ate my homework.
— Conor Mulvihill 🐄 (@conormulv) May 20, 2018
The absolute state of that…marty basically asked billy the same question in a different way 6 or 7 times…marty obviously had wind of the issues ever before the interview started.
— Stephen O Dea (@Brureetilidie) May 20, 2018
What a load of crap. The dogs in the street know some county board officers have no interest in football and are very haphazard about the team. Football panel deserve much better than this. Its no wonder players have opted out of the panel
— Garrett Ryan (@gryanmetals) May 20, 2018
