Not good enough.
Offaly football has been through the wringer over the last few days. On Sunday, the county lost their first round Leinster championship clash to Wicklow.
Soon after, reports circulated, past players gave out, claims were made, the rumour-mill was in full flow as everything and anything was said to have been going on in the Offaly camp. Players were said to have stormed to their car at half-time of the game amid a perceived dressing room upheaval against manager Stephen Wallace.
Inter-county referee Brian Gavin was the ring-leader for many of these claims, but Wallace has since hit back at the Clara man for this “unfounded hatchet job.”
Wallace was on Thursday’s GAA Hour Show with Colm Parkinson and it’s clear that he feels he was hard done by to have gotten the boot.
The Kerryman maintains that despite the loss and the reports of player unrest, he was still at one with his players. Indeed, he insisted that were it not for his intervention, the Offaly footballers would have went on strike against the county board a couple of weeks ago.
“It’s the players that are suffering because of this ineptitude (of the Offaly county board.) There are road-blocks put in front of the players week-in, week-out, and this culminated in these players talking about going on strike two weeks ago. I had to talk them out of it, because they were just fed up of the way they were being treated by the board.”
“I have a statement, that was handed to me by the captain and player rep in the Esker Hills golf club, and it’d be pretty bloody damning if it got into anyone’s hands,” said Wallace.
According to the Ardfert man, the players were upset at being neglected by the county board, and that’s hardly surprising, given that it is claimed they had no S and C coach, no proper medical team and they weren’t even provided with boot vouchers.
“There were players with tears in their eyes (at this Esker Hills meeting) because they hadn’t got their boot vouchers, and they couldn’t afford a pair of boots. There were senior players crying because they were fearing their career was being ruined because we didn’t have a proper medical team. We haven’t had an S and C coach since last February.”
Wallace claimed that he helped to soothe the players over and by doing that, saved the county board’s face.
“These are not Stephen Wallace’s excuses. I said lads, ‘be careful where you’re going with this.’ I said, ‘let’s sleep on this lads because emotions are running high.’ I said, ‘let me see if I can rectify these problems’ – which I did, and the players were in a better place within 24 to 48 hours and subsequently went back to work.”
The man certainly feels like he didn’t get a fair crack of the whip.
“The fall-out from it, people saying it’s the worst day in the history of Offaly GAA, the over-reaction has probably cost me my job. We lost the game and it’s cost me my job,” he said.
You can listen to the full, irate Wallace interview, and much more from Thursday’s GAA Hour Show here.
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