The hostilities in Galway hurling have yet to reach a resolution and we're still a little unclear as to what the exact details of the issue are. The official line at the moment is that Anthony Cunningham offered to resign when the vote of no confidence was expressed to him before his position was renewed at a county board meeting.
But whatever happened in the run-up to his reappointment as manager, one thing we can be certain of is that the there is obvious unrest in the camp.
Tipperary hurler Pádraic Maher, who was on the losing side in the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway, has labelled the affair as 'bizarre.' And although he admits he's not fully informed on the details of the revolt, he thinks it would have been better if the players aired their grievances earlier in the year to avoid any fallouts further down the line.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner he said:
If the players aren’t happy, they’re not happy, and they’re probably better off saying it at the start of the year rather than the middle or the end of the league and kicking up ructions that they’re not happy about things. They might as well get it out of the way now.
I suppose it is a bit unusual. He (Cunningham) brought the team to an All-Ireland final and had good wins over Cork and ourselves. It is unusual but we don’t know what’s really happening around the scene so I can’t really comment on it.
Pádraic Maher, now 26, joined the Tipperary panel in 2007. But even though relations never deteriorated to the level currently being experienced in Galway, there were times when disagreements arose with Eamon O'Shea.
Obviously, we had disagreements with Eamon at times as well, certain things that we thought would be changing. The way management is now, they’re very open to these things. With us around Tipperary they were anyway, they listen to certain possibilities about changing stuff, they’re willing to listen to them. Other than that the players have never really stood up and said, ‘We want a change’ or anything like that, definitely not in my time anyway.
Talks resumed in Galway last night among county officials after a brief interruption to allow for club championship fixtures to proceed at the weekend.
