On Sunday night, as initially reported by Jackie Cahill, four clubs - Golden-Kilfeacle, Arravale Rovers, Rockwell Rovers, Lattin-Cullen Gaels - were turfed out of the West Tipperary Intermediate Hurling Championship. That followed a meeting of the West Tipperary CCCC.
On Monday evening, the North Tipperary CCCC met and Shannon Rovers were thrown out of the North Tipperary IHC.
The reason for the five clubs being expelling - Moyle Rovers could yet be the sixth - was them choosing not to fulfilling fixtures in their respective hurling championships. Shannon Rovers were due to play Newport in North semi-final over the weekend.
All clubs involved have players on the Tipperary football panel. Due to their upcoming All-Ireland semi-final against Mayo on August 21st, the players came to a decision following training last week that they would not turn out for their clubs in the weekend's fixtures.
A source close to Shannon Rovers - who called the situation 'a total nightmare' - told Balls.ie what happened.
The [Tipperary] footballers played on the Sunday and beat Galway. Then the CCCC met on the Sunday night [July 31st] and they put on a fixture for us to play in the north semi-final for the Saturday.
The footballers trained on the Wednesday night and after that the players decided it was going to be a once in a lifetime chance to play in an All-Ireland semi-final, that they weren't going to put themselves in jeopardy because of a round of club hurling matches.
I think it was seven or eight players involved and they voted that they wouldn't play with the clubs that weekend.
Shannon Rovers were initially going to play the fixtures but when it was noticed the West Tipp teams' games had been postponed, they informed the North Tipp board that they would not be playing the match.
We tried to get the match postponed and the CCCC wouldn't agree. We were going to play, we thought we had no choice but to play. On Twitter on the Friday night it had that all the West games were postponed.
We sent an email then on Friday evening that we were looking for a postponement as well.
They asked on Saturday morning for confirmation that we weren't playing. So we gave them that. The consequences of not fulfilling a fixture are being thrown out and a €500 fine.
Shannon Rovers' member of the senior football panel is George Hannigan who started at midfield for Tipperary in the quarter-final win against Galway. Hannigan is the starting fullback for the Shannon Rovers hurlers.
The circumstances are described as a 'headache' for the players in question. It has also left a 'sour taste' with those involved.
It's a headache they could do without. The players themselves are feeling now that the club players are going to be against them within their own club. The club lads are after training since January.
We're not going to win a county final. So being realistic, the only chance we had of silverware was the North final. That's what these lads were training for and now they're not going to get a chance for that.
It does leave a sour taste in the mouth.
These lads never got to this stage of the [All-Ireland Senior Football] Championship before. If the new changes come in, you won't see Tipperary in a semi-final for a long time.
They were forced into a situation where they had to choose between playing for their club or the county. If our player [George Hannigan] played for us, he was going to be an outsider then on the panel with Tipp because the whole group said they wouldn't play. They were forcing him into a corner where he was wrong if he did it and wrong if he didn't.
It is an unnecessary situation, one which could have easily been avoided.
If the county board had said on the Sunday night or Monday after the football match, 'Look, there will be no club matches until after this football semi-final but there's going to be a backlog, so will ye play two games in a week?' I'd say there would be no problem.
There was no need to throw fixtures down their throat to get matches played.
There are a lot of people saying that if we were senior clubs, it wouldn't happen. If the shoe was on the other foot that the hurlers were allowed back to their club to play a football match, I know what would happen - there would be no football match.
The Shannon Rovers committee will meet this evening to decide on how they go about appealing the decision. The objective: to be reinstated to the North Tipperary IHC, but they do so in 'hope more than expectation'.
Shannon Rovers will be appealing to the 'kindness' of the decision makers as strictly speaking the games did not fall within the 13-day period prior to an inter-county game where players are not available to their clubs.
Photo by Daire Brennan/Sportsfile
