Warring Rebels shouldn’t wait for a Pyrrhic victory

Against the Breeze
By Paddy Heaney

First Published 10/02/2009

Maggie Thatcher’s daughter, Carol, got sacked from her job in the BBC last week because she refused to apologise for referring to a black tennis player as a “golliwog”.

Thatcher made the dreadful comment during a private conversation with the presenter Adrian Chiles and the comedienne Jo Brand. Chiles and Brand reported her. There has been some discussion as to why Chiles and Brand were so willing to tout on Thatcher. Political correctness? Maybe.

Politics probably had something to do with it. I have my own pet theory, which I hope is true. I’d like to think that Chiles suffered in some way during Maggie Thatcher’s reign of power. Maybe a family member lost their job.

Jo Brand might also have a callous regard for the Thatchers. A former nurse, she will have witnessed at first hand how Maggie’s cutbacks would have crippled the National Health Service. When presented with the chance of exacting some revenge against the Thatcher dynasty, Brand and Chiles seized it without hesitation.

I dearly hope my theory is true. It could be. Maggie Thatcher and her children’s children will be despised for generations to come. This is the price you pay for ‘not turning,’ and for being prepared to do whatever it takes to win. The Cork County Board should take note. They share some similarities with the ‘Iron Lady.’

In 1984 Thatcher practically invited Arthur Scargill to strike. She created conditions that were so unacceptable to the British miners that Scargill’s National Union of Mineworkers had little other choice. Thatcher had chosen her battleground carefully. She was in a strong position of power, and the full force of the establishment was behind her. The miners were led into an ambush.

The Cork County Board’s decision to reappoint Gerald McCarthy has a certain Thatcherite touch to it. The players had made it known to the board they didn’t want McCarthy. But the board weren’t interested in the players. After the previous year’s strike, they reckoned the public’s sympathy with the players had been exhausted. If the hurlers downed tools again, then it would prove Sean Og and Donal Og were unmanageable, power-hungry, spoilt brats.

Rather than setting out to appease the players, the board jumped at the chance to put the players in their place, and to end the power struggle once and for all. Thatcher’s battle with the miners was part of her bigger war against the trade unions. She wanted to prove the days of the country being dictated to by the unions were over. Defeating the miners was her way of forcibly demonstrating that she was in charge.

Like Thatcher, the Cork board is determined to prove they run gaelic games in the county. They are prepared to see this one through to the bitter end. Gerald McCarthy has evidently being given assurances that he will be backed to the hilt.

It has all got extremely personal and poisonous. Cork hurling is now ripping itself apart. It’s the sporting equivalent of civil war. Houses are divided. Jerry O’Sullivan is chairman of the county board. His son, Paudie is one of the striking hurlers.

Club teams are divided. Kieran Murphy is from Sarsfield’s. He is on strike, but five of his fellow clubmen lined out for the Cork team beaten by Dublin on Sunday.

More than 2,000 Cork supporters turned out to watch a third choice team get beaten by the Dubs. It was a huge crowd for such a fixture. The Cork fans who paid E15 at the turnstiles gave the players a standing ovation before the game, at half-time, and at the final whistle.

There was no admission charge to the public rally held for the striking hurlers in Cork city centre the previous day. Nevertheless, people have other things to be doing on a cold Saturday afternoon and more than 10,000 turned up. It was a dramatic show of support.

But Gerald McCarthy isn’t interested. On the same day, he went on RTE radio and got involved in a ding-dong debate with Donal Og Cusack.

McCarthy argued that the current stand-off is not really about the players’ principles. Instead, he suggested the strike is part of a sub-plot where the long-term aim is pay-for-play.

McCarthy is an honourable man but his words somehow ring hollow. The irony in all of this is that the players are striking because they are amateurs. They don’t play to get paid. They play to win. And they don’t think they are going to win with Gerald McCarthy in charge of them. It’s really that simple.

The Offaly footballers are exactly the same. At the weekend, they ousted Richie Connor, the captain of the All-Ireland winning team of 1982. It was nothing personal against Richie. But you can’t commit yourself to a cause if you think the man in charge isn’t competent. The Wexford hurlers and the Cork footballers performed a similar stunt last year.

In each case, John Meyler and Teddy Holland walked away. It was the sensible thing to do. Further down the line, we must start to ask ourselves: where this is going to end? Many GAA supporters will believe that players are getting too big for their free boots. They will sympathise with county boards whose decisions and appointments are increasingly being undermined and questioned by the players.

Yet, these spats can easily be avoided by sensible management. By communicating with the players, and sussing out their opinions, it’s easy to discover which candidates will command respect in the changing room. The trouble is the Cork County Board is not interested in satisfying the needs of its hurlers. This strike is about personalities and power. It’s about showing who runs Cork hurling.

In their bid to assert authority, the county board is prepared to force their own sons into exile. Like Maggie Thatcher, they could win. And we could very well have seen some of these fine hurlers in the red jersey for the last time.

That would be a huge pity, and not just because these players would be denied the chance to win the MacCarthy Cup. No, the real tragedy would lie in the decades of resentment that such an outcome is guaranteed to generate.

There are some battles where the price of victory is just too great. Sometimes, you’ve got to surrender to win. Gerald McCarthy and the Cork County Board really can’t afford the legacy of bitterness that will come gift-wrapped from winning this particular stand-off. It’s a victory that will be thrown in the faces of their children’s children.