SLIOTARGATE!
Clare apologise... but stop short of naming the ‘thief’
THE individual who dumped Cork goalkeeper Anthony Nash’s sliotars prior to the start of Sunday’s Munster final is understood to be closely connected to a member of the Clare senior hurling management team.
Clare were left red-faced yesterday after footage emerged of the individual, dressed in what appears to be official Clare training gear, snatching Nash’s supply of balls pre-match before throwing them into the Killanan terrace.
It prompted an official apology yesterday from Clare which was accepted by Cork manager Kieran Kingston, but Banner chiefs are understood to be fuming at the incident.
The apology, which was made by joint manager Donal Moloney on behalf of his management team is likely to stave off an
investigation by the Munster council but it is expected that Clare board bosses will demand an explanation as to how the incident occurred. Two separate pieces of film shot by supporters in the crowd went viral. One is over two minutes long with the camera trained on the individual concerned, tracking his movement along the sideline and end-line, but occasionally breaking away to focus on the red bag containing Nash’s sliotars at the back of the goal. The person initially walks behind the ball-stop netting behind the goal and past the bag of sliotars, but doubles back, grabs it and rushes to the corner of the terrace where he throws it into the crowd. Given the focus of footage on the individual and the bag of balls, it raises questions as to whether the act was pre-planned. Yesterday Clare county secretary Pat Fitzgerald went public with his displeasure. ‘We do not condone it and we are intensely annoyed about it and we apologise to Anthony Nash and to Cork GAA. It is not in the spirt and the ethos of our association. We play the game in a manly fashion between the four lines and when the games start that is it. That type of thing is not in the spirit of the association,’ said Fitzgerald yesterday. The switching of sliotars made headlines previously when the former Cork goalkeeper Donal Og Cusack, currently coach to the Clare hurlers, revealed in his autobiography how the Rebels deliberately tricked Tipperary’s Eoin Kelly into taking a penalty with a ‘dud’ ball in the 2005 Munster SHC. ‘If we won a penalty we’d be getting rid of the O’Neill’s ball and getting one of our favoured Cummins All Star balls into use. If we conceded a penalty I’d get rid of the match ball in use at the time and the dud ball would be rolled in. ‘Never handed over. Rolled in, so that it would just appear to be lying on the grass waiting to be picked up. There was nothing obvious. It would just appear there. On the day, Kelly picked up the dud ball. It had been a job of work for one of our men to soften it up and still have it look like a newish O’Neill’s ball. ‘It gave me great confidence to see him pick it up. To reassure opposing players, what we used to do was write the opposing county name in marker on the ball. Tipp! Eoin Kelly picked up the ball, looked at it and placed it for the penalty. I said to the boys, “we have a chance here”. He took the penalty and we saved it.’