A FORMER Mayo GAA star and current referee has called on his county’s players to apologise to their ex-county managers for calling for their removal last year.
Eugene MacHale from Knockmore, a star Mayo forward in the 1980s and a county Donegal referee, added that it was not too late for “the Mayo players, who were led by a few, to make contact with Pat Holmes and Noel Conneely and say sorry”.
MacHale was responding to weekend revelations from the ex-joint managers who felt it was time to set the record straight from their point of view. And he claimed a “cloud had been lifted” by both men for telling their side of the events that continue to rock the county.
Some commentators have criticised the ex-joint manager’s stance saying that it will only deepen division in the county. But MacHale said he believed the duo had done Mayo football a good service by laying bare what was going on and what was still going on in the Mayo team.
"They made it very clear that a very small number of players are the root of the problem and unless this problem is properly addressed Mayo will win nothing,’’ he stressed.
“I know Pat and Noel as two great people who have given Mayo football so much. I am angry and disgusted at the way they were treated. I feel sorry for both of their families who, like Pat and Noel, have suffered pain and humiliation.
“I would ask any person, how can Mayo win an All Ireland when you have players trying to tell the managers what players to play? I have played under many managers and never did any team that I played on ever question the men that were in charge.
“They had our total loyalty and when we failed to win the first person we looked at was oneself,’’ he claimed
He added: “To this day the Mayo players have not given one substantial reason why they wanted their managers removed.
“Imagine a player expressing his and others’ annoyance at another player not making the panel. Pat Holmes and Noel Conneely can hold their heads up high but the players should say sorry.”
