Football

Rory Kavanagh slams Croke Park’s keeping April free decision

Donegal's Rory Kavanagh. Picture by Seamus Loughran.
Donegal's Rory Kavanagh. Picture by Seamus Loughran. Donegal's Rory Kavanagh. Picture by Seamus Loughran.

A DONEGAL All-Ireland winner has slammed Croke Park’s decision to let individual counties decide on the ‘keeping April free for clubs’ strategy as a “recipe for disaster”.

Straight-talking Rory Kavanagh added to the fears recently expressed by veteran Bundoran delegate Michael McMahon, who called on Croke Park to enforce the rule on the matter across the country.

Donegal will play Cavan in the Ulster SFC on May 15 next year and a possible conflict of interests between the county team and the clubs has been described as a ticking time-bomb.

The Donegal County Board has so far stayed relatively silent on this major issue as the county Convention beckons on December 8.

However, Kavanagh believes there could be fireworks, which would be avoided if Croke Park took the initiative on the matter.

“It is going to be very interesting and the fact that they have put it in the hands of each county board is going to be a very contentious issue,” he said.

“By nature, county managers exercise quite a lot of control over these matters and over their players.

“If they release players for League games at the weekends in April it will be a success but if they don’t and they hold on to them and not allow them to play with their clubs, we are going to have a big problem.

“There is no point in having April free unless players are allowed to play – it is as simple as that.”

Some prominent figures within Donegal have suggested that county manager Declan Bonner should have access to the players from Monday to Thursday, with the clubs having them for the weekend.

And Kavanagh believes that compromise could work for all concerned.

“It could be possible and it probably was a model that was there in years gone by,” he said.

“But anyone who was carrying any sort of a knock, the manager would always say that under no circumstances are you going to be playing for your club.

“So that is what Declan is probably going to be saying to his players as well.

“If you wanted to do it right you probably needed a directive from Croke Park.

“But giving the autonomy now back to the county boards is a recipe for disaster.”

Meanwhile, the Letterkenny man said the pain of numerous defeats to highly impressive Tyrone and Armagh teams over the years helped drive the older players in the Donegal set-up to All-Ireland glory in 2012.

“We experienced a lot of hard defeats in Ulster finals against Armagh and Tyrone and they stuck long in the memory and that made us that bit more determined,” said Kavanagh.

“We were not going to let it slip, particularly that older group of players who had tasted bitter defeat.

“We were determined to squeeze the last drop out and we really pushed ourselves to the limit.”