NEWLY crowned Opel/GPA Hurler of the Year TJ Reid has described the Galway management crisis as "a very messy situation" and suggested it could put pressure on the Tribe players to perform in 2016.
Galway, defeated by Reid's Kilkenny in September's All-Ireland final, are without a manager just six weeks out from the new year after dramatically ousting Anthony Cunningham. A strong vote of no confidence from the majority of players last weekend, in advance of a county board meeting scheduled to deal with the situation, prompted Cunningham to resign.
Cunningham was critical of the show of player power in a strongly worded resignation statement and Reid said he was grateful to have avoided such bust-ups during his own glittering Kilkenny career: "It's a very messy situation," he said.
"You could be putting a lot of pressure on yourself and the players, doing that."
The 28-year-old half-forward added: "To be honest, I don't know what's going on up there. Obviously, the players don't have the respect for Anthony Cunningham. He's after driving Galway very close to two All-Irelands. But he's after losing the respect of the players, it's unfortunate to see it."
Reid said he had no inkling there was disharmony in the Galway camp, particularly when they led the Cats by three points at half-time in the All-Ireland final, though insisted nobody outside the camp could have known anyhow.
"Behind closed doors, you don't know what's going on," said Reid.
"They could have been fighting all year. Who knows? Certainly we don't."
Reid was speaking at the launch of the 2015 Opel GAA-GPA Allstars jersey to raise funds for the Childhood Cancer Foundation. He said he was very surprised to learn of the four recent high profile retirements from Tipperary's set-up, with Lar Corbett the latest to call it quits. Kilkenny suffered a similar haemorrhaging of talent last year, with six iconic players departing, though so far, nobody has left Kilkenny ahead of the 2016 season.
"Very surprised to be honest with those retirements because, looking on, you would be thinking that there was a few more years in those guys," said Reid, who believes Jackie Tyrrell, Eoin Larkin and Mick Fennelly will all prolong their careers.
Interestingly, Reid came out strongly in support of Kilkenny football when asked if the decision to stage Dublin's Leinster Football Championship opener at Nowlan Park next June might help to promote the ailing game locally.
"Myself, I hate Kilkenny to be bad mouthed regarding football," said Reid.
"There are good players in Kilkenny, good footballers, for sure. Promoting it and getting players on board, that is the problem. There's plenty of good footballers in Kilkenny, but they just won't put that foot forward because they could possibly be a bit embarrassed about it.
"No, I hate people talking down Kilkenny. Myself, I have two junior football medals. I love playing football, but hurling kind of takes over and that's the key thing in Kilkenny, hurling does take over a small bit."
Reid is currently preparing for Saturday's Hurling/Shinty international test with Scotland at Croke Park. Ireland lost the first game heavily in Scotland and are keen to restore pride, perhaps partly explaining Reid's introduction to the panel.
"We are heading up on Friday, we'll have a training session Friday night and then the match on Saturday," said Reid.
"It's a fairly tough game, you'd want to be protecting yourself at all times. It's different, you can't catch the ball, so it is going to be strange for myself because, if the ball is coming to me, I always like to catch the ball instead of playing it with my hurl.
"So it is a different challenge and it's probably going to take 10 or 15 minutes to get into the swing of things."
