Kevin McDonnell, Mayo Ladies’ County Board secretary, has admitted that the board did not know of the mental health issues cited by the members of the panel that left in July over ‘player welfare issues’.
Details emerged last night from a press conference held by the twelve players and two members of staff involved in the dispute that the experience “had a significant impact on their mental health."
Asked whether he was aware of this aspect of the dispute, McDonnell gave his view:
“No, that was new to us.
“What we had was a situation where players may have [had] an issue, and Peter [Leahy] would have raised things with us if he thought there was an issue. When we did raise those issues, there was nothing to be dealt with following on from speaking to those players.
“In terms of mental health issues – these things can affect people in different ways. It takes over a period of time. When you look at this happening from 6 July onwards, for us and the county board, to now – which is over two months later – some of these things take a long time to sink in.
“So we weren’t aware of any mental health issues, or that wasn’t raised specifically at that meeting.”
There are questions over the board’s awareness of what actually transpired at the press conference held by the players and staff last night. McDonnell admitted that he had not heard Sarah Tierney’s statement as to her experience last night. In addition, McDonnell has said that aspects of the meeting moved the situation on from the initial meetings held between the board, management and the players.
“There were certainly some of the points that were raised in the meeting last night that did not come out of the meeting when we met them first. And when we reached out […] to their club to meet the players, we took feedback from the players as to what they wanted to say. They asked us to keep that meeting confidential, which we respected as a county board.
"But when players started saying things like that, we felt we had to say something in terms of what we had picked up from speaking both to the management, to the players that left the panel and also the players that remained on the panel.
“There were a lot of players that were gobsmacked when the players left the panel because they were not aware of any player welfare issues. A lot of players were told of improvements that they had to make. I have spoken to one particular parent whose daughter was told that she needed to lose x amount of weight and you need to knock 40 seconds off your 5k time. Her attitude was ‘that’s what I have to do to make the panel’ and she did it."
McDonnell said that a new style of management will have knock-on effects to team morale.
“Peter was a new manager this year. When any new manager comes in, he’s going to put his own authority onto it, and for people that have been used to different management styles, it can take a little while to readjust to that.”
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