There was plenty of drama in the GAA on Tuesday with movement on the managerial front in three counties, but we bet the drama was nothing like what happened in Laois last week.
Back when he was getting enough sustenance off the golf course that he could play with a happy-go-lucky attitude on it, often spoke of Moving Day. It was typically the third round of a Major championship, when Tiger would stalk the lily-livered leaders, intimidate them into hitting wedge shots into water from 60 yards and move clear at the top of the leaderboard en route to the latest in a stack of titles.
The GAA had its own kind of Moving Day on Tuesday. County Boards all around the country settled down to business, as if spurred into life by events at Croke Park at the weekend when Kilkenny and Tipperary once more underlined their status as hurling’s top dogs par excellence.
Facing up to facts and the need for the longest winter of the hardest slogging in the mud-slicks of Walsh Park/Rathkeale/Mallow, it was all change in Waterford, Limerick and Cork.
Davy Fitz bid farewell to Waterford after four good years and Donal O’Grady stepped down in Limerick after just one ship-steadying year in charge.
There was news of an appointment, too, with JBM back in situ in Cork after the necessary evil that was Denis Walsh’s unsentimental two-year stint.
And there were also rumours emanating from Galway that John McIntyre’s topsy-turvy spell over the Tribesmen could be about to end. But Galway decided to keep us all on tenterhooks with that one. Well, maybe not us all.
But some people were probably in tenterhooks. Most of them in the McIntyre household in Galway.
Laois barny
There must’ve been an almighty shemozzle in Laois when Ballylinan and The Heath met in a club championship scrap last Thursday.
Pauric Walsh, the Ballylinan goalkeeper, has received a two-year suspension, one selector from each side was banned for a year apiece and three other players were banned for six months after an incident that was clearly a good deal more than handbags.
Looking at the list of punishments, we almost feel embarrassed for Heath sub Alan Bell, who was served with a four-week ban, presumably for picking his nose or something.
Incidentally, the two sides go fist-to-fist head-to-head once again this evening in a rearranged encounter, so by the time you read this there could have been more skin and hair flying in the midlands.
(PS If there’s any YouTube footage of last week’s drama out there, make sure to let us know…)
