Date Published: 15-Jun-2011

FRANK FARRAGHER

A BOARDROOM decision to turf Connemara club Micheál Breathnach out of the Galway senior football championship following their first round victory over Mountbellew-Moylough last month, now looks set to ‘go the distance’ in terms of appeals and possible legal action.There were shock waves in Galway football circles last week when Mountbellew-Moylough lodged an objection to the ‘on-field’ 1-11 to 0-12 defeat that they suffered to Micheál Breathnach on Sunday, May 29 last, in Pearse Stadium.

Mountbellew-Moylough lodged their objection to the Competitions Controls Committee (CCC) of the Galway County Board on the basis that a Micheál Breathnach player, who came on as a sub in that game – Tommy Conneely – wasn’t a legal player for the club.

However the Micheál Breathnach club are understood to be furious at the implication that this player wasn’t legal to play with them as he lined out with the Inverin outfit for the last five years from under-14 level up. His brothers and sister have also played with the Ml. Breathnach club.

Mountbellew though have contended that because the Conneelys come from the Camus area of South Connemara – under the geographical wing of the Na Piarsaigh club in Rosmuc – they would not be entitled to play with Micheál Breathnach at adult level without a specific ‘permission to play’ clearance.

Back the years, the Conneely family who had returned from England to live in the Camus area, had made a special application to the Galway County Board for ‘permission to play’ clearance with the Ml. Breathnach club – after considering in detail the circumstances of this application, the Board decided to grant those requests, and this procedure has continued since then. However the permission to play procedure for the Conneelys did not come with the ‘blessing’ of the Na Piarsaigh club, the Connacht Tribune has learned.

The ‘technical problem’ that Ml. Breathnach and Tommy Conneely ran into this year was that the permission to play form signed by the player was made in relation to the under-21 grade specifically and did not state senior. If the application had either left out completely, specific mention of the under-21 grade, or alternatively had included the senior and adult grades, it is unlikely that the Mountbellew appeal would have succeded, the Tribune understands.

Because Na Piarsaigh field an adult junior A in the football league and championship, Mountbellew-Moylough successfully contended at last Wednesday night’s CCC meeting in Oranmore that this rendered Tommy Conneely to be an illegal player with Ml. Breathnach.

The CCC, made up of the County Board Chairman and Secretary – Gerry Larkin and Michael Monaghan – as well as the three main officers of the Football and Hurling Boards, heard submissions at the Maldron Hotel on the Wednesday night of June 8, from officers of both clubs. They decided to uphold the appeal lodged by the Mountbellew-Moylough club based on the ‘flaw’ in the permission to play application.

However within three days of that decision being made, the Ml. Breathnach club had lodged what is understood to be a very detailed and comprehensive appeal of that decision which is scheduled to be heard by the Hearings Committee of the Connacht Council at Ballyhaunis next Monday night.

Tom Cunningham, the secretary of the Mountbellew-Moylough club, told the Connacht Tribune that their club’s objection wasn’t ‘just based on a technicality’, but on the more principled issue of a club playing an illegal player. He said that it now seemed that the matter would be settled at the Hearings Committee of the Connacht Council next Monday night.

Coincidentally, Tom Cunningham is also secretary of that Hearings Committee, but he stressed that he would naturally be standing aside in relation to any adjudication on this matter.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.