Mystery and rumour as Mayo GAA applies media ban
Mayo County Board has yet to explain the reason behind it's postponement of its annual convention which will now be held on Wednesday, December 18 instead of next Sunday. Picture: INPHO/Laszlo Geczo
A postponed Convention, media denied access to the monthly board meeting, players opting out of the senior football panel… at a time of year when all through the house, not a creature is supposed to stir, not even a mouse, trust Mayo GAA to be headlining instead of hibernating.
That problems exist both on and off-pitch is hardly breaking news but as to the precise nature of those problems in dressing-room and boardroom, the people who know the most are saying the least. And perhaps they’re right, for to borrow a political phrase given the week that’s been, ‘If you’re explaining, you’re losing.’
But unquestionably, when you postpone – without explanation – an annual general meeting (has it ever happened before in Mayo GAA history?), and do so just a couple of weeks after a national newspaper describes Mayo County Board as continuing to have a “live” issue with the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, speculation about the reason of the postponement is as inevitable as a Met Éireann weather warning. And it’s a speculation that could only but have escalated once Mayo County Board moved like it did last Wednesday when contacting the media to ask that they not attend that night’s Coiste Chondae meeting at MacHale Park, where you could be sure the cause of Convention’s unprecedented postponement would have been demanded by at least some of the delegates.
But as MCB’s good fortune would have it, it was one of those Met Éireann weather warnings – a yellow one for patches of fog and freezing fog – that gave them the opportunity to cancel last Wednesday’s meeting as well, and so everyone is still none the wiser about the reason behind pushing back the Mayo GAA Convention by 10 days. Instead of next Sunday, delegates are now asked to travel to the Great National Hotel in Ballina on the night of Wednesday, December 18.
“The Board are permitted to have meetings without the media. On this occasion we would ask that the media are not present,” read the communication from the Mayo GAA secretary last week. But the media had also been denied – by stealth – access to the previous Mayo County Board meeting on Monday, November 11, when unlike every other scheduled meeting this year, it was given no notification that the meeting was even taking place.
Two days prior, the had claimed Mayo was one of seven counties currently being audited by Revenue and that having last year made a legacy payment just short of €120,000 relating to a tax issue regarding payments of Cúl Camp coaches, Mayo County Board would be required to make “at least one more substantial payment to Revenue”.
My understanding, not being at the last board meeting, is that none of the Mayo GAA executive officers addressed that article, nor were asked questions about its contents. It is also my understanding that a handful of club delegates, like the media, were also not in receipt of an invitation to that particular county board meeting.
Of course, the media aren’t at Mayo County Board meetings to participate, only to report what is said, be that by officers or delegates. The media’s exclusion, then, could be viewed as an attempt to deny the Mayo GAA public any knowledge of whatever the board’s issues are, and also the answers to the questions that might be asked of them. Which begs another question. Why?
Another meeting is believed to have been scheduled for this Thursday, December 5 but as of the time of printing, neither an invitation to attend or a request not to had been received by the media.
