FORMER MAYO STAR Conor Mortimer believes that the player-generated attempt to remove the county’s joint senior football team managers Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly has been coming for some time.
But the Parnell’s clubman is reluctant to apportion blame to the pair for Mayo’s failure to win the All-Ireland title.
Instead, Mortimer believes that clubs in the county have questions to answer after appointing the duo in the first place — and he insisted that poor defending and a lack of scoring power cost Mayo on the field against Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final replay.
Mortimer said: “It’s hard to lay blame on their shoulders – they were hired and the clubs voted them in, as well as the chairman.
“Why wait a year? Why now as opposed to the start of the year?
“I knew this was boiling up for quite a while but I don’t think it’s down to anything specifically performance related.
“There’s a lot of other stuff that goes on and you couldn’t say in the Dublin game that it was the line that lost it.
“To use a soccer example, if you’re pushing for something for so long and it doesn’t happen and you invest so much money and don’t win anything, you won’t have the same resources as the year before.
“Ed Coughlan (strength and conditioning coach) left for the Dublin hurlers but the problem with a lot of the boys is that they were four years with another manager (James Horan) and change isn’t easy.
“If this move is because of tactical issues, you could go back to the four years when James Horan was there and two All-Irelands were lost for tactical reasons, so what’s the difference?
“Mayo won their first few games easily this year, beat Donegal and should have beaten Dublin but for mistakes on the field.”
Mortimer insists that the Mayo players must shoulder a huge portion of responsibility for not getting over the line, admitting that he underperformed in the 2004 and 2006 All-Ireland finals against Kerry and that was not down to management.
He added: “People will say that we didn’t defend well enough (against Dublin) but we had defenders that didn’t perform to the best of their ability.
“Certain players didn’t step up to the mark when it mattered — that’s nothing to do with a manager.
“I did it myself in two finals and you don’t blame the manager. We didn’t play, it’s that simple.”
But Mortimer accepted that the root of the problem stems back to the controversial appointment process that saw Holmes and Connelly, brother of county board chairman Mike, as joint-bosses.
He said: “The process wasn’t followed and that’s a huge issue.
“But you can’t blame Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly.
“When a manager is appointed, clubs have to pass it, which they did, regardless of whose family member is on the county board.
“There was allegedly an interview process but there was a meeting later when the clubs could have objected. They had the chance to speak but didn’t, they voted them in.
“Now the players are looking for a new manager but who’s out there?
“I know for a fact that people are laughing at this situation. Here are Mayo again, airing their dirty linen in public. It’s always bloody Mayo.
“We had this with John O’Mahony, when the county board got ride of Mickey Moran and John Morrison to bring him in because O’Mahony had won a couple of All-Irelands.
“Success doesn’t automatically happen. We didn’t have enough scoring forwards to win the (Dublin) game and a manager can’t change that. He can’t make forwards appear. They were unfortunate with Evan Regan getting injured earlier in the year and they shot themselves in the foot not giving Alan Dillon a run but it’s just a big mess. It’s going to drag on.
“Will the lads (Holmes and Connelly) go? I don’t know. I presume the clubs will have to say out ye go.”
