JOE BROLLY HAD another pop at Rob Hennelly in his Sunday Independent column yesterday.
Eight days after Mayo’s All-Ireland final loss to Dublin, Brolly took Hennelly to task over the statement he released on Instagram in the wake of the defeat.
“Hennelly seems a good lad, but was no sooner out of the shower than he was embracing his experience, as though it were some noble tragedy,” Brolly wrote.
“The sort of guff you might expect to hear on daytime TV from one of the guests who has just been chatting about his love of Egyptian cotton pyjamas as he tastes the celebrity chef’s black pudding and macaroon sandwich.
It was like a celebrity break-up, save for the fact he didn’t say he was consciously uncoupling from Mayo. Rob could incorporate this experience into his motivational talks for the GPA and the Web Summit. His strap-line on his Twitter account reads: ‘Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.’
“I said before the final there were some celebrity losers in this Mayo group. I meant by that that some of them are not serious footballers, fully absorbed in the battle. While that remains the case, the warriors on the team will carry them to finals, but will continue to be beaten by the handicap on the biggest day.”
He concluded: “When a ‘keeper’s meltdown is turned into a heart-warming PR exercise, it is not hard to see why Mayo didn’t win the All-Ireland.”
To drag in Hennelly’s work at the Web Summit and with the GPA seems unnecessary on Brolly’s part. Criticising a player for his performance is fair game, but there’s little need for a pundit to go beyond that and make it personal.
Brolly seems to have an issue with the fact that Hennelly is more of a public figure than the other goalkeepers he mentioned in his piece, but the 26-year-old is managing director of his own digital media company, Love Media, so a public profile comes with the territory.
There was a mixed reaction online:
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What do you think? Did Brolly go over the top with his criticism of Hennelly? Let us know in the comments section below.
