LAST UPDATE | 12 May 2020
MAYO LADIES FOOTBALLERS will have to decide whether to commit fully to the Green and Red set-up or to Australian Football League Women’s [AFLW] going forward, according to manager Peter Leahy.
The Westerners boss told Midwest Radio’s Sunday Sports Show that it’s “what’s best for Mayo,” and “there is a time that you should put your county first.”
This news comes as “extremely disappointing,” “disgusting” and “quite an underhand tactic” to AFLW agent and CrossCoders co-founder Jason Hill, who spoke to The42 from Australia this morning.
Four of the county’s current ladies football stars lined out Down Under last season, missing the majority of Mayo’s Division 1 league campaign before the Covid-19 crisis brought the sport across the globe to a halt.
Sarah Rowe enjoyed a successful season at Collingwood, Aileen Gilroy starred for North Melbourne and sisters Niamh and Grace Kelly impressed through their debut season with the West Coast Eagles.
Currently, players can do both with the AFLW campaign running from pre-season in late October until the Grand final in April, before returning to home soil for the tail end of league and championship. But Leahy says they must pick one or the other for 2021.
We’ve made a decision that anyone who wants to go to Australia or whatever, we’d have to omit from the panel and carry on regardless because [it's] what’s best for Mayo,” the Westmeath native, who has been vocal on this with The42 in the past, noted.
“There’s no other sport that I know of that you can play both in the same season. The demands of inter-county football is so high. You can see that you can’t even be a dual player now, you can’t play football and hurling at inter-county level now, it’s just an impossibility.
“I believe if you really believe in Mayo and you really believe you can win an All-Ireland, then you battle it through together.
If we’re serious and if we really want to have a go at it, we really have to have players at home. There’s a reason why none of the Cork players go to Australia, because every time they put on a Cork jersey, they want to win everything and genuinely believe they can win everything.
“Mayo people need to start believing in that too because we have a genuine team at the top level.”
The Kelly sisters are among 12 Irish players who played in the Australian league after coming through the CrossCoders programme. And Leahy’s recent announcement “doesn’t sit right” with Hill and CrossCoders.
“My initial reaction to hearing what he said was an extreme disappointment,” he told The42. “I instantly went to if I was in the girls’ shoes — and this is a personal opinion, this is not one we’ve had great discussion with the girls on.
“If that was a consideration going through Peter’s head, I would have liked that conversation to be had in private and I’m sure the girls would have appreciated that too. I don’t think this needs to have been played out in the media, but equally, now that it is out there I feel, from a CrossCoders perspective and also a perspective of the clubs in Australia, we need to put on record our support for these girls during this time.
“They shouldn’t have to make this decision, no one is forcing them to make a decision apart from the manager of Mayo in this instance.
“Obviously there are plenty of other girls who are still dual -sport athletes, for both their county and in Orla’s [O'Dwyer, Tipperary] case, two sports in her county and then in the AFLW. While the leagues are running at certain times in the year, obviously everyone’s enjoying the fact that they could play both.”
In a previous interview Westmeath native Leahy branded AFLW a “terrible game” and noted that one of his star players “did not come back a better footballer.” Hill firmly rejects that statement — among many others.
I think it’s safe to say that no one’s performance in Gaelic football sundered because of the fact that they played AFL, I’d say that they became more important players. To say, in his previous statement, that players came back as worse players and now to take it one step further, it’s extremely disappointing. If we go into the way this has been done, to question the commitment of these girls and what they’ve put into Mayo, and question their commitment going forward is rather… for loss of a better word, I’d say disgusting.
“They’ve put 23, 24, 25 years into living this dream of playing football for their county, they’ve done everything that’s ever been asked of them. And now that they’ve developed themselves — with the help of their counties and clubs — into elite athletes who are contributing not just on the field for Mayo, but in various other ways in the sport in Ireland and for sportswomen all over Ireland.
“To be then questioned about your commitment and your loyalty to that sport, when you’ve done everything, jumped over every hurdle and worked your hardest when no one else is watching to get to that level, it just really doesn’t ring and sit right with me or the CrossCoders as an organisation, to limit opportunities for these girls when there’s no real reason for them to be limited.
“Mayo will become a worse footballing county for the loss of these players.”
Hill also took issue with the timing of Leahy’s announcement.
“To make that decision now when, in reality, we don’t know when Gaelic football is coming back, we don’t know when social distancing will not be a thing in society anymore, especially in Europe where there is a lot more harrowing scenes than what we’re seeing in Australia right now.
“It’s beggars belief as to why this messaging would have to come out now, and not be a conversation once we know when the championship will be played and when county football will be back.
“In Australia, it doesn’t seem like there’ll be a removal of social distancing until there’s a vaccine and from all estimates, it seems like it’s going to be 2021 before that happen, which would be well into what is expected to be the AFLW season. We speak with the AFL and AFL clubs around the future of the women’s game and the expectation is we will carry on in the same guise, there might be some slight changes but we don’t expect wholesale changes.”
“To summarise,” he added, “it’s extremely disappointing that this has come out in the media. We would have preferred Peter to come and deal directly with these players, even with us and the clubs in Australia.
We’ve always had a complete open door policy to county football, boards and managers; we want to work with them. To have to hear this, in hand through the media, is just really disappointing and I think it should have been dealt with in private.
Back to Leahy’s Mayo charges. While Rowe, Gilroy and the Kelly sisters were in Australia, they won three of their five league games and performed well after a turbulent few years off the field.
Now, Leahy wants his side — who reached the All-Ireland final in 2017 — to push on, and he feels this decision is best, although tough on players affected.
“It’s the hardest decision ever,” he added on Midwest, “because we have super girls who are kingpins to the decisions and what we’re doing, and for me and management to say, ‘If you go to Australia, you won’t be part of the panel,’ it’s absolutely the worst thing to have to say.
“But we have to move forward for what’s best for Mayo, the girls who are training from November right through to March as much as possible and then people come back from playing a professional sport — out of no fault of theirs or anyone else’s, I mean they got the opportunity and they should take it. I always believe that you should take the opportunities put in front of you but there is a time that you should put your county first.
“We’ve come to a stage where we’re not a county that is just scrapping to survive, we should be at the top notch. And to be ordered to do that, you have to have everybody together. So we made the decision on that. We hope it won’t affect the girls who are making decisions, the girls have to make their own decisions, we are not in charge of anyone, all we’re in charge of is Mayo, and what’s best for Mayo.”
Leahy continued: “We have a league — and possibly even a 2020 championship to be played in January, February, March, we don’t know yet. We have a season ahead of us and we have to think about what’s best for Gaelic football.
I’m sure the clubs and everyone else who invested all their time and effort into these people to play for their county want to see them playing for their county, they don’t want to see them playing on foreign soil in a different code. It’s a great opportunity and if it was off-season, brilliant, but we have a season and we have to think about that.
“It’s a hard decision for girls and I wouldn’t give out to any girl for making a decision — this is amateur sport — but we have to make decisions for Mayo, and really what’s best for Mayo is that we have all the best players playing the game they love and were reared playing, with a lot of money and time invested in that game.”
Hill acknowledges that while it shouldn’t be like this, individual players do have to make their own decision. He’s aware that this may happen in other counties, and shares advice with any who may face this going forward.
“At the end of the day, the player has got to make the decision that they feel comfortable with,” he concludes. “If that’s them deciding that Australian Rules football and the AFLW is the place they want to be, then great.
“Equally, if they decide that Gaelic football means the world to them and they want to stay and play Gaelic, and a coach puts them in this position, I mean it’s disappointing from a coach’s perspective that they’d ever put someone in that position.
But we’re not here to support them just when they’re in Australia, and all the clubs that I’ve spoken to that have Irish footballers and other overseas players, they support the athlete 24/7, 365 days of the year. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Ireland, America, Australia; they’re there to support the individual, their families and what they want out of their future.
“If that future is in Ireland, then they’ll do the best for them and I have no doubt about it. That’s equally the same as what the CrossCoders will do. We don’t just wash our hands of people because they decide that they want to continue their sport in Ireland, we’ll help them no matter what they want to do in their future careers.
“That’s maybe where we very much differ at the moment: Peter seems to have his Mayo hat on and his Mayo hat only, and we want to support our athletes through whatever they want to achieve in their careers.”
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