Letters to the Editor: Club players deserve much better treatment

Tue, 07 Nov, 2023 - 02:00

I read with interest, and a certain amount of incredulity, Liam Sheedy’s article on the trouble hurling is in.

Liam made some very interesting points but where has he been with 12 months or more? He borrowed the analogy used by Donal Óg Cusack about ‘the game being starved of oxygen’. It wasn’t today, yesterday or last month that the Cloyne man made a passionate plea to save hurling. Four times in the last year on this very letters page I have outlined my personal fears for the future of our national game.

My incredulity stems from the fact that while Liam cites the disgraceful plight of thousands of club hurlers whose season was over in less than 14 days and just two games he still refuses to come straight out and state the glaringly obvious — the split season will kill off club hurling.

Come on Liam, and say it straight out. The advocates of the split system were absolutely correct when they said this system would give certainty of fixtures to club players, spot on there.

And what’s furthermore we now have the awful, scandalous certainty that as long as this split regime lasts club players will have no meaningful club hurling games in May, June or July. Now that’s what I term real certainty.

Liam says the county managers do not have too much power. Utter rubbish, Liam, and you know it only too well.

He mentions 2010 when Tipperary won the All-Ireland and his players played in Tipperary divisional finals just two weeks prior to the All-Ireland final. Big difference back then Liam was county and club fixture were allowed to run in tandem. Not anymore.

I am blue, gold, white and red in the face from promoting the idea of a dual season with club and inter-county running from early May until September, with certain weekends set aside for club fixtures only, with dates pre-set to give the certainty that club players yearn for.

Unfortunately I know once intercounty resumes in December county managers will want complete ‘ownership’ of their players until their intercounty campaign ends.

Liam says: “So forget club v county, and them versus us.” Oh Liam, wish that were so.

Remember Liam, all intercounty players are club players, while around 3% of club players ever get to wear a county jersey.

At present the club players are very much second-hand citizens. Imagine the reaction of John Kiely or Dessie Farrell if they were told their county team could be out of the All-Ireland race after two games in as many weeks?

That’s the club players.

John Arnold, Bartlemy, Co Cork

New Marshall Plan needed for Gaza

Ireland has a unique place at the UN Council presently, to not just support motions calling for a ceasfire in Palestine, but to
initiate its own motion, calling on all right- thinking states and people of the world to support a Marshall Plan in aid of the Palestinian people. But Ireland must go further in a bold move to thwart the carnage being inflicted daily
and hourly on the Palestinian people, and commence that Marshall Plan itself by making a first-aid flight to Palestine, even if to only drop a single bottle of water and a single packet of smarties to the children of Palestine. I call on the Taoiseach to do this now in our name in a determined effort to force a ceasfire over Gaza and mercy and justice for the Palestinian people, women, men, and most especially innocent children, too long forgotten in what is a black spot on the collective conscience of the human race.

Kevin T Finn, Mitchelstown, Co Cork

Big Fellow cut down to size

For someone who was called ‘The Big Fellow’, the new Michael Collins sculpture in Cork appears to show he was a bit short in the legs.

Robert Sullivan, Bantry, Co Cork

Academic boycott

Academic freedom is one of the defining characteristics of a university. Scholars must be free to research, teach, speak, and publish without interference, and universities should encourage diversity of opinion on social, cultural and political topics.

Every individual should be free to boycott whatever they wish on a personal level, but calls for an institutional academic boycott of Israeli universities are a gross insult to the concept of academic freedom, and must be resisted as a matter of principle.

Interestingly, there have been no calls for an academic boycott of Russian universities in response to the invasion of Ukraine, or of Chinese universities in response to human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

Teresa Trainor, Dublin 16

Cashing out would be the wrong call

Niamh Hennessy in her article entitled ‘Cash was king, but is its reign ending?’ (Irish Examiner, November 2) misses three main reasons why cash should be retained.

Firstly, if digital devices are allowed to become the sole means of financial exchange, a monopoly would be created where control of every transaction would be the sole preserve of the banks. This would be a denial of choice and an invasion of privacy for buyer and seller.

Secondly, because the banks charge both the seller and the buyer for each purchase, much needed money is constantly drained from the community in favour of the bank. This already amounts to a substantial annual sum.

Thirdly, the presence of cash is a valuable safeguard and insurance against cyber failure.

Choice is key to a healthy economy and a free society. If digital becomes king, let cash be queen.

Rosie Cargin, The Grove, Kinsale

Many Israelis were also refugees

Anyone who thinks that the Hamas terror attacks of October 7 were a result of the Israeli presence in the West Bank needs to be bear in mind that hundreds of Israelis were killed in cross-border fedayeen raids from Egypt and Jordan in the 1950s and early 1960s.

This was long before Israel entered the West Bank, after having been attacked from there in the 1967 war.

Many of the residents of the southern Israeli kibbutzim subjected to Hamas’s onslaught are Mizrachim — Jewish refugees from Arab and Islamic countries who fled persecution and violence to a safe haven in Israel. Now, they and/or their descendants have had to flee anti-Jewish atrocities once again.

The destruction and expulsion of these ancient Jewish communities in Arab countries with histories going back over 2,000 years is the greatest of the untold stories of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And their claim to be refugees is as great as that of the Gazans who attacked them on October 7.

Ciarán Ó Raghallaigh, Cavan, Co Cavan

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