A source from Clarinbridge has confirmed that their controversial players’ charter was actually thought up by the players themselves.
The club’s management and executive have been the subject of much derision over the past week, on the back of an extensive list of commitments and demands as part of their senior hurling panel.
Entitled ‘requirements needed from players before we sign up for 2024,’ the list stated that ‘anyone planning trips to Australia/America/Canada for the summer can’t be part of the senior panel for 2024.
It also ruled out holidays during championship, drinking during championship (June – Oct) and even placed a curfew of sorts on other sports such as soccer, golf, rugby and athletics.
But in a piece with Dermot Crowe on this morning’s Sunday Independent, a source from Clarinbridge confirmed that the list was an initiative inspired by the players during an end-of-season-meeting.
Having won numerous underage titles in Galway over the last few years, Clarinbridge have failed to make the breakthrough at senior level in recent times, losing the final in 2021, the semi-final in 2022 and then the quarter final this year, under a management team led by former player David Forde and Limerick legend Niall Moran.
This is seen as a golden generation from the club, who have been the main provider for Galway’s successful minor teams in recent years. The source told the Sunday Independent that, on the back of this season’s defeat, it was actually the team’s leadership group who drove the above charter.
“It was as a result of a discussion between the players and management,” the source told the Sunday Independent. “The players came back to the management and said this is the feedback from the year.
“The feeing among lads was that if they really want to have a crack at winning a county championship, they needed to make more sacrifices. If you want to go for a J1, if you want to go to Australia for a year, that’s fine.
“Best of luck to you, you are always Clarinbridge. You can train with us but we can’t have you back a week before the championship and expect to go straight into the senior team.
“That was the context, that if we want to have a proper crack at the championship we have to do the work.”
“We weren’t banning golf,” the source explained.
“It was more about lads not missing training because they’ve played 18 holes of golf.
“You don’t play golf the same day as an important training session. You can’t train with the proper intensity.”
“And just doing things at the right time. We had a couple of lads who said ‘oh we’ve booked two weeks in Ayia Napa’ the week before a championship game. They’d been told to book holidays in June, don’t book them in August when we’re playing championship.
“So it’s just those common sense approaches. The club completely believes in a player-led system. This is what the players wanted.”
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