Offaly manager explains why he was “dressed like a gangster”

Conan Doherty

Of all the questions Colm Parkinson has had to ask on The GAA Hour, this was as strange as they come.

Stephen Wallace and the drama surrounding his unceremonious sacking as Offaly senior football manager has garnered plenty of press and he hasn’t been shy in telling the media just what happened.

Despite receiving the backing of the players, the Offaly county board opted to get rid of Wallace in the middle of the championship and, in an honest interview on The GAA Hour, he went through the entirety of the drama.

One element, of course, was the dress code.

Colm Parkinson: I’m just trying to see it from the Offaly county board’s point of view. So you’re suspended and it’s obviously difficult being at training and whatever and they’re working with you on that. Then the loss to Wicklow so maybe in their heads then they’re thinking, ‘right, him not being at training is affecting it’. And then maybe it was an error of judgement on your part – the pictures of you up in the stand with the hat and the hoodie, you looked like a gangster up there. I’m sure if you were to do that again, you wouldn’t have done it. All these different things are building up, then Brian Gavin really stuck the boot into you and it culminated with you getting that phone call.

Stephen Wallace: Regarding what I was wearing that day, I had about six layers of clothes on my in O’Moore Park because I was dying with a flu all week, I was absolutely choked. I had layer after layer after layer and, as you know, that concrete stand in O’Moore Park doesn’t get a lot of sun. I was coughing and spluttering and the last piece of attire I put on was a wooly hat and a hoodie because I was choked with a flu. I’m just telling people why I was dressed like that but is there a dress code now for a manager? I was sick, I wrapped up warm and that’s a problem now? Come on, Colm, this is getting ridiculous.

Colm Parkinson: I’m trying to give a side of it that might be someone else’s argument, that that’s the image of Offaly football with you up in the stand kind of looking like someone out of Love/Hate.

Stephen Wallace: Well you might propose, in your role as a big influencer of the GAA, that there might be a managerial dress code.

Listen to the debate from 20:50.