O'Neill has sympathy for Foster, but says the chain of events was a coincidence. "Any conspiracy that I spoke to Neale Fenn and tried to dream up: 'How about retiring Neale? That's a way of getting out of it'.
"I'm not clever enough to do that. I wish I had thought of it, to be honest," he said.
"Neale saw the attraction of Rovers, with the convenience for his family life, us training in the evenings.
"I think all those things were factors in him saying he'd play the rest of the season. I don't think he's done it with any malice or deviousness."
Meanwhile, O'Neill has also hit back at Galway manager Sean Connor, who complained that the Rovers boss hadn't contacted him in relation to a bid for young striker Karl Sheppard.
"It was Nick Leeson that contacted me personally to offer me the player, and another player at Galway," said O'Neill.
"If Sean Connor has a problem with that he should go and speak with his CEO, because, at the end of the day, the conversation me and Nick Leeson had was initiated by Nick Leeson.
"We weren't able to agree a deal for Karl and, with that in mind, the option of signing Neale became available to us. We've done our business in a professional manner."
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