On the topic of off the ball, i was listening to it last week when the rovers match was on and the presenter called Thompson Ndo
I listen to their pieces with John Giles, sometimes with some of the foreign correspondants (who are more than just colonial half wits) and even last week they completely embarassed themselves over Paris St. Germain (saying they had no fans and no hope), only for the French journo to completely rip them a new one! It was almost a pleasure to hear, though they will continue so long as the meeja dictates this is all we're fit for. Joe Duffy and OTB. Good god!
What did people make of the coverage of this on MNS last night? It's here from 15 minutes if you missed it: http://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/mns/
I thought Sadlier (holy crap, someone on MNS who knew what they were talking about!) wiped the floor with McGuinness to be honest.
The most striking thing was that the PFAI were unable to deny that the strike would have been illegal. An extraordinary situation for a representative body to place itself in. Also, he seemed to think it was a big deal that the players played without an appearance fee- like they ever deserved one! That they asked for €20k to play the game was outrageous.
Pats may not have handled this well, but I can see why they wouldn't want to entertain such crazy demands.
#NeverStopNotGivingUp
I dunno, I thought McGuinnes won the argument, as clearly, if you have to shout and point the finger, you're winning (sarc). JesusH, he came across very poor, Sadlier absolutely made him look like a right idiot
"Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins."
"Homer Simpson, smiling politely."
Mc Guinness was crap and Sadlier's well thought out points mopped the floor with him. To be fair, Mc Guinness has to represent his members and their actions no matter how flawed they may be. lets hope that away from the public glare he realises that such an occurance must not happen again.Originally Posted by Mr A
I'm not sure what else Pat's were supposed to do really.
Players - "Can we have lots of money?"
Pat's - "No; anyway, we're very busy trying at the moment to get ye all to Kazakhstan."
Players - "Right so; we'll just strike and not warn ye about it"
Maybe not down to SPA but should there not be an agreed procedure to deal with disputes of this nature ? Always going to be issues parties cannot agree should be some avenue to address them. If nothing else it avoids frutration that leads to people making poor decisions
Maybe, but sure who could have seen this coming? You can't make plans for every possible eventuality. What else should we plan for?
(Cue Mr A for the punchline...)
Actually most industries sectors that do not avail o fthe State dispute resolution machinery have in place an agreed Tribunal/arbitration system, agreed panel of arbitrator(s) and any issues unresolved locally (directly between parties) automatically referred to same. If parties agree in advance to binding arbitration then possibility of Industrial action does not arise. Given the increasing (although still small) number of occurances perhaps FAI should consider some similar model for LOI
But what if they ignore that? It's already been suggested that the players' strike would have been illegal had it gone ahead. It's already been noted that the Pat's officials - volunteers, like at most clubs, I assume - were engaged in getting the team to Kazakhstan at short notice. The players seem to have ignored all the rules; you can't legislate for that.
It is already legislated for - a court injunction can (and previously has been) sought to prevent illegal (as outlined in IR Act) industrial action. Most employers are slow to go down the legal route due to cost and the residue of ill feeling that results but if it were made clear to parties that non adherence to procedures would result in legal route I would see it as a serious deterrent. I always suspected the SPA players were bluffing to a certain extent and would not have gone ahead with strike action - strike threats are very regular occurance across industry but (fortunately) rarely result in strike action.
That's not the point though. Had the players gone through with their illegal strike, the club would have folded. That's not a typical case.
I agree the club could probably have called the players' bluff - I wouldn't have liked to do it, mind - but this was a slightly unusual case.
Stephen McGuinness cames across as illogical and unreasonable.
To dismiss the issues of demand for appearance money and the strike statement on the basis that neither actually came to pass is bizarre.
The damage done by threatening this strike (and further compounded by declaring a strike) was significant.
The only mild positive to come out of this is that McGuinness and the PFAI are damaged goods.
If action was declared illegal (by court) PFAI could have been liable for all losses incurred. I would suggest that might have changed/tempered the PFAI view on Industrial action. Anyway, as I said legal route is not a good option (any more than brinkmanship we saw last week) and an agreed dispute resolution mechanism should be sought.
Thank god for the real leader of the pfai as soon as he got involved it was sorted
But Karpaty would have chased Pat's, and Pat's would have had to chase the PFAI. That would have ended with both bankrupt - wouldn't have saved Pat's at all.
I still think there is a dispute resolution mechanism, but the players just ignored it, and you can't legislate for that.
They'd have chased Pats receivers as if the game didn't go ahead on Thursday, we were in receivership on Friday. Absolutely no question at all about that.
To be fair, when some players realised this, their attitude changed.
54,321 sold - wws will never die - ***
---
New blog if anyone's interested - http://loihistory.wordpress.com/
LOI section on balls.ie - http://balls.ie/league-of-ireland/
I hate to ask this, and it's not acting the maggot, but are things so bad at Pats that it's literally day to day? Is the cloth being cut to just about cover the body?
Not according to Mr McGuinness last night
"Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins."
"Homer Simpson, smiling politely."
say a lot of things, and their agents on committee and twitter,
The leader said last night that if the club engaed with them in july there wouldnt have been a problem. One club i know went to the pfai first before the fai or anyone else to engage with them and tell them things were going to happen the way things were going. It was thrown back in their faces, the pfaI threw a wobbly, told everyone in power the club was finished, the pfai stormed the dressing room at a game cleansing out without realising it the locals of the team.
That club continues to place the ball on the centre circle come every friday and a championships on saturday no thanks to the pfai and its nuts all over €50
Posting Permissions
Quote
Bookmarks