Kilkenny chairman Ned Quinn took to the airwaves this morning to apologise to the county’s minor footballers after they were mauled by their Wexford counterparts in their Leinster championship encounter at Nowlan Park on Sunday.
Wexford inflicted a 17-20 to 0-01 defeat on a county where hurling has long enjoyed a stranglehold.
Speaking on KLCR FM, Quinn told listeners: “As chairman of the county board, I have overall responsibility for all of our county teams, so I accept my responsibilities as regards our minor football team as I do with any other team."
"The second thing I would like to say, with the aid of hindsight, is to express very much regret that the young players who represented our county and were more than willing to represent their county last Saturday suffered the defeat that they did and I will apologise to them for what happened to them during the game on Saturday."
While the defeat was entirely predictable, the manner of the loss will now be discussed at a county board meeting on Tuesday night.
Quinn also insisted that such a heavy defeat couldn’t have been anticipated, saying: "In the lead up to the game, by our own standards, preparations had gone well. Nobody envisaged what was about to happen, but it did happen on the day and I would apologise to everybody for that.
"I will say in the GAA in Kilkenny that over the years we’ve got a lot of things right. We have never been able to get football to where we’d like to get it to and we will have to deal with this issue starting tomorrow night when we will have an executive meeting of the management committee of the county board."
Quinn was not in favour of any proposals to disband the Cats’ inter-county football set-up, adding: “That’s a viewpoint in Kilkenny, that we should discontinue playing football.
“The other viewpoint is that we should continue to try and improve the situation.
“I’m in the latter camp. It’s going to be a long and difficult road, but I think we should go that road and make the best efforts possible. We’re going to have knockbacks along the way but I would be opposed to discontinuing football altogether.”
