Olympics manager in bitter row with AAI

Chris Wall, the joint international secretary of the Athletics Association of Ireland, has described the comments made by Patsy McGonagle, the Irish athletics team manager in Sydney, as that "of someone trying to buy himself out of jail".

McGonagle spoke out on the problems he believes are crippling the administration of the sport in the country and how he feels they contributed to the poor performance overall of the Irish athletes at the Sydney Games. He said there was "not an athlete friendly situation" and that "we in Athletics Ireland need to get more professional."

But, Wall contended yesterday, this was nothing more than an attempt by McGonagle, who he said had been largely responsible for the team since 1996, to slip out from under the poor performances for which he was responsible.

"To say we are not planning for the future is not accurate," Wall continued. "I have already submitted a four-year plan for international competitions and I took the comments that McGonagle has been making as that of someone trying to buy himself out of jail after the athletes, in his view, didn't perform up to their expected standard."

McGonagle, who is also the press relations officer with the AAI, was ratified as team manager by the Olympic Council of Ireland earlier this year and claimed his job has been a rollercoaster recently.

"I should have been a tightrope walker," he said. "I was either going to fall on the Olympic Council side or the athletics side and I was going to be eaten alive either way. And there was no crowd cheering for me. In the last few weeks the sniping from Athletics Ireland has become a significant part of my life. I don't know the agenda, I just know it's there."

There is, according to Wall, no simple explanation for the poor performances of the Irish athletes is Sydney, which, with the obvious exception of Sonia O'Sullivan, have been the way below expectations despite thorough preparation.

"There are a lot of factors in this," said Wall. "We had laid down our own selection criteria last October for what we believed would be the best selection standards for Sydney. We wanted the qualifying standards to be achieved in the year of competition but the Olympic Council of Ireland were constantly changing their goalposts.

"From the point of view of the AAI, I believe our selection criteria would have resulted in less athletes performing below their best. I'm not saying they would have done any better, but I do believe there were athletes selected who would not have been in Sydney had our criteria been used. And there would have been athletes going who didn't get to go."

It appears, however, that there is considerable support from the athletes in Sydney for the way McGonagle has handled both the preparation of the athletes as his responsibilities as manager.

Breda Dennehy-Willis, for example, near tears after her disappointing 10,000-metre heat earlier in the week, immediately paid tribute to McGonagle and called for him to be made manager of the Irish team for the World Cross Country championships in Dublin next spring. Such loyalty to McGonagle is reported to spread through the Irish squad.

Eamonn Coghlan, the former world 5,000 metre champion and for the past two weeks one of RTE's athletics analysts, has called for a major clear-out at the top of the AAI, citing staleness and lack of vibrancy as the root problems of the organisation.

"They do work very hard as an organisation," he said. "And it's nothing to do with characters or personalities, but it's gone beyond the time now for change. That's not just my view but the view of the vast majority of people inside and outside Irish athletics."

Niall Bruton, who competed over 1,500 metres at the last Olympic Games, also called for change. "It goes back to the whole idea that the athletes should be the most important thing in the sport. That is certainly not the case right now."

It has also been made known this week that Slattery Public Relations, who have a considerable say in the promotion of rugby and Gaelic football in the country, had approached the AAI this summer with an interest in developing a relationship for the promotion of Irish athletics. But according to John Redmond, who heads the sporting side of the company, they "weren't afforded the opportunity to do so".

The company wanted to get involved with the Dublin International meeting, which was subsequently described as the "best kept secret" in Irish sport.

"I'm not talking about a £1 million Grand Prix," said Redmond, "but I believe that if we had been given the invitation to get involved then it could have been an opportunity for a good athletics promotion in the country."