LAST UPDATE | 6 Nov 2022

OUTGOING CORK MINOR ladies football manager Joe Carroll is “at a loss” after he was informed by email that he would not be re-appointed for the 2023 season. 

The process to appoint Carroll’s successor was discussed at a meeting of the county board on Monday evening, but no appointment has been confirmed yet

All-Ireland winning manager Carroll had been in place since 2020 when he took the reins from John Cleary, and steered the team to back-to-back Munster crowns in 2021 and 2022 ahead of their All-Ireland success last August.

Prior to his appointment, the Macroom clubman had been involved in Cleary’s set-up in 2018 and again in 2019 as part of the All-Ireland winning backroom.

A few weeks after August’s All-Ireland final win over Galway, Carroll says he received a phone call from a Cork county board officer to say that the minor manager post was being re-advertised, and he subsequently applied.

“I was a bit surprised that the management weren’t just being asked to continue for another year,” he admits.

A five-person panel conducted his interview in October: Marian Crowley (county board elected member), Lisa Walsh (Cork development officer), Rhona Ni Bhuachalla (former Cork player), Shane Ronayne (Cork senior management representative), and Irene Hogan (coach education/development background).

“When they addressed me first, they didn’t even congratulate us on winning the All-Ireland. It was as if it was totally insignificant, which I felt a small bit upset about really.”

On Friday 28 October, he received a message from a Cork county board officer advising him that the executive were due to meet and would inform him of their decision afterwards. That evening, he was sent a brief email from Cork LGFA county secretary Kieran Keane stating that he was unsuccessful.

“There was no thanks for what we had done over the past 12 months, which I thought would be par for the course really, if you were doing the thing professionally.”

Carroll points to the lack of continuity in the planning.

“This job is for 12 months, so basically it could be back to the same situation again next year, where a candidate at U14, U16 or minor win the All-Ireland, they are not offered the job, there’s another round of interviews, and you would have the same thing happening over and over and over again.

“There seems to be no continuity, there seems to be no plan by them as to what exactly they’re doing. Is there reasoning behind all this? We don’t have the answers to that.”

Carroll is keen to stress that he has no bitterness or complaints about not being reinstated, but wishes to highlight this for the greater good of Cork ladies football.

“Even though we’ve had a lot of successful minor teams, for some strange reason, they’re not transitioning into senior teams and that probably needs to be looked at – but come and discuss it.

“And that’s what I would be worried about as a Cork LGFA person who’s had a huge involvement in ladies football going back many, many, many years at schools level, club level, and inter-county since 2018 — where are we going from here? Are we going to have the same situation persisting year on year on year? Girls will get disillusioned, management will get disillusioned, and we’ll lose a lot of very, very, very good people.

“I would be worried about the direction we’re going in at the moment. I’m not sure that this is well thought-out.”

The42 contacted Cork LGFA for comment, but received no reply at the time of publication.