Cork ladies football manager Ephie Fitzgerald has described the situation leading to the release of dual star Libby Coppinger to play camogie because of a schedule clash as "crazy". 

Coppinger will play no part in the Rebellettes All-Ireland football quarter-final against Galway on Saturday in Mullingar, where throw-in is at 12.30pm, as she gets set to line-out for her county against the Tribeswomen in Limerick at 7.30pm in the semi-finals of the All-Ireland camogie championship.

Coppinger was told by Fitzgerald to make the latter game her priority and, speaking to RTE Sport yesterday, the Cork boss was critical of a situation like this arising again.

"I made the decision for Libby. At that level, you can't be focussing on two games in one day," Fitzgerald stated.

"We felt it would be best to give Libby a break and let her focus on the camogie. There are no winners in this. You could argue that Galway maybe will get a bit of an advantage, but I'm sure they wouldn't want that either. The only person that loses is Libby.

"You're looking at this for next year and you would say, 'Why would you bother playing both codes if this is going to occur?'

"Libby is the most important person in all of this...she isn't happy. She trained with the camogie team last night and will be with us tomorrow... it's a very unsatisfactory situation.

"It's not something we wanted to do, but I'm happy to do it in terms of looking after our players. Their welfare comes first, winning is second."

A similar situation occurred two years ago when two of Cork's players had to line-out against Offaly in the camogie championship hours after losing the Munster football final to Kerry.

Fitzgerald commented: "We were under the assumption last year between the two Boards that this would never happen again. When it did, we made representations from our own County Board to see if the game could be changed. We were told no because of television commitments. To me, that's crazy.

"It beggars belief. Can you imagine that happening in the men's game?"

"Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA), I haven't heard anything from them. The two Boards seem to be silent about it as well. We have the literature from the meeting last year and it definitely states that these things shouldn't happen again, but unfortunately they have. It's ridiculous."

Tweet

Most Read Stories