Donegal minor manager Declan Bonner upset by media coverage

Declan Bonner, manager of the Donegal minor footballers this year, says that he believes the Ulster Council statement in relation to the verbal abuse allegations that arose from the county's championship match with Tyrone last May, "could have been stronger" and that he would have preferred fuller disclosure of the council's investigation into the matter.

The controversy centred on accusations that Tyrone players had taunted Donegal captain Micheál Carroll on the recent death of his father.

Bonner at the time was extremely critical about the matter in his weekly newspaper column in the Donegal News, saying: "If this is what is going to happen in games, then I don't want to be a part of it. I would rather walk away than be involved in something that has become so toxic."

Confidential

Tyrone requested the investigation by the Ulster Council and its findings were reviewed and accepted by both counties on September 23rd but it was decided to keep the outcome confidential.

During this week the Tyrone-based website teamtalkmag.com ran an item claiming that Tyrone players had been exonerated. This was denied by the Donegal County Board, who in a statement said: “CLG Dhun na nGall has in its possession the Ulster Council CCC Investigation Report and the conclusions reached were agreed by both CLG Thir Eoghain and CLG Dhun na nGall at a meeting on Wednesday September 23rd. We understand that the Ulster Council will make a statement in the morning accordingly.”

The Ulster Council statement said that, "The committee agreed with both county committees that the findings will remain confidential. We would also highlight that recent media reports regarding the investigation do not accurately reflect the findings of the committee. All parties were satisfied that this matter was resolved and there will be no further comment from Ulster GAA. "

Bonner is unhappy with the reaction in Tyrone to the Ulster Council findings.

“My stance on it is that I was disappointed that teamtalkmag.com came out with that statement on Tuesday because as far as we were concerned the Ulster Council had produced its findings and for them to come out with a lot of inaccuracies just wasn’t on.

“At no stage were those Tyrone players exonerated completely. That wasn’t true. That’s disappointing. We wanted to move on to be quite honest; we didn’t want any young players being handed hefty suspensions but we had to highlight it because that has no place on any football field. There was no way we were letting it go.

“From our point of view we know exactly what happened. Why would we have made that up?”

He said that he would have preferred the conclusions of the provincial council to have been released to a fuller extent.

“To me the Ulster Council need to be a bit clearer in terms of the findings because it’s very vague in terms of what they came out with – that there were inaccuracies in the teamtalk statement.

“A stronger statement needed to come out to be honest rather than just there were ‘inaccuracies’.”