DCU MANAGER NIALL Moyna insists he will not encourage his players to promote Gaelic Games in the wake of the eligibility row that has rendered Cork’s Aidan Walsh and Donegal’s Michael Boyle unavailable for their Sigerson Cup campaign.
Both Walsh and Boyle have been deemed ineligible due to a new ruling made by the GAA’s Higher Education Board last October.
That ruling stipulates that players have studied for six years or taken more than two colleges courses, are unable to play football or hurling at third level.
A DRA hearing on Tuesday night failed to pave the way for the duo to line out in DCU’s eight-point win over Queen’s University in yesterday’s Sigerson Cup clash.
And after that game an angry Moyna questioned why some of his players would promote the GAA in their future careers.
“Aidan Walsh made a decision three years ago that he was going to drop out of a course and retrospectively they have imposed a ban on him playing collegiate football.
“That man is going out to teach physical education and I certainly won’t be encouraging him to promote Gaelic Games and I mean that. In my classes from now on, I have no intention of promoting Gaelic Games.
“There are people who must spend all of their time thinking of ways for students not to play and if they would spend one tenth of their time figuring out how to get more people to play inter-collegiate football they would be serving their time much better.
“It is very disappointing for him, he’s devastated and so is Michael (Boyle). This is his final year, he has played in three Sigersons and basically he has been told he is not a student.
“Michael Murphy is going to be a PE teacher so is Paul Flynn and Aidan (Walsh). Why should they promote Gaelic games if that is they way they are going to be treated? Michael Murphy was disgusted. After the meeting he said that if there was ever an excuse to give up Gaelic Games, tonight was certainly it.”
Moyna revealed that the retrospective application of the rule was what annoyed him most.
“We have to be far more flexible rather than this hardline attitude they continue to take year after year. They were saying the rule was enacted maybe a year or two ago. But they still made their decisions three or four years ago. In the current climate can you blame someone for wanting to reskill?
“I sent him (Aidan) a text last night saying that he was going to walk away with a DCU degree and they can’t take that away from you. When Aidan came to me first about doing PE my words to him were ‘You are not coming here to play football’.
“I’ll get a much bigger kick if I see him walking out of here with a first class honours degree and I still mean that.”
