Shan wrote:I couldn't give a shíte. If there are any players who are upset about this they should f-ck off and join their local creche rugby club and they won't be missed.
Shan, I think this misses the point about the significance of the whole episode - it's nothing to do with players with upset feelings, I think there are three problems (2 big, one small).
Firstly, legal ramifications - there is a reason why Fitzgerald immediately sought legal advice, and followed their recommendation to run it by the data protection body, and that reason is prima facie evidence potentially in support of a number of constructive dismissal cases.. People saying this is a storm in a teacup and will blow over are sorely deluded - Fitzgerald will be cacking bricks from now until at least the end of the contract cycle, and I would guess he already knows this will cost Munster money (and Munster of all sides can ill afford any more expenses).
Secondly, the impact on trust and team morale. Again there's a fallacious argument used by some commentators, saying that robust criticism is all part of pro sports, the players will have heard all this one-to-one in any event, so what's the big deal. The huge distinction is the veil of confidentiality that surrounds such feedback - this has been breached, and trust given up like that is not easily regained.. It is a completely different kettle of fish, for example, for Axel to tell a player, let's call him J, that his lifestyle is 'sloppy' during a frank tete-a-tete - than for a management figure to email the entire squad with Axel's view that he has a sloppy lifestyle, even if this is a view that would widely be held among the squad. It's not necessarily what is being said, it's the fact that it's being said at all in this way - there is a reason after all that in every team (or business) in the world, feedback like this is given in confidentiality, not in front of everyone else.
I think the 'feedback' (to be generous) will have different effects on different players - for example the broadly favourable comments about Keatley, laced with some mild constructive criticism, could quite conceivably be a boost. But it's all too easy to see how the slating that some of the squad members cop could simply give rise to resentment, lack of motivation, disenchantment etc.
Thirdly, and less importantly, there is something very amateruish about the whole affair - not just the dumbass leak in the first place, the document itself is riddled with typos, and I've only seen the couple of screenshots on imgur, so maybe there is more, but as feedback goes its pretty unenlightening stuff.. Purely qualitative, with no evidence of hard info behind the judgments, it boils down to a hasty grab-bag of subjective impressions of various parts of each player's game/life. It's a long way away from the kind of ongoing analysis I would have expected from a pro rugby management team - certainly not the kind of dirty washing that anyone at Munster would have wanted aired..