What the Mayo footballers can learn from the Burkes from Castlebar

14/10/22 Enoch Burke’s parents, Sean and Martina, and sibling Ammi, arrive to the Court of appeal the in Dublin ….. Pic Collins Courts

Imagine telling a decision maker, upon whose decision you rely, that he is a “disgrace” and “corrupt” and “not fit to sit in that chair” and expecting to get a favourable decision.

It is hardly going to happen, now, is it?

Such was the case yesterday in the High Court when Mr Justice John Edwards was told by the applicant, jailed schoolteacher Enoch Burke, that he was “not fit to sit in the chair” (in the High Court).

Or Martina Burke, Enoch Burke’s mother, describing the Judge’s decision as “a disgrace” to give February 2023 for a hearing date of Burke’s appeal to the Court of Appeal and describing judges as “corrupt”. (She was removed from the High Court on the Judge’s direction by members of An Garda Siochana).

These statements are hardly going to win over the decision maker, the one man who can give the appeal an early date.

A simple lesson in persuasion and influence would not go astray, methinks.

But the Mayo footballers might benefit from a touch of this arrogance and hubris when setting out to win an All-Ireland. This level of arrogance is just the thing for footballers who may be carrying the battle scars of falling at the last hurdle so many times in the last few years.

There is a time and place for everything. Yesterday in the High Court in front of Mr Justice John Edwards was not the time and place for hubris and arrogance.

Later in the year, as the championship unfolds, might be.

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