MUNSTER HAVE PUBLICLY addressed the issue of a leaked management report last week, stating that they are ready to move on after a frustrating episode caused by simple human error.
Speaking at Thomond Park this afternoon, Garrett Fitzgerald and Anthony Foley outlined their belief that the accidentally distributed document will not cause a dip in squad morale.
“It will never, ever happen again,” said head coach Foley, while explaining that Munster have already taken steps to ensure that is the case.
Fitzgerald, the province’s CEO, gave a full review of the incident, as well as outlining that Munster had taken all necessary legal steps to ensure that there would be no ongoing issues in that department.
“There was an accidental dispatch of an email on Wednesday the 27th [of August],” said Fitzgerald. “Within in a very short space of time, all the recipients were notified — I think within an hour — and every effort, as would be normal, was made to retrieve the data on the email.
Following that, there was a full review of what happened and we’re completely satisfied it was a human error, and we have taken all the steps necessary to address the issue and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“The key thing is that it is a data protection issue and, with proper legal advice from our solicitors Ronan Daly Jermyn, we did notify the office of the Data Commissioner, as is the correct thing to do. They came back to us and confirmed that they were happy that we met all the criteria in how we managed what actually happened and what we have done with it.
“They’ve registered the letter and accepted it and they don’t intend to take any further action on it at this point in time,” continued Fitzgerald.
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“For us as an organisation, confidentiality is a very serious thing in this business, a people business. We fully comply with all employment law, so we take confidentiality seriously and I suppose the focus is on us moving forward positively. We have taken all the correct legal and professional steps to handle it correctly.
“It is a simple, rolling document that is updated from time to time and the information is usually dealt with between the individual and coaching staff. I don’t see it as a funny issue.”
Meanwhile, Foley stated that if he had experienced an incident like this one in his playing days, he could have accepted it as an honest mistake. The former No 8 says he would not have taken issue with critical comments as long as his coach could have stood over them.
“The first thing you [as a player] ask is ‘why?’ and then you make sure there’s no malicious intent in it,” said Foley. “Is this information I would have gotten anyway? The players would get this information anyway as part of our ongoing review to make us a better team, trying to make them better.
That’s only one aspect of the document, but you [a player] would wonder would you have seen this information. Once you’re satisfied that it was human error, the information was accurate and the coaches could stand over it, I would accept it.”
Foley was quizzed as to whether or not the most disappointing aspect of the episode was the fact that there was a leak from within the Munster organisation, that news of the report accidentally being sent out to the squad even made its way to the media.
“In the modern day, it’s seldom that things don’t make the media. It was contained up to Sunday. Obviously on Saturday, there was someone ringing around the houses trying to get information from the players, which obviously isn’t the way things are done, but you accept that and fight it at a later date.
“If you write things down, you have to be prepared to stand over it, be prepared that someone’s going to see it, be prepared that it could make the media. We understand that in this game.”
Fitzgerald believes that certain individuals may have been upset by aspects of the report being sent around to the entire squad, but said he doesn’t see there being any lasting effect on squad morale.
Foley commented that he could indeed stand over the contents of the report and said an accidental release of information such as this will never happen again.
“This is an ongoing rolling document, so it’s already obsolete,” said the Munster head coach. “We sit around, we talk about our players and their performance on a given date. We try to point out players’ strengths and weaknesses. It’s something that is standard practice.
“It’s unfortunate that it’s out in the public domain, something that we do behind closed doors to make us better. We’re not going to change in terms of how we do our business, but there certainly are procedures in place in terms of how we send documents.
“It will never, ever happen again.”
