Former Limerick hurling manager Donal O’Grady has dismissed suggestions that he resigned by voicemail on Sunday night, saying a statement released on Tuesday by the county board was aimed at discrediting him.

O’Grady stepped down from the post after statements made at a previous county board meeting apologising over team performances during the recent league campaign were attributed to O’Grady and his co-manager TJ Ryan.

The pair looked for a statement to be released on the Limerick GAA website to clear up the matter after a meeting on April 11th with county officers, but after waiting 10 days without receiving a clarification, O’Grady resigned on Sunday night.

A statement released yesterday by the Limerick county board ended: “Unfortunately Donal O’Grady was reluctant to agree the statement or engage with a third party intermediary to finalise an agreed statement. In the end he choose to resign his position and informed the Chairman by voicemail before 10pm on Sunday night last”.

O’Grady denied that claim on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme on Wednesday.

"I have to say I was very disappointed with it (the statement) because there was efforts made in that statement to discredit me, particularly around the voicemail issue, because I spoke with Oliver Mann last Sunday night and what happened was that I rang him on Sunday night and I got his voicemail first," said O'Grady.

“We decided that I would ring Oliver and then that we would send out emails to the players because it was important that they didn’t find out through press, Twitter or some other source.

“Now I couldn’t get Oliver at the beginning so I left a message on the phone and rang him back within minutes. And in fact we had a very cordial conversation and I told him I was impressed with the fact that he admitted immediately at our meeting in Charleville on April 9th that we hadn’t apologised and he has always struck me as a very decent man, a very sincere man and he just noted at the end that he was very sorry to see me stepping down. And that’s how we left it.

“To leave a sentence hanging there, that I had resigned by voicemail, I think that was an effort to discredit me as it would show a total lack of respect on my behalf to chairman Oliver Mann and I just want to refute that because I was very, very disappointed that that would be put on the Limerick website.”

O’Grady also confirmed that his duty to protect his players was key in his decision making of the management duo in relation to statements attributed to them.

“The whole issue came up because of the language that was used at the county board meeting, I mean there was ‘abysmal displays’, ‘venom in the eyes’, ‘fire in the eyes’. Whenever that happens it’s the job of management really to protect the players at all times. We were set down as having apologised we say for the ‘abysmal displays’. If you do that, if you apologise for that it implies that you are agreeing that the players served up abysmal displays.

“We said at a previous meeting that we took full responsibility for the way the team played at all times, because a manager has to do that and as I said it’s the job to protect the players, but we wanted to get the message out there as quick as we could and put this thing to bed because we felt that further press reports that were using these terms ‘abysmal’, ‘venom’, ‘fire in the eyes’ were undermining the confidence in the camp.”