{"id":462324,"date":"2026-05-22T20:43:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T20:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/462324\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T20:43:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T20:43:12","slug":"exclusive-munster-rugby-chief-apologises-over-failed-roger-randle-coaching-appointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/462324\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Munster Rugby chief apologises over failed Roger Randle coaching appointment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking publicly for the first time since the controversy emerged, Mr Flanagan told the  Irish Examiner that he took full responsibility for the failed process that led Munster Rugby to commission an <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/sport\/rugby\/arid-41843370.html\">Independent Governance and Organisational Review<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Reports linking Mr Randle to the vacant attack coach role were followed by the circulation on social media of South African newspaper reports from 1997 referencing rape allegations against the former Super Rugby player.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Mr Randle has consistently protested his innocence against the claims, which did not result in a prosecution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The appointment process <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/sport\/rugby\/arid-41830925.html\">led to the resignation<\/a> of three independent members of Munster\u2019s Professional Games Committee \u2014 former players Billy Holland, Killian Keane and Mick O&#8217;Driscoll.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Volunteer members of the organisation\u2019s informal Commercial Advisory Group also stepped down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Flanagan said his priority was now to repair reputational damage and rebuild trust among supporters and stakeholders.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu caption\">\u2018We want to learn from this\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI understand that. I accept it. I acknowledge it,\u201d Flanagan said. \u201cAnd I wouldn&#8217;t necessarily say it&#8217;s just supporters. We have a lot of stakeholders and I know there&#8217;s disappointment out there from a lot of people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI know there is upset out there from a lot of people and this is a significant motivation for commissioning the independent review that we want to assure people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cFirstly, I want to apologise to those people for how it did unfold and hold our hands up and say, we want to learn from this.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">&#8220;We do want to re-establish trust\u2026 and we want to reassure everyone that we are going to learn from this and we are going to strengthen our processes and our governance so that it doesn&#8217;t happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking publicly for the first time since the controversy emerged, Mr Flanagan told the Irish Examiner that he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5658,42,11897,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-462324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-irish-examiner-instagram","tag-headlines","tag-munster-rugby","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}