Walsh: Managers ending dual careers

Cork managers are the ones who called the shots in ending the dual commitments of Eoin Cadogan, Damien Cahalane and Aidan Walsh, according to former hurling boss and dual player Denis Walsh.

Over the weekend, Cadogan and Cahalane opted for football and hurling only respectively next season. Walsh last month announced he would concentrate on hurling in 2015. But his namesake Denis is adamant they were compelled to make their choices by Brian Cuthbert and Jimmy Barry-Murphy.

“What I would have been thinking to myself over the last couple of years is that it really depends on the mindset of the manager in question. Up to this point, we have been talking about what the player wants to do. That’s irrelevant.

“The perception might be that it’s the player who is deciding but the decision-maker is now the manager. That’s what fascinates me about this, that nobody has touched on that. It’s all about ‘what is Aidan Walsh doing’, ‘what is Eoin Cadogan and Damien Cahalane doing’ but it all comes down to what the manager wants. We saw that clearly with Davy Fitz in Clare.”

Fitzgerald presented Podge Collins with a choice — hurling or football — and the player chose the latter. The optics appear different in Cork but the situation is the same, insists Walsh.

“This boils down to one thing and that’s what influences the mindset of the manager — winning and losing. At the end of it all, that’s what defines a coach or a manager. I never got over the line. We were close but had we done it I’d be seen in a different light.

“It’s winning and losing that defines the whole thing of the dual player now.”