Fogarty Forum: Outside manager is back in GAA’s crosshairs
Former Dublin footballer Philly McMahon, who hails from the Ballymun Kickhams club, managed Naas in their defeat to Athy in the Kildare SFC Pic: ©INPHO/James Lawlor
A snapshot analysis of 10 senior county finals over the last two weekends, six football and four hurling, shows 13 of the 20 club teams involved were either managed or coached by an outsider.
It is a large number and indicative of the challenges the GAA leadership face if they are seriously considering enforcing or at least encouraging clubs to make appointments from within their own ranks.
Encouragement should always precede enforcement and that is the approach Munster GAA are taking. “The outside manager at both club and county level has reached new highs with resultant financial and other implications and an erosion of the amateur status of the GAA,” said provincial chairman Tim Murphy in his opening address last January. “In my opinion, the organisation has become something it was never meant to become.”
Murphy explained it is Munster GAA’s intention to make every club in the province self-sufficient in coaching within five years. “If successful, the knock-on effect will see clubs standing independently with minimum intervention and ultimately senior team managers and coaches coming from within the ranks of each respective club unit.”
There is also an understanding that enforcement can’t be immediate. Last week, the GAA’s national games development committee chairman Micheál Martin spoke of a grace period in which the outside manager would be discontinued, starting with those at large clubs.
“We’re looking at the concept that coach eligibility may, either in the short term or longer term, be linked to the same type of restrictions as player eligibility,” former Wexford chairman Martin told this newspaper. “In other words, there will be some level of restriction on whether you could coach clubs that are not your own. And that's something the amateur status committee has explored. Clare brought a motion in 2018.
“You could phase it in. Clubs with large membership would be the first clubs to be required to adopt such a policy. Many of them are either in Dublin or greater Dublin area and they've also benefitted to the largest degree from Central Council game development funding over the last 20 years. It's something for consideration and discussion.”
The motion Martin namechecked was Wolfe Tones’s proposal in 2018, which received just 15% backing. Their idea wasn’t as sophisticated at what the games development group are discussing but it still afforded a manager the opportunity to take charge of another club providing they satisfied the terms of a transfer of membership.
Ultimately, it will be the amateur review status committee chaired by David Hassan that will decide what recommendations are to go to Central Council before Congress in February.
Although the games development committee’s idea has been spoken of positively at a recent meeting of county chairpersons, it’s understood the amateur status review is going ahead with its own proposals. The options at inter-county management level are expected to include retaining the status quo, providing a €20,000 stipend for inter-county managers completing an annual programme, or providing a contract of employment.
The leadership are hoping the stipend is the happy medium yet counties have been saying neither it nor the contract suggestion are to their liking. On a summer roadshow of the provinces outlining the amateur status review ideas, GAA president Burns was at times exasperated with some of the feedback.
At Special Congress last month, he provided some insight to his frustration. “We are going to bring those proposals to Congress in February, and they are going to be a bit radical. We did go around the country, and we did do a lot of consultation.
“I just fear that this part of my presidency will not succeed, to be honest with you. There are a lot of varying views about what the amateur status means to players and to counties and to everybody else.
“Essentially, what we are trying to achieve is that it is going to be easier for our county players to play the game and live their lives, and it is going to be easier for our counties to pay for playing the game at the highest level.”
He added: “I sort of get the feeling that, when we go around the country, everybody wants change, but not too many people want to change.”
One of the three tenets of his presidency along with the Football Review Committee and hurling development, Burns has made no secret of his determination to conclude the work his mentor, former GAA director general Páraic Duffy, started 14 years ago.
However, he knows he is in danger of hitting a wall similar to the Monaghan man whose attempt to address the association’s à la carte attitude to amateurism was foiled by the GAA’s inclination to look the other way.
The managed decline of the outside manager, which could also apply at the highest level of the inter-county codes, may just ensure Burns avoids the same fate as Duffy.
Replays are required in four senior county finals – Fermanagh, Mayo, Meath and Westmeath – arising from draws this past weekend. Laois’ SFC final replay between Courtwood and Portarlington takes place this Sunday.
If there wasn’t a two-week turnaround between Sunday and the Munster club quarter-finals the weekend after next, both Limerick’s senior and premier intermediate deciders may also have gone to a second day instead of being decided in extra-time and on penalties respectively.
Seeing a multitude of players cramp in both Limerick senior and intermediate finals — indeed during the penalty shoot-out too — it was difficult to shift the belief that a replay at club level, where feasible, is the fairest outcome to a drawn final.
A second day out would be more appropriate in concluding the All-Ireland finals too. Park all the gate receipts and split season counter-arguments and the decent thing is replays to apply to games of such importance.
The possibility of that happening had been on the cards earlier this year only for the motion to be withdrawn, as baked into it was the facility of replays to provincial finals still tied after extra-time.
That decision or lack thereof came back to “haunt” Special Congress when Limerick lost out to Cork (incidentally, Effin’s Limerick PIHC final loss to Garryspillane was Nickie Quaid and Patrick O’Donovan’s second penalty shoot-out defeat in TUS Gaelic Grounds this year).
When the dust settled, it was clear Limerick and some neutrals’ opposition to the means of how the game was concluded was stronger than their appeals for a replay. The idea of a golden score or more extra-time may yet be revived.
As for All-Ireland finals, the compromise in the forthcoming proposal to extend the hurling inter-county season by a week, and football by two. is to continue to make replays more possible than probable. It’s an understandable trade-off but the best way of deciding a game remains a game.
The latest addition to the “they wrote us off” list may just be the best one yet. Up the steps in Cedral St Conleth’s Park, it came from Athy captain David Hyland after they pulled off a surprise win over defending champions Naas in Sunday’s Kildare SFC final.
“The bookies had us at 4/1,” said the Kildare defender. “The Leinster Council felt the need to set the fixture for two weeks’ time for Baltinglass and Naas and felt the need to publish an article at the end of July asking why we bother playing the Dermot Burke Cup at all.
"There's an old saying, ‘they wrote us off’ but guess what, we didn't write back.”
Westport must meet Ballina Stephenites in a Mayo SFC final replay but reaching the final had shocked some. “Nobody gave us a chance at the start of the year,” said their coach Michael McGeehin after they defeated Crossmolina in the semi-final.
There is always an angle, always a slight, always a “and I took that personally”. No sauce is greater than being told you are unable to do something.
It’s the end of eras later this week when a collection of fine sports journalists depart the and the . To them, especially those who have covered Gaelic games for their publications so diligently and passionately, may your reportage and observations be read again soon.
