Kieran Shannon: James Horan shouldn’t have to answer every whim from Mayo delegates
Mayo manager James Horan. Picture: INPHO/Tommy Dickson
Twenty-five years ago, only days either side of James Horan kicking five points from play in one of the most agonising All-Ireland final defeats Mayo has ever known, down in Limerick Dave Mahedy was getting his head around a document that he’d later transform into a gift to hang on his office wall in UL.
As part of the county’s senior hurling management that had lost another heart-breaking final of their own, he’d been privy to a copy of 20 pointed questions the county board executive had posed to manager Tom Ryan, some of which enquired was Mahedy “the right man to train the team”?
Ryan was incensed both at the time and decades later, telling the writer Henry Martin for the book Unlimited Heartbreak that the infamous 20 questions were “f..king outrageous, scandalous”, drawn up with the intention “to force us out”.
One of the players Mike Nash would describe it as “stupid men well qualified to ask a stupid question asking stupid questions”, in stark contrast to Mahedy who he viewed as “way ahead of his time and very advanced”.
Nash may have had a point. Question No.4 was: “Are the hurley carriers justified when players on the panel have to go up into the stand?”
About two of Mahedy’s sports science students who were assisting him, it was asked: “Is there a necessity for the two girls?”
They also got to vent or express their tactical chops and concerns, asking: “Was there any instruction given to Joe Quaid to vary the puckout and make use of the extra man in the second half?”
Although Limerick hadn’t won a Munster title in the 13 years prior to Ryan’s appointment only to win two out of three on his beat, the question was posed: “Does Tom (Ryan) feel that the best interests of Limerick hurling are served by him continuing on? This bunch of players have reached and lost two All-Irelands now. Would it not be better off to make a fresh start under a new manager?”
As it turned out, Ryan would refuse to give them the satisfaction of stepping aside as Mahedy would, but his final year was tainted by the fallout from the 20 questions more than the All-Ireland itself.
Within days of delivering another major title to the county — the 1997 national league — he was gone as it wasn’t the cup that was wanted.
By then Mahedy had framed the 20 questions for posterity.
“I keep them,” he’d philosophically muse to Martin, “because if ever I am successful with a team and I think I am getting too big for my boots, I can look up and say: ‘That’s how close you are to winning and how close you are to being the most useless bastard going.’”
In recent weeks James Horan would have reason to think precisely the same, not least because of a rather bizarre and unique review process the Mayo county board have initiated that has encouraged clubs to submit questions for Horan ahead of the board’s end-of-year-review with him.
At the most recent county board meeting at which 14 different delegates expressed their views and frustrations regarding the county’s latest All Ireland defeat, chairman Liam Moffatt told delegates that “constructive criticism and feedback from clubs is welcomed”.
Those questions, criticisms, and feedback have yet to find their way into the public arena the way the infamous Limerick 20 questions did.
But already some sections of the Mayo support have gone and even outdone the Limerick executive, with one social media contributor compiling 24 questions they’d pose to Horan, the tone of which are so similar to the Limerick queries of 1996, you’d think they came from the same pen.
Its penultimate question wondered: “If the outcome of such a review were to be in any way unfavourable towards management, will the process include a recommendation or sub-process which will adjudicate on the manager’s suitability to continue in his role?”
About the only question it was missing was the first one posed in the Limerick list. “Why did we lose the match?” But like the Limerick one, there was a lack of balance.
As Bernie Savage, a selector to Ryan back in 1996, observed: “Nobody asked the question: ‘How did we get to the final?’”
End-of-season reviews are vital in any high-performance setup, or one aspiring to be.
A team can and should conduct one internally which could also be conducted and co-ordinated by a higher or more independent body, like a performance director, much like Cork GAA has one in Aidan O’Connell and its footballers’ end-of-season-review report would have been seen by football co-ordinator Conor Counihan.
Horan and any other manager in the GAA do need to be accountable.
But if that review is not conducted correctly and by people who are not suitably qualified and au fait with high performance, then it could spiral into a farce where you risk losing a Mahedy or Horan.
As Mahedy put it to Martin: “If you were an engineer, I wouldn’t go to you and say you should approach it this way or that way.”
Yesterday Horan gave a strong interview to Midwest local radio which did much to dispel much of the rumour and innuendo that had been rife in the county over the past six weeks and undoubtedly gave the impression that he is not going anywhere.
In an unfortunate oversight though host Tommy Marren did not get round to asking Horan how he felt about the board’s invite for clubs to submit questions to him.
Maybe the Mayo executive will suitably manage and massage this.
Moffatt himself is highly familiar with high performance set-ups himself from his qualifications and experience as a physio.
He also stressed the word “constructive” in how any criticism and feedback would be relayed.
His secretary, Diarmuid Butler, also noted that other Mayo teams, at minor and U20, didn’t win an All-Ireland this year either, so they should be open to receiving questions and criticism too.
But it’s still bizarre. By all means have what Moffatt describes as “an open and honest discussion on the technical, tactical, psychological and physical side of it”.
But that “open and honest” discussion can’t be open to everyone; confidentiality for one, along with how unwieldly it’d be, makes it impossible.
Horan should be answerable to the executive, but he shouldn’t have to answer every whim and query from a delegate.
As Daithí Gallagher, the Mayo GAA Bord na nÓg chairman, noted at the meeting: “We have to put a little bit of trust in the structure we’ve set up here.
“We have to be very careful when it comes to a scenario where 48 different clubs across our county can submit a specific question. I think it’s dangerous territory.”
He’s not wrong.
Could you imagine Brian Cody being subjected to the county board executive inviting the clubs to ask why he had gone a sixth consecutive year without delivering an All-Ireland?
He wouldn’t. And nor should Horan.
