Q and A with Liam Hayes
He told Michael Moynihan that the county boundary should be a thing of the past.
MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: Does wearing the county jersey mean as much as it ever did?
LIAM HAYES: Very definitely. I think that’s one of the things we forget when we see the GPA being so active and militant. The pride and joy of wearing the county jersey is the sole thing for 90% of footballers and hurlers – it’s the only thing most of them have going for them in that context.
MM: Would you be a member of the GPA if you were still playing?
LH: I definitely would. I think it has a role, to represent players properly, but I think players are well catered for in the main now, compared to the situation 20 years ago, in my day. €20 million is spent on players nowadays and that wasn’t the case at all 20 years ago. The GPA has proven its worth in that regard.
MM: If you were president of the GAA for 24 hours, is there any single change you’d make?
LH: That’s a tough one – there’s an awful lot of things. It’d be a full 24 hours. I’d be a busy man, that’s all I’d say!
MM: Is there a disconnect between the GAA of Croke Park, the GAA of the clubs and the GAA of the inter-county player? Or has it always existed to some degree?
LH: There’s a vast gulf there, and unfortunately that’s a matter of evolution. The game is evolving all the time and getting better, players are getting stronger and fitter, as happens in all sports.
The impediment for Gaelic footballers and hurlers is that they have to remain amateur. From my perspective, I like to see the very best sport – the best golf, the best athletics – and I’d have no personal problem with anything that facilitated GAA players becoming the best they can be, even if it meant they were paid.
With natural evolution in a sport there’s always going to be a gulf between elite players and the club players, and elite players and the sport’s administration, which in this case is holding on to amateur status for dear life.
MM: How is/will the recession impacting on the GAA?
LH: What you’ll see the recession impact on generally is on discretionary spend. For most GAA people, going to big games is not a discretionary spend – it’s part of their lifestyle and an important part at that.
Where you’ll see the recession impact on the GAA is in big capital spending. The recession has been a good thing for most of us, putting manners on us and forcing us to reevaluate what we’re doing in our business and personal lives.
For the GAA, look at what it’s spent on ridiculous things like improving county grounds to 30,000-40,000 capacity or putting floodlights there – at huge cost, when the grounds will never be full or the floodlights never be used.
That was a total waste of money, so the recession should be good for the GAA in terms of helping it to examine how it spends every penny.
MM: What’s the first thing people find out about themselves when they become coaches?
LH: The essential thing at club and county level is that no matter how good your selectors are, you’re alone. Your head is on the block and that feeling doesn’t go away.
What I found out when I took over Carlow was that though I’d played for Meath from U14 to senior, for 20 years, I had no idea just how hard the job was. When you have responsibility for an entire team it’s hugely difficult to analyse every player on your team – and on the opposition teams. It was twice as hard as I could have imagined and a huge learning curve for me, and it showed me just how good the top-level managers are.
MM: How, as a coach, do you deal with a talented but temperamental player?
LH: It depends on whether you have a strong team. If you have a small selection of players then that problem doubles and trebles in size and there’s no real solution. You have to get on with it.
In my own limited inter-county experience I made a complete mess of that, handling high-profile players who maybe weren’t as committed as others. It’s a very difficult one and when I was in that situation I made a complete hash of it. But if you have limited resources it’s very difficult to deal with that situation.
MM: Was there an overreaction to the Colm Cooper-Tomás O Sé drinking incident/suspension?
LH: When you’re Kerry manager you have the toughest job in the country and I thought when Jack O’Connor came back into it he showed huge courage.
I would be critical of him in many respects, in terms of his general attitude and so on, but I have a lot of respect for him because coming back a second time shows bravery of a magnitude that most people wouldn’t possess. He’s a brave man.
Having got some team selections wrong earlier in the year he needed to get control quickly, it was like a runaway train. He mightn’t have taken the actions he did in most other years, but I think he did the right thing.
MM: Who’s the most underrated inter-county Gaelic footballer around?
LH: There’s a lot of them in the smaller counties, and that’s why, when you talk about how the game evolves, you need to talk about the disappearance of county boundaries, particularly when there are so many opportunities open to modern sportsmen.
If I were a parent of an exceptional talent in a weak county I wouldn’t condemn them to a lifetime of servitude to that county.
There’s an awful lot of players out there... in Carlow the level of talent I saw in a team bottom of Division Four was amazing. There were four or five who’d walk onto any county team, so from my experience it’d be Mark Carpenter of Carlow. He’s one of the fastest and smartest footballers I’ve ever seen.
MM: Should we go back to straight knockout in the championship or has the qualifier system become part of the GAA consciousness?
LH: No, I think the qualifier system has accommodated the knockout system, and the GAA has done very well in that. They need to take another couple of steps with the provincial winners and so on, but the more chances you get to see the best teams in a summer, the better.
Nowadays, invariably the best team wins the All-Ireland. In the past, in my day, often the best teams didn’t win the All-Ireland because they just had one bad day and lost one game. Further amendments to the qualifier system will be for the good of the game.
MM: Would you prefer Pat Spillane as an anchor or pundit?
LH: I’d prefer neither to see nor hear him, I think he plays a tokenism role, but he’s far more suited to punditry than the role of anchor.
