Managerial monarchs feel weight of their thorny crowns
The crowns so often are composed of the sharp stinging thorns of loss.
The dour Capello countenance of recent days is cloned in the world of Gaelic football as well.
John Joe Doherty has departed from disappointing Donegal after their defeats. And John O’Mahony has ended his reign over a Mayo outfit which has been even more disappointing.
A shocked and wounded Pat Gilroy in Dublin cannot but be gutted after what Meath did to his team in the Leinster championship. And for how long has Gareth Bradshaw’s equalising point for Galway spared the neck of big Joe Kernan of Galway? Micko’s long trips to Wicklow are probably over. A crushed Malachy O’Rourke of Fermanagh will take a long time to regain his optimism.
Uneasy indeed lies the head that wears the managerial crown.
And, especially in an amateur code, one has to think that they are in an unfair and impossible situation, these managers. Take Peter Fitzpatrick of the jubilant Wee County for example, after they ended a 50-year drought to get to the Leinster final. Peter jumped as high into the air in joy at the long whistle as any of his men had managed during the game. He masterminded that victory and deserved his celebration. But it would be a brave man indeed who could see him celebrating in Croke Park come September. They travel in hope, these quite special men, who give so much to their charges, and they know well that there are more heartbreaks than silver in the fall.
There is another new variable in the modern GAA equation too. I was watching the Monaghan squad going through their warm-down exercises after they had broken my old heart in the manner in which they hammered Fermanagh in Breffini Park. That warm down was as intensive and sustained as many of the exercises which the managers of the recent past expected their teams to endure during training sessions of even the recent past. You needed to be super-fit to be able to go through them!
We are in the world of the thoroughbreds nowadays in Gaelic football and hurling. And as anyone interested in horse racing knows too well, they can be a very brittle breed. Modern county teams, without an ounce of fat on their bodies, now look remarkably alike, play essentially the same style of game, are honed into particular strategies and patterns, and because of this, on any given Sunday, the worst of them can put it up to the best of them.
And the physical conditioning has to be matched by the even more delicate area of mental conditioning. We have psychiatrists and counsellors on the backroom teams aiding today’s managers, motivators and dieticians and suchlike. There is more than a little brainwashing involved I’d say. And the cruel consequence for managers is that the team spirit of their sides, on any given Sunday, can burst apart like a brown paper bag. So Meath pulverise Dublin. So Sligo humble (almost) the mighty Tribesmen. So Longford play out of their skins to beat Mayo and guillotine John O’Mahony.
Uneasy lies the heads that wear the managerial crowns.
One cannot blame the players either, not really. We are in a complex zone today when it comes to performance afield. One disadvantage of all the modern teams is that, to a lesser or greater extent, in a team game, they are trained to be cogs in a machine and to scarcely express their individuality. They will run forever and they will pass forever and they will operate the manager’s system to the best of their abilities. That is the way it is. And when the machine breaks down, for whatever reason, like Dublin did so dramatically, players are not often enough able to cast off the shackles, get a good old fashioned rush of blood to the head, and express their individuality by having a go themselves in the way, for example, that the late great Dermot Earley often lifted Roscommon by carrying them on his broad back for five or 10 inspiring minutes.
That, sadly, is rarely seen nowadays.
You would sometimes wonder why would good men and great Gaels want to be managers anymore?
If they win the big ones they are lauded to the skies and given a lot of the credit. If they lose, and especially if their teams lose badly, not alone are they blamed for everything but are hotly and unfairly criticised at every level ever afterwards. And so very often their heads are lopped off by their county boards.
It is a tough world for managers.
A lot more of them, in this sporting society which is a consumer society too, will be wearing that Capello countenance before the year is much older.
It’s a thorny crown.
* Contact: cormac66@hotmail.com
