Finding a new manager is the least of Galway’s problems
A combination of those three factors is what led to Joe Kernan’s surprise resignation as Galway football manager earlier this week.
Until a meeting late last week between the key people on the Galway football board and Kernan, it looked highly probable that he would continue on in charge of the Galway footballers for 2011.
He had said publicly that he was willing to stay on and all the early indications were that he was to be retained.
So what changed?
It is understood that at that meeting there was a disagreement over the role the county chairman John Joe Holleran would have in relation to team matters, and that Kernan asked for more autonomy and less direct involvement from the county chairman.
That, as you can imagine, went down like a lead balloon.
Whether as a result of that or not, in subsequent discussions, Kernan was informed that he would have to reduce and replace some of his backroom team for next year. His team trainer for the past season was John McCloskey, who has worked with Kernan in the past, and Paul Hatton, who had also done a lot of the early season conditioning.
Those men were to be replaced by a local trainer and there was also to be a change to his selectors. Again selected by the board. Many supporters of Galway football and on the football board were not happy with Kernan’s tenure and Holleran knew that.
Much of the criticism concerned the fact that most of Kernan’s fitness and medical backroom team had to travel from the north too.
It was all far too impractical, too expensive and lacked logic.
Getting Kernan for Galway was Holleran’s brainchild and with results having gone so badly in the championship, he was under pressure by association.
Holleran had to flex his muscles and make some changes. By getting Kernan to reduce his backroom team he could at least say that there had been significant compromise by Kernan. Kernan was not prepared to sacrifice his backroom team and hence his resignation. Does Diego Maradona and Argentina ring a bell?
Money? It will never come into the public domain how much the appointment of Joe Kernan and his backroom team cost. Or how much it would have cost in 2011. However, using even the most basic calculations, it had to be seriously expensive.
Kernan and McCloskey had to engage in enormous levels of travel across the country and the time commitment for both men was colossal.
How do you put a figure on how much it costs for a top inter-county manager to drive the guts of four hours, do a three to four hour training session and then drive home again?
Or, alternatively, stay the night and then get up and drive back to Northern Ireland from Galway. Multiply that by two if you have a full-time trainer in tow travelling the 280 miles.
Some of the medical team used during the year travelled from the north too. Galway also used the Sport-Tracker system last season to monitor the players, and the cost of that is quite significant.
Kernan was perfectly correct to stick to his guns regarding his backroom team, but the Galway football board also had a legitimate point on the need to cull some people in an effort to save some costs.
Nobody could deny that Galway had a dreadful championship campaign. Again.
Defeated by Sligo, and then the same one-point dose from Wexford at home in the qualifiers. Everyone in Galway football knows that there is a deficit of talent currently to beat the top five or six teams. Or should that be read, nine or ten?
However, they expect the team to be competitive and be making progress at least. That did not happen in 2010, and in a results-driven business that was always going to lead to tension.
The question now on most people’s lips is who is going to be the new Galway manager. Ironically, that’s not the most important thing to be addressed in Galway football.
There is a most definite need for the structures of the game to be looked at in the county.
Hoping that we might get lucky and find a few new Padraic Joyces, Ja Fallons, Michael Donnellans or Seán De Paors by some kind of fluke of fate is lunacy. Doing the same thing, year in, year out and expecting to get different results is the current way of doing things.
Galway don’t have development squads, they don’t have a football academy, they don’t have a director of football or coaching and there is not sufficient coaching going on in either primary or secondary level schools.
I will give you a quick reference to make my point: Galway won the 2007 All-Ireland minor final, and Paul Conroy is the only player has come through and made even a minor impact at senior level. There was no plan put in place to try and cultivate and develop that panel of players. No joined up thinking. Galway will get a new manager over the coming months but there are much more fundamental and strategic changes required if the county is to contemplate getting back to the top level anytime soon.
