Outside managers one of the GAA’s under estimations
Over the weekend, president-elect Liam O’Neill spoke with his customary candour about his negative experiences of outside managers. Having served on the Laois county committee at the start of the last decade, O’Neill had direct dealings with outside coaches, some of whom were unashamed “money men”. Consequently O’Neill believes that when you hire an outside manager, you effectively become “his slave”.
He won’t listen or give “any credence” to any manager he believes who is “coming from afar and taking money for it”, prompting some of us to worry are Kieran McGeeney’s views on the tackle to be dismissed on the basis that O’Neill might perceive him as “coming from afar” rather than one of the best defenders of his generation.
Although it has been floated that Páraic Duffy is open to debating the prospect of allowing payments to managers, O’Neill firmly contends it would mean “the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer”.
In espousing laudable virtues like self-sufficiency, O’Neill strayed into displaying a disturbing sense of insularity. Inherent in his argument was a string of assumptions — all outside managers are paid, only outside managers threaten to become bigger than the county boards, outside managers usually aren’t successful.
At no stage was the upside to having an outside manager even mentioned.
It’s not just him. Christy Cooney recently argued that the policy of recruiting outside managers “doesn’t and hasn’t worked”.
That is patently at variance with the facts. True, the counties that win senior All-Irelands tend to be coached by their own, but counties like Cork, Kerry, Kilkenny and Tipperary have such a sizeable playing and coaching population, they’ve never needed to be managed by an outsider. The measure of a team’s success rate isn’t its All-Ireland count but its tendency to get the most out of its resources.
And the record shows that of the 26 counties that have hired at least one outside football manager over the last two decades, 19 of them were at their most competitive during that period when they had an outside man at the helm.
O’Neill yearns for a return “to something from our own lifetime,” so let’s reel back the years. Back in the ‘80s when you managed and were managed by your own, All-Ireland semi-finals were contested by the usual suspects and the usual whipping boys, attended by paltry crowds. Then Clare beat Kerry in the 1992 Munster final and 65,000 people flocked to Croke Park for their subsequent All-Ireland semi-final against the Dubs. Something much louder than the Banner roar resonated that day. Every county started to question its place in the world and why shouldn’t they broaden their horizons, just as Clare did by recruiting John Maughan.
The Maughan Effect has been the poor getting richer, not poorer. Leitrim, Fermanagh and Wexford have contested All-Ireland semi-finals, all coached by outsiders. Westmeath have won Leinster and contested three All-Ireland quarter-finals under managers from Kerry and Kildare. Tipperary and John Evans; Limerick under Liam Kearns and Mickey Ned; Cavan under McHugh; Antrim under Baker Bradley; not to mention Johnno in Galway; they all make a mockery of Cooney’s assertion.
The god-daddy of them all of course is Micko. Over the last 20 years in Leinster he hasn’t so much managed teams as lifted entire counties, people and communities. He has become an ambassador for the GAA rather than an embarrassment to it as the presidents seem to infer.
There is merit to much of what Cooney and O’Neill are saying. If clubs and counties continuously have a regular turnover of coaches, particularly of the outside variety, long-term player development is stifled. Doora-Barefield, the subject of Christy O’Connor’s brilliant book The Club, have been through nine different management teams in the last 10 years. And they wonder why they’re no longer improving or contending? At last week’s Coaching the Coaches forum run by UCC, the progressive Ballygarvan club outlined the benefits of putting a halt to continuously recruiting outside coaches and prioritising internal coaching education and development.
There is something wrong with a club or county that finds itself going outside more than once every third appointment. But sometimes, the outsider is just what is needed.
It becomes stifling and incestuous if every coach is condemned to his own. Down might have reached last year’s All-Ireland final with one of their own but James McCartan wouldn’t have been so assured if it wasn’t for his experience at the helms of Ballinderry and St Gall’s.
The GAA may need to tackle the under-the-counter payment culture but it’s no excuse for sweeping some inconvenient historical facts under the carpet. Rather than being a blight, the outside manager has been one of the GAA’s great blessings of the last 20 years.
* Contact: kieranshannon@eircom.net
