To strip this power from a club is nothing short of an insult
Setting the county champion’s nomination aside allows the manager to pick the best player as captain. If the county champs don’t have a first-choice player then there are no selection headaches coming down the track. It’s all outdated, anyway. Part of the past.
Well, we’re in favour of it. Not just because the county champs are entitled, but because of the glaring logical flaw in the counter-argument.
First of all, isn’t the team which wins the senior championship within a county entitled to a couple of corollary benefits to go along with the big silver pot and a day or two on the beer?
Second, it’s worked pretty well for a lot of counties. We were in Nowlan Park last weekend for the Kilkenny SHC decider, and Eoin Larkin was nothing short of awesome for James Stephens in their win over Ballyhale Shamrocks — out of 12 shots he raised a flag with each, ending with 1-11.
We’re aware there’s a category error in the making when you say ‘well, it works in Kilkenny so it’ll work everywhere else’, but James Stephens didn’t dawdle this week, nominating Larkin as county captain almost immediately. That performance last Sunday will do nicely as his proposal speech.
Third, to strip this power from a club is nothing short of an insult. In effect you’re saying members have such a slavish kennel-blindness they’re willing to sabotage their own county’s chances of success just to see one of their own lead the team out.
Not true.
In this day and age even the most chauvinistic club members aren’t blind to the obvious. If their senior side wins a county title through selfless teamwork rather than the derring-do of one or two superstars, then people can recognise that. If they don’t have a first-choice player on the county team, they’re not stupid enough to try and shoehorn in a fringe man as captain.
The truly apocalyptic scenario obtains only in the following circumstances: a club wins the county title against the head, as it were, and finds the armband in its gift. It has one player on the county panel, a peripheral figure who isn’t sure of his place, and nominates that player as county captain. A hapless county board acquiesces, heaping undue pressure on the county manager, the player and, in turn, the team.
What nobody wants to admit is that trusting the decision to a county board executive or team manager is no guarantee of success either.
The usual argument here is to cite the likelihood of an inter-county manager having a greater sense of who among his players will serve as a good skipper.
But aren’t the chances of that manager not picking the right man about the same as a club not picking the right man? Just because you have one man, or three or five if all selectors are involved, selecting a captain, that doesn’t mean it’s intrinsically likely to be more correct than the call made by the 20 or 30 club members at an AGM.
It’s not as though county managers have a monopoly on right decisions, though nobody wants to admit that.
The odd thing here is that in almost every other facet of life one welcomes the input of a large number of people for important decisions, but when it comes to picking a county captain the fewer, it seems, the better. Anyone would think the main reason is to ensure that it’s easier to blame just the one man if it all goes wrong.
But that couldn’t be right. I think we’re all agreed on that.
