Managing to make the most of every team situation
It was with those tormented souls in mind that Tim Healy penned a book that was probably long overdue. ‘Can You Manage?’ is not so much a handbook as a guide and refuge for any prospective or practising manager and would be a worthwhile read too for any club or county officer in the business — or very likely, dilemma — of seeking out what they like to believe is “the best man for the job” but too often is not.
In his book, he recounts stories of managers whose own sons refused to play for them, they were that non-communicative and ill-suited for the job.
Healy himself has been a manager. In fact, it would be fair to say he’s even more of a leader. In his teens he captained Colaiste Chríost Rí and played for the Cork minors. Work then brought him to Dublin, where he was a company director at 29 before setting up his own business. He has been chairman and manager of his local club, Bray Emmets, managed Castletown in Wexford to a couple of league titles and a county final, has an MBA, and in recent years has managed the Wicklow county U21s as well as being a selector to the UCD club and Sigerson teams. In a way, it makes him the ideal candidate to write a book. He may not have a CV or a trophy cabinet to rival Jack O’Connor or Brian Cody but he knows what it’s like to manage and to try to get the most out of whatever side you have.
Take his time in Castletown. One of the motives for writing the book was to help clubs and counties hone their own managers but as he says in the book, the weaker a side has become and the longer its decline has been, the more reason there is to import, and in this case he was that import.
A drinking culture had set in and so he tackled it.
“We sat down at the start of the year and made a sort of psychological contract — what the players could expect from us and what we would expect from the players. And one of the things we agreed on was two weeks leading up to a championship game, the lads were going off the drink. And I actually went round the room individually. ‘Do you agree with that? Do you agree with that?’ You could say it was a bit pedantic but I felt by doing it that way everyone individually was making a commitment. The Thursday before our first championship game I got a call. ‘Tim, we have a problem. Two of the lads were lorrying pints back in the pub last night.’ Our two brain surgeons had been drinking in the same pub where the committee were having a meeting upstairs.
“So I said ‘Grand, that’s not a problem’ and called the two boys aside that night at training. In fairness to them, they owed up, even though they said other lads were drinking elsewhere as well. I said to them, ‘Look, let’s just be clear. I came in and gave you certain commitments? Have I kept those commitments? Right. Now you haven’t kept this one. You’re not on the panel for Sunday.’ I couldn’t believe how upset they were, the indignity they felt at not being able to tog out on championship day, but I explained to them that after Sunday there would be no more about it, they would be back on the panel for Monday.
“We had a problem, we dealt with it, we moved on.”
That’s the beauty of this book. The plethora of coaching books from the US which you can order online don’t tell you how to handle one like that, and as much as they’re to be welcomed, the plethora of coaching courses and seminars the GAA put on don’t tend to cover it either. This book identifies the dilemmas and situations that are uniquely GAA while drawing on observations from a variety of basketball and soccer greats, and it recognises that managing is something more rounded than mere coaching. This book isn’t about drills and cones but rather how to deal with and get the most out of players.
“I’ve spoken to players who have been on county panels for over 18 months and have yet to have an one-to-one chat with their manager; not even for a minute or two at training. In a lot of situations, at both club and county, people are being appointed who are patently not equipped for the job because they have either no experience of managing people or no manner with people.
“I’m writing primarily for the club manager but the principles don’t really change, whether you’re over Barcelona or Bray Emmets.”
Whatever about Pep, your local manager would do worse than to read it over the Christmas break.
* kieranshannon@eircom.net
