Managers at the business end tough enough to make big calls

Managers don’t live or die by their decisions but they either win or lose by them, keep their jobs or are fired by them.

In all the talk in recent weeks about who should or shouldn’t have won the various sports person or sports manager of the year awards, it got this column thinking about how marginal all these things are.

Davy Fitzgerald was a worthy winner of the RTÉ Manager of the Year on Saturday night but he knows more than anyone that there was a moment in September where it looked very likely he wasn’t even going to be the hurling manager of the year. The cameramen had all gathered around Jimmy Barry-Murphy for the money shot. Kieran Kingston was on his shoulder, about to be the first person to hug the All-Ireland winning manager. The substitutes and the substituted were ready to explode onto the field to embrace victorious teammates.