O’Grady and Moyes badly let down by petty powerbrokers
I didn’t go to school but I played with some scholars. And I can work the Google machine as well as anybody. I know this...
Around the country hurling people still generally speak of little else but the Cloyne senior hurling team which reached three county finals in-a-row a few years back. That team and their young, charismatic coach were the inspiration for a generation etc.
At the time I thought maybe I was Alex Ferguson. Lots of others would probably have thought I was David Moyes. The 2.0 out of his Depth Moyesiah Model. That’s an argument for another day.
I remember though before one of those finals that we, the management team, were promised a visit from one of the shinier suits on the executive. He was going to advise us as to the club’s rules and regulations, as to how we should spend every minute of our lives between that meeting ending and the final whistle on Sunday afternoon. There were probably some rules too about what to do after the final whistle.
The wisest fella among us said that we’d take it. We’d nod and we’d agree. We’d swallow the necessary pain. The suit came among us. We nodded at every word the man said. He said an awful amount of words. Some fellas needed physio after all the nodding. It was as if he had come down from Mount Sinai with the commandments on tablets of stone.
He left. We congratulated each other on our acting and our nodding. Now we were going back to doing exactly what we had planned to do.
We’d sort out the executive and their rules next week sometime after the game.
First rule of management when dealing with the layer of suits above? Do what you need to do. Apologise later. Except if you are in Limerick. Being the manager in Limerick means you never have to say sorry. The suits do your apologising for you.
Of all the hurling men I know, Donal O’Grady is one of the most impressive and knowledgeable. Right up there in the top three after myself and the father. The Holy Ghost. He has proven his ability both as a player and a manager. To lose O’Grady’s services once may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose his services twice, as Limerick have, looks like carelessness.
You would have to say Limerick are exceptional in that they have learned nothing from the careless waste of their three in-a-row All-Ireland U21 winning sides. They look hell bent now on wasting the great work being done in Ardscoil Rís and Doon and in clubs around the county at underage level. They are exceptional but they aren’t unique. Manchester United, who are normally held up as the model for how things should be done, have shown the same talent this week. Mediocrity always dreads excellence.
Nobody knows for sure what David Moyes would have become had he been allowed to make Manchester United his own. All we know is that the mediocrity above him and below him eventually killed him.
It started when Alex wasn’t just allowed to pick his successor but given the green light to invite Moyes to his house for dinner and to tell him the news personally. ‘Don Corleone, I am honoured and grateful that you have invited me to your home…’ I bet looking back now, given that set-up, Moyes should have made his excuses and left.
The situation should have told him all he needed to know about the weakness of the men who would be employing him and the dim prospect of Alex Ferguson heading off to a desert island and leaving him with enough space to do the job properly.
Moyes didn’t set the world alight in his first year but when you see the weakness of the United board from start to finish in the whole affair and their cowed posture before Ferguson you can understand one of the reasons why. Given that Moyes is the one losing his job it says a lot that he is the only one at the end of this week coming out with his dignity enhanced.
Ferguson, the United board, and the United players all look smaller than they used to look.
I have a memory of Donal O’Grady before an All-Ireland final 10 or 11 years ago. We were in the team hotel up in Dublin and O’Grady had rounded us up into the ballroom to a team meeting. He was speaking to us in the way we were used to. He was the múinteoir.
We were the young pupils. As he spoke he was looking over our heads to some distraction at the back of the room. The county secretary was fussing around doing something.
“Frank,” said Donal “do you mind? It’s time for you to be going now.”
Frank scuttled off about his business. We were left in no doubt as to who was in charge. Remembering that day brings back a few more lines from The Godfather. We have one or two Dons of our own in Cork who know that ‘power isn’t everything, it’s the only thing’.
Seeing Donal O’Grady walk away this week and listening to David Moyes’ quiet words I had to look up another line which half came to me: Power wears out those who do not have it.
In Limerick and in Manchester the man with the true talent didn’t have the power needed to exercise the talent. Those with it didn’t care. Just so long as the power was still theirs.
It’s a tragedy O’Grady never really got the time and space he needed in a management job. The best director of hurling this county never had.
David Moyes hopefully will have learned his lesson. Great men are not born great, they grow great. They need the space and the support to be let grow.
The best administrators are quiet people without egos. In Liam Mulvihill and Paraic Duffy the GAA has been well served in that regard.
In too many boards and committees below that level though the association is crippled by noise boxes who know the truth of the next line from Milton’s Paradise Lost: Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
It’s been a good week for those who like to be little kings on a pile of mediocrity. A bad week for some lions unlucky enough to be led by donkeys. It kills me to say it but it looks as if nothing changes boys…
