The angry approach to management

If the last week has shown us anything — and we say this without any intended pun regarding the coming All-Ireland hurling final between Kilkenny and Tipperary — it is that there is more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to the tricky business of managing a team.

That holds for disciplines both familiar and foreign.

“Managing is like holding a dove in your hand,” said the one-time Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda. “Squeeze too hard and you kill it: not hard enough and it flies away.” Put more simply, though far less eloquently, it is the old balancing act between the carrot and the stick.