When it comes to coaching, the truth will find a way
There was a tangible dread of being left off the starting 15. What kind of motivator did they find Brian Cody? A brilliant one, not least because he understood that one of the greatest motivators of the lot could be the bench.
There’ll be plenty who’ll say it’s been easy for Cody to wield such a stick throughout his tenure, with the players and options at his disposal in a county like his. But you need only look across the county bounds to see how a similar dynamic was in play when Wexford won their All-Ireland 21 years ago.
The more time goes on and the more you reflect on 1996, the firmer you become in your conclusion Liam Griffin was one of the most brilliant and inspired coaches hurling and the GAA has known, in the fullest meaning of the term ‘coach’.
A few weeks ago we were down in that part of the world to meet Larry O’Gorman. He spoke about how Griffin looked out and cared for him, even long after Griffin had finished as manager of the county team.
One February night in 2004, O’Gorman found his whole world unravelling. He’d just had a conversation with the team management and basically they’d told him his services were no longer required. His days as a county hurler were over. In tears, he pulled his car over to the side of the road and rang Griffin. Griffin not only comforted him, reminding him that he’d had a magnificent career, but he got some of O’Gorman’s old teammates – Tom Dempsey, Martin Storey, George O’Connor – to call him as well. That night O’Gorman went to bed happy, proud. Loved.
Griffin was just as supportive when they worked together in the mid-90s. At the time O’Gorman was struggling in his personal life. The break-up of a relationship had left him devastated. There were nights he’d never leave his flat, heading straight from work to bed. But thanks to Griffin, he wouldn’t feel alone. “He’d often come over and put his arm around me. ‘How’s your family? Are you able to pay your rent? Are you okay with feeding yourself?’ I’d get into the car after training and get quite emotional... Here was a man trying to guide me trying in the right direction and lead me to the glory that I had always been looking for... I knew he loved me. He was the closest thing you could get to another father.” But part of that love meant some tough love. It meant the bench. In one league game against Meath O’Gorman was taken off at half-time for over-elaborating with the ball. Then for the league quarter-final against Offaly, Griffin went one further, dropping O’Gorman from the starting 15.
It was a decision that shocked all of Wexford hurling, and no one more than O’Gorman himself. At the time it was a huge game; in fact, later on that year, on the eve of the All- Ireland final, Griffin would rank it as one of Wexford’s three most significant wins of the year, placing it ahead of their All-Ireland semi-final win over Galway, such was the stranglehold Offaly had over Wexford prior to that season. It would have been so easy for Griffin to merely caution or cajole O’Gorman to play a more disciplined, team-oriented game. But as Denis Walsh would observe in his classic Hurling: The Revolution Years, “For O’Gorman, nothing exceeded the terror of not being on the team. It was the most brutal and direct route to his senses.” That autumn Wexford would win the All-Ireland and O’Gorman would win Hurler of the Year. Other leading teams and players have had a similar experience. In 2009, Bernard Brogan was Dublin’s leading scorer from play which could have given him some dispensation in the aftermath of the startled earwigs debacle against Kerry. Instead the following pre-season he was one of the first players openly confronted and challenged within the group about his tackling and willingness to pass to teammates. He was left off the starting 15 for Dublin’s opening three league games. He’d finish that season as Footballer of the Year and has since won four All-Irelands.
Last month, after Gene Auriemma’s commentary on the importance of body language went viral on social media, the sportswriter Sally Jenkins spoke about something he and the other outstanding coach of the US women’s basketball college scene these past 30 years had in common.
Jenkins had written several books with the late great Pat Summitt over the years and had open access to all individual and collective workouts in her University of Tennessee programme. One time she remarked to Summit she felt she had been overly harsh on a particular player and had embarrassed her. Summitt checked Jenkins. Which was more embarrassing? What had gone on with just the three of them in that gym or what that player could do to embarrass herself in front of 40,000 people? As far as Summit was concerned, she was trying to keep the player from embarrassing herself.
“All of a sudden, a light bulb went on,” Jenkins would remark on the Bill Simmons podcast. A coach like Summitt and Auriemma were trying to create moments for their players where they could hit the shot to win a national championship. They themselves had experienced that high. Now they wanted the players to experience it, and were, as O’Gorman put it about Griffin, ready to lead them to the glory they had always been looking for.
“Once you understood that about her [Summitt] and once you understand that about Geno’s work [at University of Connecticut], you stop looking it as harsh and it becomes very, very generous.”
Other coaches are not so generous. They fob off confronting, challenging or dropping their best players. Not realising that a lot of the time good is the enemy of great; that what got you to second or third won’t get you to first; that to win it all down the line you have to be prepared to drop some points and some players earlier on.
It may be out of a fear of their players or, conversely, a certain fondness, but it backfires. The college basketball coach Bill Mussleman once said, “I don’t know what tough love is. If people love you, they tell you the truth. They don’t lie to you.
“Because if you’re not being honest with your players and you’re not giving them passion, then there is no love. That’s phoniness.”
Brian Cody may not perceive any of his decisions as being out of love for his players the way O’Gorman felt Griffin’s actions were, but he certainly doesn’t do phoniness.
In that way, he’s been very, very generous to his players.
