Eimear Ryan: Rise of the cross-coder brings intrigue to new inter-county season
TALKING SHOP: Monaghan manager Seamus McEnaney, left, and performance coach Liam Sheedy talk tactics last Sunday’s Allianz FL Division 1 match against Tyrone. ‘Getting involved in a sport other than your primary one can be a tonic in many ways,’ writes our columnist in reference the former Tipperary hurling boss.
There are many things to get hyped for (as the kids would say) in the run-in to the 2022 GAA season, but the line-up of new managers is one of the more fascinating talking points. True, there’s a fair bit of continuit — last year’s final-contesting managers are staying on, as are Brian Lohan, Darren Gleeson, Mattie Kenny, Seamus Plunkett, Liam Cahill, and Kilkenny’s manager emeritus, But the entry of Darragh Egan, Henry Shefflin, and Michael Fennelly to the fray, lads who aren’t gone long from the inter-county scene themselves, will keep everyone on their toes.
Colm Bonnar is no stranger to inter-county management, but he’s with his home county now, and has been thrown a few curveballs already — all Tipp eyes will be on him.
But perhaps the most remarkable trend in coaching set-ups this year is cross-pollination — former hurlers coaching footballers, former footballers coaching hurlers, and big-ticket names being drafted in from other sports to lend their wisdom and winning ways. Darragh Egan’s appointments at Wexford typify this: His Avengers Assemble-style backroom team includes both Leinster and Ireland rugby star Gordon D’Arcy and head coach of USA boxing Billy Walsh.
Perhaps this trend isn’t exactly new. International rugby players and athletes coming in to give motivational talks to GAA teams is a time-honoured tradition. But those were usually one-off sessions. That Egan has attracted figures as internationally recognised as D’Arcy and Walsh to their native Wexford for a season-long commitment is a coup, and speaks to his managerial imagination.
On the face of it, there mightn’t be too many correlations between boxing, rugby, and hurling, but Walsh and D’Arcy will bring expertise on performance, mentality, intensity and motivation.
This is modern management in action: Nobody has to know it all, but everyone brings a piece of the puzzle. A good manager’s strength lies in his ability to delegate and empower rather than harness and control. And a bit more diversity in coaching can only be a good thing.
Other interesting managerial movers and shakers — cross-coders, if you like — include former Clare hurler Tony Griffin, who has just been appointed performance coach with Kerry footballers, and former All-Ireland-winning Tipp hurling manager Liam Sheedy, who likewise will serve as a performance coach for Monaghan footballers this year. Getting involved in a sport other than your primary one can be a tonic in many ways: You have a bit more emotional distance and therefore objectivity, and there’s a satisfaction in figuring out what’s transferrable between sports.
Ephie Fitzgerald and Shane Ronayne have essentially swapped seats, with Fitzgerald leaving Cork ladies footballers after six years to manage the Waterford men’s football squad — a role Ronayne has just vacated to manage the Rebelettes.
An exciting development for your local feminist columnist has been the appointment of former Cork goalie Elaine Harte as goalkeeping coach for the Tipp men’s football team.
With eight All-Ireland medals and two All-Stars, Harte knows about the pressure of big days, composure on the ball and how to build an attack from the back.
Living in Tipp since 2004, Harte was previously a selector with the Tipp ladies football team.
While the pipeline of male coaches to the women’s codes is a plentiful one — see Davy Fitz’s involvement with Cork camogie this year — you don’t see the reverse as often, so it will be exciting to see Harte on the sideline for Tipp’s fixtures this year. She follows in the footsteps of Mags D’Arcy, who was involved as a goalkeeping coach and assistant coach with Davy Fitz’s Wexford set-up since 2018.
“There’s no gender with Davy,” Darcy said soon after her appointment. Having had the privilege of being trained by Davy a handful of times in the mid-noughts, I would agree — he was as passionate about motivating Tipp women as anyone else, challenging us to be as fast and as sharp 90 minutes into a session as at the outset. ‘Hurler’ is a not a gendered term, after all.
But there are certainly challenges for women looking to enter coaching.
As Meath star Vikki Wall recently pointed out in an interview with the Michael Verney: “It is difficult in the sense of maybe the age that men get into coaching is maybe the time that women are having families. So there are barriers to it as well and that comes down to how it’s approached by the whole system to make it more accessible to women.”
The women’s codes are constantly evolving, but we’re not retaining enough of our ‘elders’ — those former players now in their 30s and 40s who have been through the inter-county system and would have a wealth of specialised knowledge to pass on to the younger generation.
As Wall pointed out, those former players may now have their hands full with small kids, or are focusing on their careers after years of juggling work and play. They are knowledge-rich but time-poor — and coaching is a time-consuming job.
A coaching report published last month surveyed 10,400 coaches across the GAA, LGFA, and Camogie Association, and found that 80% of coaches across all codes and grades are male. On average, coaches committed seven and a half hours per week to their coaching role, a figure that rose to nine hours the week of a match. Not many of the young mothers I know have that sort of time to give.
It’s a pity, because the more that female experience is channelled back into the GAA, the better it will be for the system as a whole. Plurality and diversity of personnel leads to plurality and diversity of ideas and approaches — which helps to find that edge that every manager is looking for.
And besides, in an ideal world, it’s probably what every former player would love to do. There are plenty of opportunities for former sportspeople. You can write a book or a column. You can start a podcast. You can appear on TV and radio panels and at events. But the feeling of being back in the arena — of throwing your shoulder to the collective effort and helping a team get over the line — is hard to beat.
