Who will manage the managers?

WITH the management of their hurling teams in turmoil, a course in crisis management would appear to be a priority for the County Boards of Limerick, Clare and Tipperary.

And crisis is exactly what it is, according to one senior officer, a crisis that runs deeper and wider than at first appears.

The recent shock resignations of Cyril Lyons and Michael Doyle, senior hurling managers of Clare and Tipperary, respectively, and the sacking of Dave Keane in Limerick just one year into his projected two-year term, has created waves in three top hurling counties, but nobody in the GAA should feel complacent, reckons Clare GAA secretary Pat Fitzgerald.

This could have happened to anyone, as it did a few weeks ago in Offaly football with the bizarre removal of first-year senior football manager Paul O'Kelly, and two years ago in Cork, when Tom Cashman cashed in his chips as senior hurling manager, to be followed within a year by Bertie Óg Murphy, whose resignation was directly linked to a player revolt.

Indeed, it could even have happened in Kilkenny a few weeks ago, where manager Brian Cody, despite having won two of the previous three All-Ireland titles and two consecutive National Leagues, would have come under enormous pressure had Kilkenny lost to Cork in the final.

However, according to Fitzgerald one of the more progressive thinkers in the GAA there is more to all of this than meets the eye.

"I've heard Cyril Lyons being criticised lately, people blaming the manager for the lack of success of the team, but the problem is a lot more fundamental than that, a lot more complex than just picking out a single aspect and stating, 'the fault lies here'.

"There are far more, and far greater, underlying problems, but our tendency is always to look at what's over the ground. We've got to go underground, dig a little deeper, get to the root of the problem."

"There is growing pressure coming from the players, and that's becoming far more evident.

The playing life of the average inter-county hurler or footballer is becoming much shorter, much more intense, the ante is being upped every year with the result that it demands a lot more commitment."

With that demand there has been a commensurate demand from the players that this time, their time, should be spent as constructively as possible, and it is perhaps ironic that while over the last decade the modern managers have demanded more and more from the players, we're now seeing the reverse.

Tipperary's Michael Doyle, in his resignation, cited the fact that a lack of confidence from the players was one of his main reasons for leaving, while some within the Limerick camp claimed unhappiness with their fitness levels, leading to a request from the board that Keane should rid himself of the team trainer (Keane vehemently rejected that charge, using the rebuttal that 'this trainer had trained teams to win three consecutive Munster and All-Ireland U-21 Championships').

There is another player problem, of course, (also referred to in the Keane affair in Limerick) the drink culture now so endemic among that generation.

"Limerick senior players have no more of a problem with their social habits than any other county," stated Dave Keane.

"The kernel of Limerick's problem, with this and other issues, was the willingness and eagerness of a player or even some players, to go public. This drew national attention and magnified it out of all proportion.

"It created the divide, ensured disharmony and inhibited me in my natural instinct in dealing with the team. Such a fragmented team could not possibly develop the passion necessary to win."

ALL TRUE, but there was no denial of the problem, because according to Fitzgerald, there is no denying that one exists.

"There are so many social problems on the ground now, well documented, and the GAA isn't immune to that, in any county. To try and control that you almost need a second manager, one who is trained in these matters, in man-management, alongside a hurling manager."

Yes, alongside the fitness trainer, the physiotherapists, the doctors, the liaison officers, the body-mechanics experts, the backs' coach, the forwards' coach. In fact it's almost reaching the stage where the management teams are becoming more extended than even the extended player panels.

"But it's still the players who get most of the glory when you win, the managers who get most of the blame when you lose," notes Fitzgerald.

There is another reason for the growing pressure on inter-county managers however, a far more ominous reason, one felt especially by the Clare secretary. "There is a groundswell coming, pressure from the bottom, and that manifests itself at the County Board meetings.

"The clubs, the players on the ground, the ordinary Joe Soap feels aggrieved that they're getting further and further removed from what's happening at the top, but they are still the ones that have to pay the piper.

"They're the ones paying going into games, they're running the club lotto, training young fellas, looking after the raffles and draws, then they come in to the County Board meetings and see what's being spent on the county teams, around €500,000 in a year now on average, with one county going over €800,000.

"Ten thousand a week just on inter-county teams alone, that's a hell of a lot of money when you're depending on voluntary contributions and so on.

"Our gate receipts are the only regular source of income we have, and annually that would generate only about €240,000, so making up the shortfall is significant work.

"This whole inter-county thing has taken on a life of its own and is a worrying question for any GAA person. What direction are we going in? Do we try and reel it back in? There is no simple answer, but there is a real problem, at all levels," Fitzgerald believes.

Are inter-county managers now being hoist on their own petard?

There is no denying that this problem grew with the cult of the manager.

That was where the segregation began, powerful individuals being given carte blanche to proceed as they saw fit, holding more and more training sessions, bringing in more and more players, mini-weekends and maxi-weekends, pre-season breaks and post-season wakes, always the costs piling up, success surely going to pay for everything.

Where the spiral began doesn't matter anymore, but it is a spiral, every team now chasing the other into the success vortex, from which only one can emerge as winner.

Reel it in? Some proposition now, because this has become one bloody big fish. "More segregated, less integrated," that's how Pat Fitzgerald sees the new way of the GAA.

Inter-county managers? Going with that flow, caught in a maelstrom they helped to create.