Rest and fun — the Roe recipe for success

IT’S six years since Pat Roe first tried his hand at inter-county management but the most important lesson the Offaly manager ever learnt about football was when his own playing career was ended cruelly in 1995.

Save for three seasons in Boston, Roe played with his native Laois from 1982 on, but that came to an abrupt end with a knee injury in an O’Byrne Cup match.

“The surgeon told me after the operation that I didn’t need a brace because, as a new knee, it was actually far better than the old one, but of course, I didn’t listen.

“My first game back was a league match for the club against Portarlington. I played it with the brace on and I was watching the knee the whole time. I got back that day and told (his wife) Mags to hide it somewhere I’d never find it and, sure enough, I never wore it again.

“I’ve never had a problem with it since and I got three more years with the club that I thought I’d lost. I forgot about the injury totally. It just goes to show you, the psychological side is everything in sport.”

Roe dipped his first toe into the managerial pond with the unfashionable Crettyard club the year after his operation and success came quickly. By the time he moved on, Crettyard had won two league titles and came within a whisker of a county semi-final.

What served him well there worked in spells with Carlow and Wexford and, despite demotion to Division Four, may well pay dividends if Offaly can put the frighteners on Dublin tomorrow.

Mindful of the lesson the knee brace taught him, Roe spends as much time working on his players’ minds as he does on their bodies.

He explained: “A happy dressing room is a productive dressing room. I won’t say players like training but they like being with the rest of the squad and it doesn’t have to be a chore. It shouldn’t be a chore. There’s a huge workload on the modern footballer but a fella has to like to go into a dressing room. If you achieve that then you will get a productive team.”

He was a popular presence in Carlow and Wexford when he set the players on leaves of absence until the New Year celebrations were done and dusted.

Roe has consulted physiologists in the past about the GAA phenomenon of training regimes that start as early as October and discovered such an approach was pointless if you wanted teams to be peaking in June and July.

Rest is the most vital aspect of a county player’s preparation, he believes, and it pains him to see so many players finishing-up when they have even to hit their peak.

“I just don’t believe in these gruelling sessions for months on end. We put a programme in place for our season to start in January and, truthfully, we suffered as a consequence in the league because we weren’t up to the pace of other teams in the division and are going down to Division Four.

“The thing is, you want to see the best of players in June and July and that’s what we have aimed for.”

“When I think back on it now, I think we were wrong to let him go so easily,” reflects Carlow official Tommy Murphy.

“I think Pat felt he had taken the team as far as he could and we accepted that. Maybe we should have tried to persuade him to stay on because he did a very good job here.”

He did an even better one next door with Wexford. They served notice of their intentions with a one-point defeat to Armagh in Crossmaglen in his first league game in charge.

They managed that without the services of Matty Forde who hit 4-5 in an extraordinary defeat of Galway in Pearse Stadium later in the league. Wexford were holding their own on their return to the top flight.

They reached the NFL final a year later but they fell short against Armagh as they would do in successive Leinster semi-finals against Westmeath and Dublin and after the second of those, Roe again chose to walk away.

Roe gave himself a full year off after his decisions to leave Carlow and Wexford, ignoring a stream of offers until he felt his batteries were well and truly recharged.

“I still say feel that way. Doing this for years and years… I don’t know how anyone could do it. It’s relentless. It is seven days a week and this year was even more difficult for me. After doing so poorly in the league, we really had to work hard as a squad and as a management team to right ourselves.”

Dublin bar his way into a Leinster final for the second time in three seasons at Croke Park tomorrow and the one point he will stress more than any other will be a simple one: enjoy it.

“I said it to the players that anyone who wants to play football should be looking to play football in front of a full house in Croke Park and it’s the same for me or any manager. You have to look forward to it.”