Micko plays it coy on Mayo manager vacancy

MICK O’DWYER has refused to be drawn on speculation linking him with the vacant manager’s post in Mayo.

The veteran manager is one of five men – former Mayo boss John Maughan, Denis Kearney and former players Anthony McGarry and James Horan are the others – to have been nominated for the post in the wake of John O’Mahony’s departure.

It has been reported that O’Dwyer has the support of a number of people on the Mayo executive but the man himself has yet to confirm a severing of his links with Wicklow and is playing his cards close to his chest.

“I have no decision made,” he said yesterday.

“I have had a word with a few in the last six months but I have made no decision. There isn’t any timescale. If they can fill out their managerial posts, wouldn’t it be great? It’ll relieve me for a year and I’ll have a rest.”

That last comment was clearly said in jest. When asked subsequently if he still had the hunger for life on the sideline for another 12 months, the answer was very much in the affirmative.

“I’m training my own team in Waterville because the man who was in charge of the team in Waterville had an operation on his back. That’s what I’m doing at the moment, I can’t get away from it.”

O’Dwyer’s name has also been mentioned in dispatches regarding the Limerick position which is also waiting to be filled now that Mickey Ned O’Sullivan has ended his involvement with the side.

It is the Mayo branch of this story that is garnering most attention right now, however, even if O’Dwyer himself is far too savvy to get cornered into a declaration of intent just yet.

“The 32 counties in Ireland would be appealing to me,” he said when pressed on the possibility of landing in Connacht. “I’d take Kilkenny as quick as I’d take Mayo if I got a notion and I’ve proven that.

“I took Kildare when they were down, I took Laois when they were down and I took Wicklow. It wouldn’t matter one way or the other. I love training teams, I’m back to my old club in Waterville and I still get a buzz out of it.”

Mayo would certainly fit the bill of being a county in need of a lift after a disappointing summer in which they were eliminated from their province by Sligo and ejected from the qualifiers by Longford.

“Mayo think they’re up all the time,’’ O’Dwyer said. “They are producing great underage players and it’s amazing they haven’t achieved. I suppose they should have won an All-Ireland in 1996 when Meath beat them.

“They have the players, maybe too many players. They have been unlucky a lot of the time. There’s a lot of good young players as well.”