Barry moves to derail Banty’s Meath bid

SEAMUS McEnaney’s high profile management team comes with a price tag of between €60,000 and €80,000.

That’s the claim of former Meath manager Eamonn Barry who insists it’s not too late for clubs to appoint a home grown manager for 2011.

McEnaney received the backing of Meath’s management committee last Thursday night to succeed ousted Eamonn O’Brien and will be presented before county board delegates tomorrow night for ratification.

Normally that process would be a fait accompli though Barry is adamant that clubs are so disenchanted with the process to date that he predicts they’ll reject the proposal.

He reckons that O’Brien was only sacked because he was ‘caught in the cross fire’ between frustrated club delegates and county board chairman Barney Allen.

According to Barry, clubs are being kept in the dark on various county board issues including exactly how much it would cost to fund McEnaney’s largely Ulster based management set-up.

“I’m hearing figures being mentioned of up to sixty and eighty thousand, for the year,” said Barry, who insisted he performed the management role free of charge during his one season in charge in 2006.

“We did this job free of charge. It was on a voluntary basis like everyone else before us, Sean Boylan and all his people.

“The same with the people that followed him; Colm Coyle, Tommy Dowd and Dudley Farrell and likewise Eamonn O’Brien, Colm Brady, Bob O’Malley and Donal Curtis, and Sean Kelly who was there this year.

“That’s the way the job has always been done in Meath. We’ve proved to be very, very successful doing it that way that I don’t believe we need outside people to come in and manage the Meath senior football team.”

McEnaney’s backroom staff consists of renowned trainer Marty McElkennon and All-Ireland winning Armagh coach Paul Grimley. All three are Ulster based though Meath legend and successful Skryne manager Liam Harnan is also a selector having initially been nominated for the position himself.

“I think it’s a bit disingenuous of Liam Harnan who received a nomination to become the next Meath manager,” claimed Barry.

“Liam failed to put a management team together from within the county and instead took the soft option and rode in behind an outside management team.

“All the other people, people within the county who received nominations, put our own management teams together. That was all involving people who are involved in Meath football.”

Barry was a star forward for Walterstown and both played for and managed Meath. He was among the last four in the race for the Meath job along with McEnaney, Gerry Cooney and Pat Coyle. If McEnaney is rejected tomorrow evening Barry could come back into the picture to take over for 2011 in the event of a fresh nominations process.

“I think the general consensus out there is that I was very badly treated when I was there (in 2006) because of hassle I had with the county board,” said Barry.

“More or less the same people are in charge of the county board and there’s still ongoing hassle over these appointments.”

Barry claimed that O’Brien was also a victim of county board politics which saw him rejected by delegates for reappointment in early September.

“Eamonn was caught in the cross fire between the club delegates that go into these county board meetings and the county chairman Barney Allen,” said Barry. “A lot of people realise now that it was unfair what happened to Eamonn O’Brien.”