O’Mahony hits out at intercounty spending

Former Mayo footballer Fr. Dan O’Mahony has raised the question of putting players in charge of teams in financially-stricken counties.

O’Mahony, chairman of Cloonacool, queried Sligo’s ability to afford a manager after their debts rose by approximately €200,000 to over €1.7 million.

He made the comments at the county’s annual convention last Thursday where he said players were being “mollycoddled out of existence”.

O’Mahony prefaced his comments by saying he didn’t want to return the GAA to the middle of the last century.

However, after Sligo replaced Galway’s Kevin Walsh with Offaly man Pat Flanagan, he is worried about the financial costs that come with manager-led inter-county squad preparations.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner yesterday, he said: “We need to have a bit of a reality check. When you’re spending money that you don’t have and people are owed money for work done you have to sit up and take notice.

“I said there was an elephant in the room. In the past, there wasn’t as much of a focus on management and getting managers in from other counties.

“Players in the past took on more responsibility whereas now they are being too well looked after and too much is being done for them.

“Small counties like Sligo, they’re competing with the likes of Dublin who have big sponsorships. When you have had some success like Sligo in recent years people get carried away and forget about what it’s costing. When that success fades the reality hits.”

“You see costs of €100,000 on physio and medical costs. Even with all that, Sligo haven’t been that successful in the last year and there’s no guarantee next year they will be either.

“What I was saying was maybe a county should look at somebody within the panel managing for a year or two before finances improve.”

“When Mayo won their two All-Irelands it was the players who took it by the scruff of their neck. Sean Flanagan was a leader. Things are much more different now. It’s fashionable to have managers from elsewhere and nothing is spared.

“When Sligo won Connacht in 1975, Barnes Murphy was the leader. Mick O’Dwyer and Kevin Heffernan made management fashionable.

“I’m old-fashioned but there’s talk of these psychologists and a lot of the problems in the county are more in the head than down further.”

O’Mahony highlighted the stress Sligo’s financial difficulties are placing on small clubs like Cloonacool.

“We’re the junior club in the Tubbercurry area and our heads are just above water financially but there will be huge pressure with different levies from the county board and more asked of us in the year ahead.”

In his address, O’Mahony recalled not having a warm-up or warn-down and receiving just a glass of milk and a club milk bar after training.

“I won a county title with Tourlestrane and the pitch was even rectangular. I was challenged once for putting cattle out of the field by the chap who claimed to own it.

“I look at that pitch now and they’re hurling there under floodlights. I’m all for it but even clubs get carried away now. You look at Davy Fitzgerald in Clare and he nearly has as many now in the backroom team as he does in the panel. Where is it going to finish?”