The big interview with Marc Sheehan: 'I won’t be shillyshallying on things that need to be done'
Marc Sheehan, chairman Cork County board with his wife Caitríona and son Ruaidhri at Pairc Ui Chaoimh. Pictures: Eddie O'Hare
Marc Sheehan, a tidy man of 42, is a disciple of diligence and detail. He was a GAA club chairman at 23 and when he’s told that he sounds and speaks like the school principal he is, it’s encouraging that he doesn’t get all huffy.
Why tell you any more about the new Cork GAA chairman — a county that doesn’t do crises by half — when he can show you around himself. They told us in writing school: Show, don’t tell. Death to adverbs.
Everything that is Marc Sheehan is in the following passage: the detail, everything that shaped him, directed him to this moment. Along the way he helped reshape underage GAA in Cork and moving to Galway for work didn’t deter him. He drove Tuesday nights from Rosscahill in Galway down to Cork to present a four-and-a-half minute report on the goings on at Munster Council, where he represented Cork. That’s a bit later. First a minor hurling game with Aghabullogue.
The ‘seminal moment’ in his life.
“I ruptured my cruciate ligament that effectively banjaxed my playing career. It was an autumn minor league final, but it was played the following May bank holiday weekend in Caherlag against Erin’s Own. It was a month before I did my Leaving Cert. Quite a significant competition it was, Trustee Savings Bank gear bags were the bounty. It was supposed to be played in November, and the following February but there was a huge tragedy in our parish and it was postponed. Eventually it was played on the May Bank Holiday in 1996.
“I twisted my knee and was carried off the field by my late father, who died suddenly five months later. We went to Cork Regional Hospital, got a bit of physio, went to Fannin’s on Washington Street for a bandage and that was that. Proceeded to the Leaving Cert, on a crutch in Room 4B in Coachford Community College with my leg up on a stool.
“It improved after, so I went back playing, and we beat Inniscarra in a Muskerry minor hurling final which was a serious enough skelp at the time. When Minor A was strong. At almost the same time as the game in Caherlag, six minutes from the end, my knee went again. My father carted me off to Dr Seamus Looney on the Bandon Road. He was a good GAA doctor, one thing led to another and the following day — after Wexford had won the All-Ireland in '96 — I ended up on the flat of my back with Bill Cashman, the orthopaedic surgeon, at South Bank on Crosses Green, who twisted the knee and had me jumping out the window with pain.
“Into Shanakiel Hospital the following day for my scope, which was a big thing at the time, and they said ‘come back when you’ve your first year law exams done and we can reconstruct that knee next June.”
That was end of September 1996.
“My father died three or four weeks later, I eventually got the knee done in June 1997. From a playing point of view, and the shock of seeing my dad dying at 45, that put me on the coaching and administrative pathway. That was our family’s annus horribilis.
“I would have played U21 Championship, I never got to play intermediate championship for my own club Aghabullogue which, pre-injury — and they’ll laugh at home reading this — might have happened. I’d have been a fairly committed corner-back. Effective if not the most glamorous. I played with Muskerry at U15 and U16 in the Dick Barrett Shield, in 1994, a great competition.
“I was 18 when my dad died. Just a massive heart attack. Just dropped. In the house. A Thursday night, Friday morning.
“He had taken me into UCC that Thursday night, the first Law Society debate for the year was on and Judge Harry Whelahan, the former AG was explaining about the X Case or something. Dad decided not to go back out home, instead heading on down to the Mercy Hospital to visit an elderly friend of his from Canovee who was dying.
“Paddy O’Sullivan, he used to fix lawnmowers for us and all that. A pure mechanical genius. But Paddy had been moved up to Marymount and Dad decided that he wouldn't bother going up there, that he'd rather remember him as he was as a good old friend — and he was dead four hours later himself. Paddy lived a week longer.
“It was as brutal as that. We went home, had a cup of tea, went to bed looking forward to the bank holiday weekend ahead, he felt unwell with a pain in his stomach — no chest pain, no arm pain, then he was dead.”
That John Sheehan had been chairman of Aghabullogue already must have been a subconscious element in his only son’s post-playing years.
“I would come from a strong line of independent thinkers on both sides. My mother Mary is from Ardfield in west Cork, and she is a real practical lady and a huge driver in our household. I still remember her saying two or three days after my father was buried, even amid the whole fog and confusion, ‘whatever else you do, you are going to stay involved in the GAA’.
“She would have pledged, after getting my law exams but still on the flat of my back above in the Orthopaedic in Block 8 — that was the VHI ward at the time — that we were going in and out of Macroom for physio, that I would be back down at the GAA pitch, even if it was to line it.
“Even today, she will comb the papers, she has a pulse and an ear for what’s going on, the various chat shows on local radio, she won’t miss anything. Since (Marc’s first born) Ruaidhri landed on two years ago she’s his principal carer. She spends a lot of time with us.”
And what would Mary and his Castlecomer wife Caitriona — father from Freemount in north Cork, by the by — agree on?
“That I would perhaps overthink many of the things I do. I always try and achieve perfection.
“They have a very close relationship. A shrewd west Cork woman and a shrewd Kilkenny woman, there’s some combo there. My wife would say, hopefully in a good sense, that I would be fairly decisive. And in terms of making a decision, sticking to it.
“As our own club chairman 20 years ago, did I ever have a grand plan to be chairman of Cork GAA? Probably not.
Something else about Sheehan that might augur well. Seems he isn’t for talking out of both sides of his mouth. The clubs of Cork might know that better at this stage as the hard sell to get ‘Rebels' Bounty’ Board fundraiser off the ground has morphed into Zoom meetings with the rank and file of the county’s units. Sheehan has had doorstep feedback on the issues affecting the grassroots — from finance to playing numbers to depopulation to the damage a lack of games is inflicting.
“There's a clarity and a comfort for everyone in honesty and being up front about issues. That's a fundamental point for me personally, workwise in the school and at home. You go into this role with your eyes wide open, and issues situations will arise. But fundamental honesty and integrity and faithfulness to the rules of the association and to the principles which guide it are very, very important.
“Sometimes it's not easy to be out in front, but our supporters and our people in clubs prefer you to be open and up front about issues. To move away from the perception of a culture of secrecy. People appreciate that. I think that's a good guiding principle in anything and that level of engagement and being forthright on issues.”
Does he keep a diary?
“I do, a written one. It's busy, it's demanding. The family comes first always, the day job is demanding as well. We're at a tender stage for a new build here at Scoil an Athar Tadhg in Carrignavar. So that's a big 37,000 square foot beast going onto a four-acre site. And that’s all before this chairmanship. I am here for a period of time to a maximum of three years. The motivation is to do the very, very best you can and recognise you have to operate within the confines.
"Did I ever imagine being country chairman — or Tracey Kennedy before me — in a Covid situation? But the key fundamentals have to be kept alive.
The benefit of Microsoft Teams and Zoom calls means one can easily collate the hours spent on meetings — for Sheehan it’s 14-15 hours minimum a week, and that’s excluding phone calls, emails and engagements.
"My conversations with Kevin (CEO, O’Donovan) would be probably four times a day. And normally I'm on the first call on my way to work around ten past eight.”
Like any Cork chairman before him, this one wants Liam MacCarthy or Sam Maguire on the South Mall during his term of office. He doesn’t need reminding, no more than Kieran Kingston, that it’s 16 years and counting since Cork won a senior hurling All-Ireland.
“And the focus has to be on that,” he nods. “Part of the rectification is the revised club championship structure that got that off the ground last year. We'd hope that we can do so this year and develop that further in a more succinct way. I suppose it's how we approach the preparation of the teams.
"And that's not all about money. A bit like maybe the health service, if you could throw more money at it, it's still not going to solve it.
“Does it irk that we are no longer considered one of hurling’s big three? It does. But that’s the reality. I mean, the stats don't lie now for the last number of years. In the immediate term it's about analysing where we're at. And we have some very good players coming through.
"It’s not productive to linger over what has happened since 2005, it's about what we need to do as hurlers, as management, as mentors and as a county board to make sure we are not dealing with another 16 years.
“I remember being involved with Brian Cuthbert, John Considine, Dr Liam Hennessy and Seanie McGrath re the formation of the development squads in 2011 and Considine, being the economist and the statistician, would always pull this all back to ground and say one team would only win in any given year. The margins and the millimetres of difference between Team A and Team B — it's a very, very competitive environment out there. If you go back to the hurling semi-final in 2018 against Limerick, and how that game finished, it was a seminal moment.
“What every chairman wants is for Cork teams to be winning and doing well. We don't have a right to be going well but the material is there. Definitely. As vice-chair I would have been involved in the appointment of Kieran Kingston. And as chair of the day, you need to have a significant engagement with intercounty management on an ongoing basis.
"You're not interfering in picking teams. You're not into that level, but you need to be engaged with them. And it's not just on the logistical stuff. You need to challenge them, those conversations need to be had and there's a delicate balance there. That's certainly something that I'm anxious to do.
“Secondly, there has to be a financial order to the place to do anything. We're not in a good position in terms of finances. We've got to grasp that. And the most tangible thing that we're doing at the moment and have been preparing for the last six or seven months is the draw.”
As vice-chair, Sheehan was also in the boardroom for the grim accounts of financial Armageddon around the stadium rebuild at Páirc Ui Chaoimh.
From a point where its day-to-day running was controlled out of Croke Park and not Cork, the chairman is now “absolutely” confident that the Páirc will not drag Cork GAA under — the unification of the Board, the Stadium and Cairde Chorcai into ‘One Cork’ helping in that regard.
“I'm very satisfied that we are on the right track. A lot of work has still to be done. And we will get there, and we'll get there in a strategic way, which will make this fabulous stadium into so many more things than a pitch.”
The funding bounce that the new Rebels' Bounty draw provides — the first winners were announced on Thursday night — is a stimulus in more ways than one. Turning the vibe surrounding Cork GAA around has been slow, unwieldy and seemingly interminable.
In a nutshell, Cork’s clubs are charged with selling a certain number of tickets and anything over and above is theirs to keep. While small clubs in depopulated rural areas initially struggled, others are clearing €40,000 profits. Over 28,000 signed up to the draw. Those who came to scoff, remained to pray, and all that.
“It's been a thumping success,” says the chairman. “€1.9m of a return to clubs, no strings attached. We started off on the 1st of January with a support committee in place, and we’ve been on the campaign which has been hugely productive in terms of linking in with clubs. It’s meant having conversations with the key officers. It's finding out where they’re at, what state of health and financial health they are in, what their outgoings are.”
Any danger of a club in Cork going to the wall, for any and all of the reasons outlined?
“In a nutshell, yes. There are clubs where they don’t have an underage structure and that's a major, major problem. Small clubs in west Cork, north-west Cork, areas in the city where you don’t have an underage. We're on Microsoft Teams as a platform for meetings and since January there are around 165 delegates logging on. To me, that's hugely positive.
"They're all engaging in the process on this project. But the second part of the conversation has been: ‘OK, we'll support the draw because we want to be under the Cork GAA banner. But we've got huge needs as well.’ They're basically saying to you in a nutshell, what you gonna do for us? And that's a very legitimate question, not easily answered.
"The beauty of up-front engagement is that these issues have been highlighted. I wouldn't say we were completely unaware of them but getting down to the nuts and bolts of it is revealing and it’s good.
“We've got to learn from this (Covid) pause as well. It's a different era now. And unless we are fairly crystal clear in our pathway out of it, people are going to drop off from the GAA scene.
"It's all about games, games, games and we're crying out for them.”
“There has been commentary, but we made a decision, we’ve engaged with them, worked with them and I don’t have any quibbles. The Cork GAA brand carries a lot of traction and this is our partner. You’ll always have commentary, particularly in a downtime period.
"Has my inbox been full with observations or my telephone pinging with same? It hasn't. And that’s the truth.”
“This is a big issue. We have formally raised it with headquarters again. The decision has to be revisited immediately. Because you will have serious threats to club players, people who have mortgages, families, on their uppers. And if there's a possibility that they're going to be without wage cover in the event of a fairly serious injury, you may well have people having to surrender their camán and their football.
"Getting people back into the organisation, back playing games, that is our core business.”
"I had that petrol station moment in Mallow one night. I was driving back up to Galway after a meeting in Cork and filling up opposite me was an inter-county hurler on his way back down to UCC. Those journeys would focus your mind because you are still up for school at 7.10 the following morning.
When I went for the vice-chair in 2018 we has a long conversation about that. There’s a tremendous forbearance and support from your family. But the cause must be served.”
"I come from a GAA club that was always inclusive so it's nothing new for me. That is hugely important. At its most basic it’s practical engagement, i.e the use of facilities. I'm not talking about huge revolution. It works best when there's mutual respect.
"I don't want there to be a perception in my time that the camogie and ladies football organisations aren't getting access to Pairc Uí Chaoimh and Páirc Uí Rinn.”
"I'd say training for underage, in pods, is maybe something that could happen next month, but being more specific is unwise and difficult. Maybe after April 12 we will have a better idea, which would coincide with the full reopening of schools. And there is a kind of logic to that.
"We need to close the window on 2020, give clubs the opportunities to prepare for those county finals. There are four or five marquee games. They’re the priority.”
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