PM O'Sullivan: jigs and reels of managers' dance brings new hope to counties

The managerial merry-go-round been spinning for lots of hurling's top sides.  

GENERATION GAME: Kilkenny manager Brian Cody and then players Henry Shefflin and Derek Lyng.  Picture: Pat Murphy / SPORTSFILE

Hurling’s current soundtrack as ‘Lanigan’s Ball’?

Managerial appointments, I mean. Take a listen.

The stepping out and the stepping in. Maybe an odd nonsensical polka, with some candidates madly talked up over the wires. Expected hum, standard crackle, the odd hiss. This person attended that club game in you know yourself what county.

No way round the recognition, I am afraid. Those stubborn facts. Four of the game’s top eight contenders put a new man in charge between early July and mid August. Quite a set of developments in so short a span.

Started with Pat Ryan replacing Kieran Kingston in Cork. A fortnight later, Liam Cahill headed home to Tipperary. Then Derek Lyng, in low-key Kilkenny style, replaced the GAA’s longest serving manager. Last week, Davy Fitzgerald went back to the future with Waterford.

Quite a roster. And why not stretch to top nine contenders? Word on Dublin’s choice of successor for Mattie Kenny cannot be long off. For side note, there is that mooted move of Liam Sheedy and Éamon O’Shea to Offaly.

The tempo would ratchet into jig time.

First off, bula bos for bravery to the new men. Consensus says Limerick, with Peter Casey and Cian Lynch fully back in harness, should run stronger in 2023 than in 2022. The Liam MacCarthy Cup might not be going anywhere anytime soon. John Kiely remains the manager to beat and Limerick the team to figure out. Offaly at least look towards the Joe McDonagh Cup, a less daunting horizon.

Then you have enlarged context. The season just gone underlined, in darkest ink, management’s fraught nature. Further applause for another type of bravery might be warranted.

Capeesh? I mentioned Kilkenny’s typically low key approach. Not always, though. This summer widened eyes, after ‘Kilkenny handshake’ started competing as shorthand with ‘horse’s head on pillow’. Colm Bonnar’s messy departure as Senor manager made a similar claim for ‘Tipperary handshake’.

The stakes got stakier, so to speak. Much sharper, anyhow.

Davy Fitzgerald steps back to Waterford, as a couple of Déise players step Down Under. He must have experienced mixed feelings about his friend Pat Bennett’s comments this week, welcoming him back while bidding farewell to Kieran Bennett and Shane Bennett. Thanks, Pat… Putting it mildly, I am no fan of Fitzgerald’s approach. But I think he made, as regards himself, a decent bet. Okay, Waterford rightly flopped after winning the NHL title. Championship hurling often makes a mockery of high flung league talk.

Yet the county still possesses a formidable spine, injury issues taken as equal. Here is a nice list: Conor Prunty, Tadhg de Búrca, Carthach Daly, Íarlaith Daly, Calum Lyons, Austin Gleeson, Stephen Bennett, Michael Kiely. Fitzgerald basically needs to sort out a reliable goalkeeper, find a top class corner back and construct a doughty half forward line.

Yes, two of the Bennetts will be gone. But Mark Fitzgerald (Passage) and Patrick Fitzgerald (Ballygunner) stand available. Davy Fitzgerald well knows even third place in Munster next summer could be glossed as significant success.

Top managers realise that snippets can be stitched into tactical pennants. The smallest element can end up broad instruction for the following season. Item: defeating Limerick will likely require two more green flags than they raise, which necessitates keeping attackers close to goal.

Barry Nash’s outing as TJ Reid’s marker in this summer’s All Ireland Final? A snippet.

Reid had a wonderful decider, seriously troubling Nash. Yet he played stretches of the second half in far too deep a position ― far too deep, because Kilkenny were behind. This dynamic allowed Nash to stay back and screen his full back line, making an opposition goal far less likely.

Had Kilkenny been ahead, the dynamic would have been different. Letting Reid off out the field would have become a far edgier affair.

Fresh idea for Waterford? Play Austin Gleeson in the sort of peregrine corner forward role late period TJ Reid has made his own. This ploy would force Nash to mark in relatively open spaces, thereby stifling his ball-carrying and ball-transferring role. Nash stifled would be Limerick significantly hampered.

Main hope in Kilkenny? That Derek Lyng brings keener awareness of tactical nuance. There is likewise a wish that he will establish a better sideline relationship with Henry Shefflin. The shadow of Brian Cody’s reign should not obscure this goal.

Many home supporters do not approve of Shefflin’s journey westward. Fair enough. That perspective is perfectly valid, even if Shefflin did not choose a different path to what was chosen by Diarmuid Healy when he transferred allegiance to Offaly during the 1980s. Healy returned to manage Kilkenny in 1989 and 1990, winning an NHL title in his second season.

Then and since, I thought the whole Shefflin affair wildly overblown. I suppose people love end-of-pier knockabout, soap opera made flesh. How else to understand TV ratings?

All the same, here is unadorned fact. Brian Cody worked for 15 highly productive seasons with Michael Dempsey, Laois native and former intercountry footballer. Dempsey was a vital part of Cody’s management team between 2005 and 2019.

Now here is unadorned truth. At most, there stands only a difference in degree between Henry Shefflin with Galway and Michael Dempsey with Kilkenny. There exists no difference in kind. The fact that the former has not relocated full time to Galway, as the latter did to Kilkenny, counts only as that difference in degree. Does hypocrisy not fleck non acknowledgment of this truth?

Meanwhile, Tipperary occupy an intriguing position. The only way, presumably, is up. Many practical challenges face Liam Cahill and Michael Bevans. Could Bryan O’Mara add juice to a backline badly in need of pep? Can this duo do for Jake Morris what Éamon O’Shea did for Lar Corbett and Séamus Callanan? So forth.

DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK: Waterford manager Davy Fitzgerald is congratulated by selector Pat Bennett after victory over Galway during his first stint in charge of the Déise. Picture: Diarmuid Greene / SPORTSFILE

Park those considerations for the moment. Ponder instead an overarching query. Cahill took on a post he effectively turned down 12 months ago. How this dynamic unspools will be, initially, the fascinating aspect. Is he stronger or weaker, 12 months later, accepting the post?

Cork have stayed notably quiet. Kieran Kingston resigned in dignified fashion and Pat Ryan immediately got installed. Such rapidity suggested two decisive factors. First, the County Board long knew their preferred choice. U20 players were always keen to acknowledge that life under Ryan’s set up proved excellent not just for silverware.

Second, such rapidity avoided a media campaign gathering around any other candidate. There remain delusional Rebel folk who believe 2000s Cork were better than 2000s Kilkenny. That faction still gaze backwards, fixated on battles long lost. Item: Dónal Óg Cusack’s Sunday Gameplaint, 16 years on, about the height of Croke Park grass on September 3, 2006.

Good luck to Pat Ryan. He has his work ― no pun intended ― cut out.

There we are. This week’s thunder is not just of literal kind. Noises off all over the place. Truth told, there can be a certain tediousness to management’s jigs and reels.

To be honest, I much prefer Joe Jackson’s take. Let us be generous and maybe even naïve about what might await us in 2023. Let us even wish Davy Fitzgerald well with Waterford.

We still have that 1982 single ‘Steppin’ Out’, Jackson’s hymn to the gorgeous ache of possibility. Take a listen. Can dress in pink and blue just like a child… No county wears those colours. Yet all of them hanker, even in August, after change as chance.