Pat Gilroy believes outside managers in leading counties 'doesn't work'

DOESNT WORK: Current Dublin coach Pat Gilroy believes appointing outside managers in leading counties has proven to be unsuccessful and can’t understand Mickey Harte’s decision to take the Derry position. Pic: Ray McManus / SPORTSFILE

Current Dublin coach Pat Gilroy believes appointing outside managers in leading counties has proven to be unsuccessful and can’t understand Mickey Harte’s decision to take the Derry position.

Gilroy noted Mayo native John O’Mahony’s success with Galway in 1998 and 2001 and the late Eugene McGee with Offaly in 1982 was another but no other outside manager has brought a county to a senior All-Ireland title.

“It doesn’t work,” the 2011 All-Ireland SFC winning manager and current management team member told the “Free State” podcast. “The facts of the matter are, guys from outside their own counties there are a handful that have actually been successful in taking a team the whole way. Do they get them better? 100%. Did Mick O’Dwyer get Kildare better? He did, very much so.” 

Gilroy, who is understood to be assisting Laois in finding their new senior football manager, explained the appointment of outside managers as a symptom of “a systems failure” and is convinced provincial councils should be encouraging counties to be self-sufficient.

“For me, the provincial championships are more or less dead in both codes, really, because they have become non-events. But there is a huge role in my view for provincial councils and set-ups in that they should be centres of excellence providing the learning and the education for all of these counties so they can homegrown these people. That should be their job.

“It’s not rocket science to understand what the strength and conditioning should be, what the nutrition should be, what the psychology should be, even what the training type should be.

“If you centralise that in the council and maybe Dublin has its own because it’s kind of doing that anyway then you breed these people in each of these counties and you’re getting the best knowledge being shared in the GAA and that evens the playing pitch. Then it stops this.” 

Gilroy, whose St Vincent’s club-mate Ger Brennan has replaced Harte in Louth, questioned Tyrone’s three-time All-Ireland winning manager’s decision to take the Derry role.

“If you’re a small county, you are tempted by it (outside manager) because getting out of Division 4 or 3 is a success. But for top counties who are competing for All-Irelands, it’s hard to see where that works. John O’Mahony did it, fair play to him.

“Mickey Harte, what he did with his club, his juvenile and senior success in Tyrone, is untouched. You would have said he’s a dyed-in-the-wool Tyrone man and he would bleed for Tyrone up to this.

“Even going to Louth, you would say he wasn’t going to be really competing against Tyrone, so I think that whole piece about going to somebody where you’re really going against your own, how do you do that? How do you honestly… you’re in a dressing room and you play on your identity and your culture and what Dublin football stands for in the Dublin case and you’re living on that and another three years down the line and imagine sitting in a Meath dressing room and saying ‘our culture…’ How do you do that? Where’s the authenticity?”

In the podcast, co-presenter Joe Brolly reiterated his vehement opposition to Harte being appointed to Derry. Yet in the mid-1990s Brolly claims he was involved in Gilroy’s late St Vincent’s club-mate and Dublin legend Brian Mullins taking over The Oak Leaf County.

Shortly after Mullins’ passing last year, Brolly wrote: “I met him after a game in Croke Park and asked him if he would be interested. He immediately said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Really?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ “I rang the county board and passed it on. A few months later, we arrived at Owenbeg and there he was, wearing that funny bushwacker hat, massive and intimidating.” 

The podcast can be listened to here: https://freestatepodcast.com/