Tony Leen: Who said Cork is the only county sweating over managerial hot seat?

Inter-county GAA management swallows lives whole. It’s hard, thankless and gruelling. The rewards are illusory and the realities of life always impinge, right down to minding the kids.

TUNNEL VISION: Jack O'Connor is due to be in charge of Kerry again in 2025, which would be an eleventh campaign in charge of the Kingdom. Pic: Tyler Miller/Sportsfile.

It isn’t easy reconcile the conflicting views. With all the hand-wringing after Cork’s derisory offering in the All-Ireland SFC round of 16 tie with Louth last Sunday, there was a parallel trepidation too at the thought of John Cleary handing the keys back to Páirc Uí Chaoimh for the final time. Sunday was shocking, but the future’s bleaker still without him, kind of thing.

Where would Cork go next? Beyond the county bounds? There appears to be no-one within the county ready to take the hand-off, Éamonn Fitzmaurice said later on RTÉ. He wasn’t wrong. Cleary is self-employed too, another complication.

The sense was that this was a uniquely Cork hole, cratered in Inniskeen. Really?

Jack O’Connor is in his third term as Kerry manager, his tenth season in all. Who would Kerry turn to if he said after this season that he’s done? Jack doesn’t tend to overstay his welcomes, even if he has signed up til 2025. It’s not like Kerry, the home of football, hasn’t had time to consider the scenario or nurture a line of succession. But the first instinct on the future would, inevitably, be to go back to Fitzmaurice. Between them, they've been in charge 17 of the last 22 seasons with the county.

Inter-county management swallows lives whole. It’s hard, thankless and gruelling. The rewards are illusory and the realities of life always impinge. ‘You’d swear we were international managers,’ John Cleary told Off The Ball this week.

As a school principal and a father of two young kids, it would be tricky for Fitzmaurice but it’s not the only live conversation in the Kingdom this autumn. Tomás Ó Sé’s term as Under 20 manager is up, as is Wayne Quillinan’s with the county minors. Is it getting easier or more difficult to attract the right type of person to an inter-county management role? Does that make it all the more important to hold onto the good ones, and accede to their requests/demands?

What would happen in Dublin if Dessie Farrell, in his fifth campaign, decided enough was enough (he has another season on his ‘term’). Pat Gilroy wouldn’t go back. Mick Bohan? Declan Darcy? Ger Brennan? It wouldn’t be straightforward for the most successful, cash-rich county playing the game.

FRUSTRATED: Cork manager John Cleary, mulling over his future in the role Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Padraig Joyce is also in his fifth season in the gig, and has his work colleague John Divilly alongside him on the management tea. If both called it a day..? Alan Glynn? Derek Savage? The Galway hurlers could be in a similar boat.

Kieran McGeeney has a decade done at the helm in Armagh. It’s all consuming. His wife Maura is the team physio, but also a mother who has to organise child-minding to keep doing the gig. Her mam often travels up from Kerry to help out. Armagh have had plenty of time to cultivate a line of succession, and in that respect, they are the outliers, in better order than most. Sligo manager Tony McEntee has done impressive work and ex-Wicklow gaffer Oisín McConville has pulled up some trees too. They have served inter-county apprenticeships.

So one presumes they now too have a sense of the all-consuming nature of the gig. The grind. John Cleary does now too. But few know it better than Mickey Harte and Jack O’Connor. They now realise that personal circumstances and time is a critical element of the package. It used be that only teachers could do the inter-county thing. Is it now just retired teachers? Both are retired from the day job, but O’Connor’s perspective on how things have moved on over the course of the last two decades is illuminating.

“When I started off in 2004 I was doing a lot of stuff myself,” the Kerry manager explains, “whereas now there is a bigger back room team and the thing is more structured. I can delegate a lot more.” Kerry appointed Jason McGahan to the role of head of athletic development six years ago but his role has been expanded since. The Tullysaran, Co Armagh man is now “a big part of the set up” O’Connor explained this week, with his fellow coaches like Paddy Tally and the mentors, Mike Quirke and Diarmuid Murphy also doing a lot of work.

The trick seems to be spreading the load as wide as possible. There’s been a lot of mirth around the number of backroom experts with the Limerick hurlers, but the All-Ireland hurling champions are the template for many and they are hunting a record fifth All-Ireland in a row. This is the benchmark.

“I am overseeing the whole thing,” added the Kerry manager. “Of course, I have my input when I see fit, but the backroom team do a lot of the work.

“When I look back from this vantage point, the way I was doing the job in the early years around 2004 or 05 wasn’t a sustainable model. I was a full-time teacher, and I was taking on too much to the extent that I felt I burnt myself out after three years.” 

It was one of the reasons he stepped down after winning his second All-Ireland title as manager in 2006, returning to the helm again two years later before leaving for a second time after the 2012 season. He only returned for a third time a decade later, in 2022. Refreshed, even with a stint in Kildare in the interim. Kerry went for him because he was a proven winner.

“The way (inter-county management) works now is a lot more sustainable, you delegate a lot more, more to share the workload, and it’s more structured – thereby more sustainable,” he argues.

That’s not to say, less stressful. He smiles when it’s put to him that Kerry have been timing their run to Sunday’s quarter-final against a ‘highly dangerous’ Derry. That they will pull a couple of jokers from the bottom of the deck. “That’s sort of suggesting what we showed so far isn’t good enough! There are no aces up any sleeve.” He’ll meet and greet Harte on the sideline, and know that the Derry manager enjoys nothing more than pitting his best stuff against Kerry. 

Though O’Connor thinks that’s somewhat overplayed.

“When we did video analysis on the Derry players, I don’t remember any clips of Mickey Harte …”