Who'd Be A Manager

What qualities do you need in order to survive in the hellish world of modern inter-county management? A touch of hard-nosed insanity has to be present in their DNA, especially those who stick it out for over 12 months. Ulster in recent years has been a graveyard for newly-appointed managers. You only have to think of Brian McIvor, Paddy Crozier, Jody Gormley, Peter McDonnell and Ross Carr. Years ago, a manager was the last man you blamed. The likes of Art McCrory and Brian McEniff would’ve taken on the post as a youngster, only stepping down at retirement age. If things weren’t going well on the field, it was the players who faced the abuse and they couldn’t really hear it on the park. The manager was just there to make sure the best players in the county got there on time and togged out. Many a boss would’ve trawled the pubs at midday to get a couple of his key players sobered up for a game three hours later. Now, it’s the man on the sideline who faces the music first and foremost. It wouldn’t matter if you won Sam five years running as manager, if you had a mediocre year on the 6th attempt, they’ll be writing letters and hurling abuse at matches. It’s a lose-lose situation. Today, everyone needs a pantomime villain.

You get the odd strong character like Kernan, Boylan, O’Dwyer, McEniff or Harte who don’t give two hoots about what others say. But they’re the exception. Too many fellas, brave enough to take on the post, are left broken men after 2-3 years of honest yet thankless service. It’s time county boards took into consideration who they appoint into that position. Let’s be honest here. If there was a 5ft 5’’, 10 stone manager prancing up and down the sideline, you’re not going to fear him from behind the fence. You’ll get rid of your anger by directing a few expletives towards the defenceless cratur, knowing he’ll hardly leap over the fence looking for a bit of boxing. McEniff wouldn’t have lasted a month if he was just starting out in the management in the modern era. Kildare made the right move. I’d say McGeeney gets zero verbals from the lily-white faithful. Can you imagine how you’d feel if after shouting, ‘ah away back te Mullaghbawn ye nordie spanner’ as McGeeney stops dead and with the deathly precision of a sniper picks you out from the crowd with a thunderous stare. You’d be out of Newbridge before the sideline ball was taken. Add to that big Grimley hovering beside him just in case you were still breathing after Geezer’d finished mauling the loudmouth.

The Down and Armagh county boards had a big decision to make. Both counties possess a growing band of maniacal followers who will take nothing less than to win every game as remotely acceptable. If Armagh appoint the likes of a McEniff type character in stature, he’ll be gobbled up within minutes of the first throw in. Same with Down – I’d worry about the likes of Linden or a McComiskey-type build taking the reins in front of a baying pack or Mournemen. Big Greg McCartan and Francie Bellew are the lads in my book. Francie’d only have to innocently look in your direction and you’d get slightly nervous wondering can he read your thoughts.

In my final few years as a club player on the Donegal/Sligo border, we had a manager who recognised the road the game was taking. Despite being in charge of a hopeless group of players, the only 15 males in the parish, Big Jemmy was beginning to be on the receiving end of some terrible abuse. It wasn’t his fault that the goalkeeper had a glass eye, our wing half back was riddled with the consumption and two of our forwards were developing serious cases of in-turning legs. He still took flak from the men and women of the parish. After another mauling from our parish neighbours, he cracked after one ‘ye bollocks’ too many was aimed at him from behind the dugout. He jumped over the wall and flailed every punter in sight, even stretching out the visiting Canon from America. The locals thought it was great to see the man eventually crack but after the third consecutive match explosion from Jemmy, the comments soon ceased and gave way to mild applause and ‘hard luck son’.

On my retirement I asked Jemmy for any advice as I was thinking of heading into the coaching side of things. He told me to set my stall out first thing, never to take even one nasty personal comment from the crowd. Unfortunately I took his advice too stringently and laid out an elderly pensioner in my first match when she shouted, ‘I didn’t pay in to see that gobshite’. I should’ve looked around me and made a valued judgement instead of wading in with both fists a blur of frenzied action. It turned out the poor woman was talking about a streaker up the other side of the field. I was sacked before half time and took up the bagging turf.

But you get the general message. The modern supporter can size up a manager within sixty seconds of seeing him on the sideline. If you’ve had a bad day at work or herself had been giving off all morning, you know that all that frustration can be exorcised by a few gulders at the unfortunate man with the bib on. However, county boards can wipe that phenomenon out. Appoint the meanest men in the business and we can go back to barracking the corner forward with the red boots. He’ll not hear half of it on the field with his flowing blonde locks clogging up his earholes. And all is well again.

The Ulster Aristocrats

Isn’t it great to see Down in the All-Ireland final exactly fifty years after their first appearance in the final and their initial Sam Maguire? You’d think something like that is written in the stars or was just meant to be. There are a lot of superstitious people around the country who’d buy into this destiny theory. Well I don’t. It’s a load of codswallop. There’s no such thing. You either work hard to get there or you don’t. However, sometimes a little bit of fortune can go a long way. If James McCartan claims all the plaudits for winning this weekend, there’ll be one man massively upset at his scenario. That man is me.

I’m probably breaking some kind of unwritten gentleman’s agreement but if I hadn’t offered my services and advice to wee James this year then Benny Coulter would be lying on a beach in Portugal this weekend. You see, there was some hype over the 1960 team this year. They have been feted the length and breadth of the country since the start of the year. They’re bound to be at the point of exhaustion and maybe even cursing the day they won the damned thing. I’d say Sean O’Neill is desperately hoping that Marty Clarke and his troops win this weekend to take the focus off them for the rest of the year, before they keel over.

I hope he doesn’t mind me saying this but Wee James got a bit caught up in the whole 50 years craic and had a mad idea. I can see where he was coming from. In recent years Down had been getting further and further away from winning anything of note. Embarrassing defeats to Wicklow and their likes was a common way to end their championship year. They hadn’t even shown signs of winning an Ulster. McCartan knew that he was going to be given a couple of years at least to build a new team. However, his plan for 2010 was revealed to be by a close friend in the Down camp. James thought that, in order to honour the team of 1960, he would attempt to field as many of that side as possible during the championship.

Luckily my snake in the Down backroom team filmed a couple of training session James was putting the lads of ’60 though. He sent me the footage via the email. It was extremely hard to watch. Brian McIvor and Paddy Tally had these lads, some of them in their late 70s, doing bleep tests and repetitive press-ups. McIvor seemed to be taking great pleasure in telling Kevin Mussen that he was a ‘hape of dung’ and punishing Dan McCartan for a mistimed block by making him do a dozen laps of the field, which took him 4 hours to complete til 3am. James had arranged a challenge match for the ’60 team against the Abbey MacRory Cup team. It was a horrendous piece of footage. The final score of 8-29 to 0-2 in the Abbey’s favour only begins to describe the horror of the occasion. On nine occasions the ambulance was called for with more than half the Down side having collapsed with either exhaustion or suspected heart complaints, and that was in the first half.

McIvor decided that instead of subjecting Mussen and his men to national humiliation, they would just play two members of the team at corner forward in each game, rotating the players each time so that every member of the ’60 squad got a turn out at some stage. I have it on good authority that Joe Lennon and Paddy Doherty were in serious training for the Donegal game at the start of the campaign. He was then going to roll out Sean O’Neill and his da for the expected game against Tyrone. It was a suicide mission. Imagine what Ricey would be saying to O’Neill? After I got wind of this remarkable plan I jumped straight into the motor and after three days of solid negotiations I managed to convince McCartan to ditch the plan for the sake of the memory of 1960 and the general health of the players themselves. It was hard going. McIvor was reluctant to give in until I mentioned to him some made-up European law against cruelty to over-60s. He soon backed down. Tally was just laughing in the background at the whole shenanigans. I suspect he was behind the mad idea and was taking a hand out of the other two.

Well, it has all turned out for the best. Down now find themselves in the All-Ireland without the help of lads old enough to be their grandfathers. The ’60 squad have been able to attend the rash of celebratory occasions without the aid of wheelchairs, crutches and an individual breathing apparatus. I’m sure the media will hound Wee James after the game if the Mourne men are successful. They’ll be looking for words of wisdom from the latest GAA guru. Just remember, if you see a vacant look in his eye and a pause when asked how he had turned this underachieving side into the best in Ireland, be of no doubt who he’s thinking about.