It was a tongue in cheek more than reality. Although this management team are going nowhere through no real fault of their own. They never wanted the job.
Look what Derry did yesterday when they finally got their set up right. And alot of the best players in the county available. I'm not saying we would be better than Derry but we should at least be competitive. Down Meath and Cork look to have big issues somewhere. Galway and Derry may have rectified theirs.
There’s certainly lessons in Derry and Galway’s change in fortunes .
The difference between ourselves and Derry is that they have had a production line of underage success over a number of years. They actually went to division 4 and that probably gave them an opportunity to rebuild . Clubwise they are amongst the strongest in the country , as well as Slaughtneils all-ireland final appearance, Glenn, magherafelt, ballinderry etc are strong and Steelstown are All-Ireland intermediate champions . They havent had our financial restrictions and have a well established centre of excellence. Their slaughtneil players didn’t have the same club distractions this year.
We have had only 1 ulster appearance at underage in 13 seasons and even semi final appearances are a rarity . Our last appearance in an all-ireland was on the back of preceding underage success.
In reality we were fortunate to be promoted to division 2, and then fortunate to stay in it. In recent years we have been on the receiving end of several poor results under a number of different managers.
We had a challenging campaign in div 2 this year, with a delayed managerial appointment. The brilliant success of Kilcoo , did not translate into Down seniors , as many of their best players are not available and those that are, were likely fatigued after the prolonged club campaign . We get drawn away against an established top teams who beat Dublin last time out. We had few travelling supporters .
In the above circumstances, why are we surprised at a 10 point defeat ?
We have a mountain of work to do to get back to the top table , but there are several things to be positive about: we have AI club champions and a competitive club game. We now have a strong GAA presence in North Down. We won an ulster u20 title last year. We have a top notch stadium. We are close to cutting sod on a new centre of excellence and our financial stresses have reduced .
We have a mountain of work to do, but our starting point must be a realistic acceptance of where we are at, and an enthusiasm about our potential , but importantly a change from the immature , ill-informed blame culture , which gets too much credibility in this county .