Topics

Just a pet hate of mine and I am curious as to whether I am an odd ball or whether some people share my views.

Every two bit county game and many club games  I attend now plays our National Anthem before the start of the game. Surely this should be reserved for finals only to "create" a special event feeling. We should be proud of our nation and identity but we devalue it through this type of excessive overplay.

Moreover if we really want to attract people from the other community and make our games open to all we need to view this from their point of view. I remember going to a cinema in Banbridge years ago and at the end of the show they played God Save the Queen. I felt at the time that this was totally out of place and gratuitous and left me somewhat resentful. 25 years on I see striking similarities with that experience and many "non-event" GAA games where playing Amhran na bhfiann seemed out of place.

Maybe as I get older I am just getting uncomfortable with naked nationalism and becoming more republican in its true sense of the word.

I went along to the game last night in Newry between Down and Meath. It was a great spectacle under lights drawing a very large crowd for a Valentines weekend night. However yet again I was annoyed at the complete lack of accountability in the financial process of entrance fees.

There were long queues at the turn-styles at when I handed over £26 for two passes no tickets / stubs / receipts were handed back to me. How can they keep track of the cash in such circumstances? It is illegal not to issue receipts. No business would operate like this. I would have grave concerns over the audit trail of such cash receivables.

This is in direct contrast to a hurling game I attended in Toomevara back in the summer 2009. There for a county championship game there were groups of two officials. One official would take the money from you and issue 2 stubs. 15 yards further into the ground another official would take one of the stubbs from you leaving you with one stubb as a receipt. This gave me the confidence that steps were being taken to close the gaps in accountability and validatiion of attendances and cash receipts. However you go to a "County" game and absolutely nothing is in place. It leaves me to conclude that it is either corrupt management or incompetent management but either way it is pretty poor stuff.

Anyone got any other experiences from this weekend's National League games?

Management Selection

This is a crucial juncture in our County's recent history and the wrong selection now could set back our senior team for many years.

The most successful counties over the last 15 years since our last triumph have all evolved towards a system whereby the coach is most seperate and distinct from the manager. The coach takes training, gets players fit and works on skills while the manager deals with strategy and crucially communication. The two front runners Pete and wee James have styles that unfortunately do not fall into one category or the other and are blends of both positions. I would even go further and say that Pete is not an intercounty manager per se but rather an excellent coach. However he is not a manager as he is a very poor person to person and group communicator. He is functional and factual like a GPS system!

Take a look at Dublin and Pat Gilroy. He seems to have gone further than anyone else in this intercounty "new manager" model. Upto his appointment, Tyrone (Harte and Tally) Armagh (Kernan and Grimley) Kerry (O'Connor and Finnegan) seemed to be the front runners in creating a new job description for an Inter county manager. They abdicated responsibility for fitness and basic coaching and involved most of their time in strategy, managing resource, PR, pyschology etc. Even the great Micko has been doing likewise over the last 5 or so years with Arthur French. But Gilroy's appointment went a step further. Pat Gilroy is a very successful Chief Executive of the Irish division of a French Multinational. He should not have the spare time to manage any county team let alone Dublin. But he brings a professionalism and strategy to the role. His sole task is to allocate resource and identify need and determine strategy. He has replicated his model for business success to the dressing room. He is most definitely not working out drills!!

We need to read the writing on the wall. We need to embrace the professional business like approaches to management and organisational development and motivation. Simply appointing an ex manager or ex player is not enough. As Einstein is famously quoted as saying "If you always do what you have always done then you will always get what you have always got!"

I would like to see a radical rethink as to how our county senior team is managed based on the best practices of Organisational Development Research.

I would like to see a significant overhaul of our development structures so that we are putting in the foundations for continued future success from 10 year olds up within Down.

Though most crucially I would like to see an overhaul of the administration of the Down County association. There are simply too many people who are in executive positions with insufficient intellectual ability and even worse many are going through the motions and not serving the best interests of their membership in the county. The great breakthrough was started in the late 50's by the visionary involvement of Maurice Hayes as county secretary. We need another such talent. The present incumbent is simply not upto the task and should resign in the best interests of the county.

Jack Devanney is one of the few if only people on the County Executive at present with true ability. The Longford native is a great administrator and needs to have more likeminded capable and honest people with him to make a difference for this great county of ours.

This county needs courage. This county needs new blood at administrative level and this great county needs to get the job description right first before it looks for the best manager. Finally the successful person then needs to have the confidence in his county board and the freedom to put whatever structures he needs in place to maximise the return form the players that we have.