Armagh management :Paddy O'Rourke!!!

[orangeman]

I got the impression that he implied that Joe wouldn't undermine a manager before a game, which seems likely enough. The end result is that he has said the someone was undermining him and that suspicion wasn't helping things but nobody now knows who this was, so there are still rumours going around. Not a good situation.

Definitely not a good situation at all.


Which makes me wonder why he made the original statement and proceeded go on the Des Cahill show and increase the suspicions even further. The rumour mill is flying at the minute and is making the situation worse. Fingers of blame are being pointed in all directions.

[Sandy Hill]

Listening to P McD's interviews since he took over the Armagh job, a common theme of his comments has been "Whatever bad has happened, it wasn't my fault". Tonight's interview, I thought, carried an element of that sentiment.

[orangeman]

Was Mc Donnell right when he said that there were leaks especially about the naming of the team and the tactics regarding the Monaghan match

[Benny Barnaveld]

Was Mc Donnell right when he said that there were leaks especially about the naming of the team and the tactics regarding the Monaghan match

Tactics? What tactics? Lol

[curvey]

Well what i do know for a fact is on the wed b4 the Monaghan game they were called into a circle and the team was named but it wasn't the same team selected on the match programme and he explained to the group of players his reasons for this. Obviously the tactics for the game (i know i can hear you saying ...what fecking tactics) were already drilled over in training. Now Monaghan knew all about this from a source within the county setup. So obviously someone filled Banty's ears with Armagh's real team and tactic's...the million dollar question is...who???

[orangeman]

To prevent further finger pointing, suspicious minds, bad feeling and general poor relations, IF Mc Donnell knows who was doing the leaking, why doesn't he come out and name and shame the individual(s) responsible

[The GAA]

I'm hearing the issue lies with the leaking of the team and particularly the marking jobs.

I have to say that the more this drags on it is looking more and more like a neat diversion from the cold hard facts...

[The GAA]

To prevent further finger pointing, suspicious minds, bad feeling and general poor relations, IF Mc Donnell knows who was doing the leaking, why doesn't he come out and name and shame the individual(s) responsible

Lets say he names some man. or two men. lets say it's a business man or a teacher or a doctor. He'd want to have conclusive proof or he'd be looking at a solicitor's letter.

[TacadoirArdMhacha]

This is all getting very messy. I hope Peter isn't going to start naming names and settling scores in public. I find it impossible to believe that tactics were leaked to Monaghan. For his own sake as much as anything, I think Peter needs to move on. There's nothing to be gained by going over old ground.

Did that Malachy Macken ever make it on the senior Armagh team? He won an u-21 in 04 I think and he looked good that day.

Yep Mal broke into the squad and started a few championship matches in 2006. This last couple of years he's been in the McKenna Cup squads but was dropped last year and left the panel this year after receiving very few chances. Mal has his detractors on here but I think a lot of times for Armagh he's been played completely out of position and has displayed the odd signs of nervousness when playing for the county, making some mistakes he wouldn't usually make. What I will say is that he is a fine fielder of the ball and, in my view is as good a midfielder as there is in club football. I see him playing week in, week out and he's almost always one of our top performers. A player I really think the new management should have another look at though its fair to say midfield is a position we have lots of options in.

[pearseog]

ive always thought mal mackin to be a very good player. always plays well against us anyway.

[Smokin Joe]

Was Mc Donnell right when he said that there were leaks especially about the naming of the team and the tactics regarding the Monaghan match

The team which actually started (as opposed to the one named in the programme) was posted here on the Wedensday night.

It was Rufus 

[full back]

The way this is panning out it is going to go on for a few months & IMHO going to detract from the search for a successor.
The main concern within the county should now be to get the right man for the job not having a wild goose chase on a whodunnit case

[naka]

have to say Brendan Crossan pulling no punches today in the Itish News

as far as he is concerned " grimley for the Job"" and i agree

[Orior]

Was Mc Donnell right when he said that there were leaks especially about the naming of the team and the tactics regarding the Monaghan match

The team which actually started (as opposed to the one named in the programme) was posted here on the Wedensday night.

It was Rufus 

lol

[020304 Tir Eoghain]

ARMAGH, FOCUSSING ON THE REAL ISSUE – Peter Makem
(Written prior to Peter McDonnell's resignation as Manager)

There
is no doubt that people are very down regarding the state of the county
senior football team after the performance against Monaghan. I have
never known it to be so depressed since the heavy defeat against Derry
at the Athletic Grounds in 1995. But the current demise of Armagh,
like that of '95 and two decades earlier in 1974, is a much larger
problem than that of a manager. In fact, our depression and anger
whatever it is, is misplaced in my opinion, the manager is largely a
scapegoat for a much, much deeper problem that badly needs to be
addressed.

There is one over-riding reality that we should keep
at the front of our minds. The Armagh senior team as a structure, that
is, the radical new structure that was set up in 1995, after the
collapse in the Athletic Grounds, and brought into life by Brian
McAlinden and Joe Kernan, is totally gone. It formally died its death
in Croke Park last year against Wexford but it was on the way out for
several years previous.

The Armagh revolution that created the
GAA's first ever high-powered professional back-up team, that
introduced the blanket defence into Gaelic Football and brought us our
first ever Sam Maguire, is no more.
What is really missing, and what
we really lamenting, is the absence of a fresh new radical set-up to
replace the one that is gone to create the next great Armagh team.
This has hit us badly in the form of the collapse at Clones. The sad
showing against Monaghan is a symptom of our problem. We have to get
this much clear.

There will be no more Sam Maguire cups
coming to the county unless we repeat the outstanding work of the mid
nineties when the Tactical Support Group was set up and a team was
created to build a team. Within such a structure – as happened before
– we need radical new thinking in the playing of the game, knowing that
a side can only be sure of winning the highest honour if they raise the
bar of possibility higher than it has been raised before. Armagh did
that in the last great adventure.

A manager's success is not
based on his technical ability nor the ability of his players, but on
the existence of a system, a structure in which he and the players can
work and develop. In the following correspondence I will try to
develop this position, and there is strong evidence to support it.

To
use a bit of imagery, if the soil is made fertile, if the land has
become barren, if the ship has become unseaworthy, no impression can be
made, no action is possible. It is part of the natural drift, the
natural growing old of things.

Kerry threw four managers, all
deeply knowledgeable former players, at their problem between 1986 and
the later nineties, but it didn't resolve things. The old days just
would not come back. Down are struggling with the fifteen year gap
since 1994, and Dublin are enduring a similar absence of real success
five managers later. These managers are intelligent, dedicated,
football loving men. Donegal and Derry have put manager after manager
into the scene but the glory years will not return. How many managers
has Antrim sent off to do the impossible? Meath cannot get out of
their barren run. It's over fifty years and probably over twenty
managers later, since Louth won a Leinster title.

Back in the
sixties and early seventies, Armagh had a whole series of managers,
good committed men who knew their football, people such as Mal McEvoy,
Paddy O'Hara, Jimmy Whan, Gerry O'Neill (first time) and Gene Larkin.
But they could make no impression whatsoever. Nor was it a problem of
administration because Armagh had administrators the equal of anybody
in Ireland. It was not a problem of management or administration as
such, but a lack of a system, that is, a well thought out structure
where a group of willing players could be moulded into a unit with a
fresh sense of ambition, adventure and momentum. The Gerry O'Neill who
managed Armagh 1970-72 made little impression. But the same Gerry
O'Neill who agreed to come back in 1974 after a new system had been set
up had the same Armagh players in an All-Ireland final in 1977 and won
two Ulster titles including Armagh first in 24 years. The manager is
only as effective as the structures and system allows.

By 1983,
that momentum had gone. The best efforts of subsequent mangers failed,
not from any lack of ability, or lack of good players, but because the
authorities did not take a deep stock of what was happening and
introduce some new radical thinking, a new system. It is the
responsibility of the County Board, not a manager to create the system
for the Board alone has the resources for such an enterprise.
Traditionally, a manager was thrown at a problem hugely bigger than a
manager can cope with. A solitary man and a few helpers are sent out
to create something that requires a large co-ordinated and motivated
team of people covering every aspect of team development. All he can
do on his own is a patchwork and piecemeal job, fitting the new into
the old, adding on to what he inherited, whereas the whole thing need
to be totally removed and a new structure built from fresh foundations.

Fr
Sean Hegarty knew his football inside out, was completely dedicated to
Armagh and had good players at his disposal. But the system he
inherited was burnt out and he had to work in the void I have
described. Paddy Moriarty and Joe Kernan, who followed also, knew
their football and had the respect of their considerable players, but
again it was a case of manager and players isolated from any new
dynamic. Jim McCorry and John Morrison, both Substantial thinkers
about the game spent four years trying to make something out of
Armagh. They too had very good players at their disposal. But the old
ship Armagh was no longer seaworthy and no matter how excellent the
captain or the crew, they were going to founder. That is what happened
against Derry at the Athletic Grounds in June 1995, the second collapse
in modern times. It was a watershed and it finally, and irrevocable
drew down the curtain on an age that had been on life support for a
long time.

Brian McAlinden, who entered the fray, was a radical
figure in his thinking about the kind of players he would choose and
the type of training they would do. McAlinden and Canavan created a
team of Spartans, of Red Branch Knights. But that on its own was not
enough. The critical thing is that this approach fitted inside a wider
County Board creation at the time as mentioned, the all important and
revolutionary Tactical Support Group, a back-up team amounting to the
GAA's first de-facto professional support team in county football. For
the first time since the collapse of 1974, and the initiative of Tommy
Lynch that same year, another collapse 21 years later led to a radical
new approach. And so the early steps in the creation of the greatest
of all Armagh sides were taken. It would not have happened, not, even
with the same players, had the new structures not been created. Within
this, the radical approach of Brian McAlinden and later Joe Kernan was
possible. It must be remembered that Armagh created the blanket
defence, copied by every other county. Everything between 1996 and the
lifting of the Sam Maguire in this county was radical, not merely for
Armagh, but for Gaelic football. But Armagh never fully resolved the
linkage with the full-forward line when Clarke and McDonnell were
forced to be target men as well as strikers. This meant that while
teams found it hard to score against us, we found it equally hard to
score against them. Despite the revolutionary approach, this ongoing
Achilles heel of linkage in attack arguably meant that we only won a
single All-Ireland instead of a possible three, in 2001, 2002 and
2003. But with Armagh's long and largely barren history of
All-Ireland's one Sam Maguire was an immense achievement, but
fulfilment of a great enterprise.

The revolution began to fade
as far back as 2003 and by 2005; having been almost ten years on the
road, was definitely showing serious cracks. So Armagh, even though we
kept winning in Ulster, were no longer All-Ireland standard, and the
old malaise spoken about previously had set in. The greatest of all
Armagh ships had become unseaworthy and was no longer capable of moving
from A to B.

Peter McDonnell, then, belongs to the long list of
Armagh managers who had to work in the vacuum I have described. He too
is a good manager and knows his football as they all did. He has won a
senior and U-21 and Club Ulster title, but the reality is that there is
no system to manage. He is ploughing a lone furrow like the vast
majority of his predecessors and neither he nor any other individual
will make any real difference as long as they are so isolated. There
is no life left in the Armagh senior set-up and there has been little
life there for a long time. The senior players, the remnant of the old
days, are a tired, ineffective lot. The new and newer players are
infected by this and by the insecurity of their places. There is no
sense of direction. I suggested in an article after the Wexford game
that the time was then ripe for Peter to draw down the curtain totally
on the ancient regime and start with totally new blood. It would have
made some difference in that we would have gone down with a bit more
fight and a bit more hope.

But that's not the kind of hope we
deeply need. We need the hope that will come from the County Board
making a radical move of taking proper stock and using the next five
months to create a totally new structure, another support team, and
working to bring and train players to a radical new level in every
way. We will only get out of the current low point when the County
Board, as in 1974 and 1995, formally set out to generate a new and
great Armagh team.

It is interesting to notice that none of the
younger players who have come into the panel in recent years have
developed or seem to have been tutored at all. They are still as raw,
un-coached, and uncertain as when they came into the side. In fact
some of them seem to have gone back.

It can only be imagined how
they would have been transformed had they went to the Aussie Rules
set-up. I cannot think of one whose game has improved as it should.
Again it takes a wide approach to enable real development to take place.

It
cannot be stressed enough that the problems of Armagh are not solvable
by a manager alone. The manager is the final things in the equation,
not the first. If Armagh were to bring in the greatest managerial
genius in Ireland, whoever that is, he would make no great difference
unless everything else was right.

The late Paddy O'Hara once
told me that he could make on impression with Armagh at all in his term
as manager. Good footballers, good fielders, nice lads, but they
always seemed to be strangers to each other, a group of individuals,
and he felt there was a part of them not really interested in being
there. This is the common state in a period of uncertainty and drift.
There was some of that in Clones against Monaghan.

I repeat for
what its worth. The immediate problem is re-creating a new and even
more radical version of what happened in 1995. Even though Armagh is
notorious of doing nothing until things collapse all around them, they
have always risen to the occasion. In the middle of the Troubles, in
the seventies and early eighties, a new Armagh reached an All-Ireland
final won three Ulster's despite ongoing disruption of training. In
the mid-nineties after the Derry debacle, we got ourselves together as
never before and created the greatest times we have ever had. But
create is the word. It is in the spirit of these two periods of
renaissance that we must now move ahead, and this county has five
precious months in which to ring in a new order of things.


Taken from another forum...dont know if this has been posted before. Apologies if it has.