James Horan Appointed Mayo Manager 2011

[StoneWall]

It will be Tommy Lyons with Denis Kearney and Declan Ronaldson  .

F*ck no! I had the "pleasure" of being managed by him for two years and he ain't up to much!

I also heard James Horan's proposed backroom trio, a bit underwhelmed to be honest.

[Tubberman]

It will be Tommy Lyons with Denis Kearney and Declan Ronaldson  .

F*ck no! I had the "pleasure" of being managed by him for two years and he ain't up to much!

I also heard James Horan's proposed backroom trio, a bit underwhelmed to be honest.

Care to divulge? James Nallen is the name that has been mentioned here. It's been kept very quiet.

[StoneWall]

Care to divulge? James Nallen is the name that has been mentioned here. It's been kept very quiet.

Yes James Nallen is one that has already been mentioned here but to be fair to the other two individuals I won't name them publically encase it's not true. I sent you a PM Tubberman.

[western exile]

I know there is a big push on by people on the forum to keep Lyons out but why such a big rush to James Horan???

He is still very much an unproven manager, had Shrule managed to take their chances, not too many would be singing his praise.  If Mayo were to stop playing as much as Ballintubber did the last day we would be beaten out the gate..............very worrying.  Liked him as a player and he seems to be a decent bloke by the sounds of things.  Having James Nallen as one of his selectors would be a positive.

Surely there is a better candidate out there with a proven record that we could have some confidence in.  Who ever it is, lets just hope the good times are on the way.......

What chances?  Ballintubber were so well organised that Shrule/Glencorrib did not get many chances.

[kevmy]

I know there is a big push on by people on the forum to keep Lyons out but why such a big rush to James Horan???

He is still very much an unproven manager, had Shrule managed to take their chances, not too many would be singing his praise.  If Mayo were to stop playing as much as Ballintubber did the last day we would be beaten out the gate..............very worrying.  Liked him as a player and he seems to be a decent bloke by the sounds of things.  Having James Nallen as one of his selectors would be a positive.

Surely there is a better candidate out there with a proven record that we could have some confidence in.  Who ever it is, lets just hope the good times are on the way.......

What chances?  Ballintubber were so well organised that Shrule/Glencorrib did not get many chances.

Well said. Shrule needed a goal and never looked like getting one. Ballintubber played a sweeper in front of the full back line and cut out 80% of the ball going in. They kept great discipline preventing either Mort or Roanldson tapping over easy frees. I'd say Ballintubber missed as many chances in the 2nd half as Shrule did. Dillon in particular missed a very handy free despite having a good game overall

[Barney]

I see Mayo bloggers have a call to arms reflective of views here, but in much brighter prose than we could ever write;

An Spailpin

The reaction in Mayo to what is expected to be a rubber-stamping of Tommy Lyons' appointment tonight as the new Mayo senior team manager by the Mayo County Board has been varied.

Storming the Bastille
On the one hand, there are those who wish to storm An Sportlann, headquarters of the Mayo County Board, just as French stormed the Bastille in the name of liberty, before they made their way to Killala to spread the same gospel of freedom here.

And on the other hand, there are those who just want the pain to stop, like that clapped-out boxer on the telly who yearns for the old one-two that one only gets from Uniflu™. Think of the prisoners on the Moorish ships in Chesterton's Lepanto, who find their God forgotten and seek no more a sign. You get the idea.

There are very few who welcome Tommy Lyons' appointment and the one emotion that the Bastille-stormers, busted boxers and prisoners-broken-by-years-of-adversity share is a deep and dark dread towards what the future may hold under a Lyons stewardship.

It's not about Tommy Lyons personally, although it can't be said he helps. Mouthy metropolitans are seldom welcome back the heathery mountain. The big problem that people in Mayo have with a potential Lyons appointment is the way the appointment was made.

Heartbreak and Bitterness
After the heartbreak and bitterness of John O'Mahony's Second Coming the Mayo Board was in humour to salve wounds. They promised a process through which a new man would be appointed, divisions healed, new processes set in place and the Good Ship Mayo pointed to a brave new tomorrow.

Everyone who got involved in that process now seems to have been sold a pup, as horse-trading went on behind the scenes. The result is Tommy Lyons. The stories about the nature of that horse-trading vary, but the bottom line is that there are very real fears that the Lyons appointment will happen for reasons other than what is best for the county team.

Liam Horan has been put in charge of a Strategic Review Committee but Horan's first job as chairman of that committee will be to explain how exactly it's the case that Tommy Lyons has a better chance of having a Mayo team still playing football in September than James Horan, Denis Kearney, Anthony McGarry or John Maughan. Or Mick O'Dwyer, if it comes to that. Because it's not at all easy to see right now.

A lot of this has to do with the responsibility of the County Board. What is their duty? Is it towards the clubs, the debt on McHale Park, or have they also a duty to field the best team they can in the senior inter-county football championship?

There is no doubt – except, perhaps, in the addled minds of the GPA – that if there were no clubs there would be no GAA. But the county team cannot be treated in so cavalier a fashion as to appoint a manager for reasons other than his being the best man for the job.

In Memory of Our Fathers
People live and die by their county teams. This is true for all counties, of course, but – and An Spailpín must confess a certain bias here – it seems especially so in Mayo where the people are so defined by what the football team does. The very notion of the team, of a Mayo style, of the unique colours, has a resonance for people that transcends a game or an organisation. The notion that there is a Mayo team out there, playing football, is a part of people's souls. It helps people understand who they are.

For instance: a great and good friend of the blog was at the 2004 final, and he got talking to the man next to him. The guy next to was from Limerick, but he had hunted down a ticket and come up anyway, because of his father.

His father was a Mayoman and had died earlier that year. The son was making a vigil to Croke Park to do honour to his father's memory, to see a Mayo victory that was no longer possible for his father but that would have meant so much to him had he lived. The Mayo GAA scene meant nothing to this Treatyman, but the very idea of Mayo was vivid and clear in his head.

He went home disappointed, as did we all. But that man, whoever he is and where-ever he is now, deserves better than this. He did honour by his late father's memory, and he deserves better. The poor deluded fools who travel on Sundays for FBD League games and National League games as well as the glamorous Championship games of high summer deserves better than this.

The gobdaws and buck eejits and helpless innocents who daydream at least once a week about what it will be like when Sam returns to Mayo deserve better than this. The ludramans and the mentally unbalanced who compose greatest-ever Mayo teams drawn from men who never played senior club football in their heads to pass the time deserve better than this. Or else it's time for us all to wonder just why we invest so much emotional energy to just get smacked around by an ungrateful lover. Again.

The Eleventh Hour
Today the eleventh hour, but it's still not too late. The Board can still turn away from the Lyons candidacy and appoint James Horan, one of the stars of the first John Maughan team of the mid-nineties and the current manager of Ballintubber, now contesting a county final for the first time in their long and proud history. Horan has galvanised the anti-Lyons feeling and become the people's choice. It's up the Board tonight to do the right thing. God be with them

Willie Joe:

The new Mayo manager is due to be appointed tomorrow night, with a press briefing at which the announcement will be made set to be held following a meeting of the County Board that's scheduled for 9 pm.  One way or another, we'll all be put out of our misery before heading for the scratcher tomorrow night but I'm still hopeful that the right decision will be made and that James Horan will be the man who'll get the job.

This report in today's Indo provides confirmation of stories that I'd picked up around McHale Park on Sunday that Horan's star is, at the eleventh hour, on the rise.  His own confident stewardship on the line for Ballintubber in the county semi-final has been an obvious factor in this – making the timing of his interview all but perfect from his point of view – as has the shrewd addition of James Nallen to his backroom team.   Nallen is the sort of man that will command respect in any company and, combined with Horan's burgeoning reputation on the sideline, they're starting to look like the Dream Ticket.

By contrast, Tommy Lyons is, from what I gather, likely to pitch up as a one-man band who will rely on the County Board to fit him out with a local backroom team.  All that Tommy Lyons has to offer is, as a result, the Tommy Lyons brand and, as I understand it, even his backers may now be beginning to see that this simply isn't a proposition that will fly.

This is a seminal moment for those whose responsibility it is to pick the man who we all want to see steer the county team out of the ditch that Johnno drove us into.  It's a big decision and those of us who have the luxury of watching on from the sidelines need to be aware of that – it's all too easy to damn those making the decision regardless of which choice they make.

And it's very easy – I know, I've done it myself – to take cheap shots at those we don't like in furthering the cause of those we do.  In this regard, I think we need to be scrupulously fair to Tommy Lyons (and Tony McGarry, though I think everyone now accepts that he's not seriously in the running at this stage) and his motives for wanting to become Mayo manager.

I once thought that Tommy might have been a good option but that was at the end of the Maughan I era, when he seemed to be one of the new breed of forward-thinking managers.  But that was over a decade ago and Tommy has now been out of inter-county management for more than half of that time, during which time the game has moved on enormously.

All of the current breed of successful managers (and, by success, I mean those who can take the talent they have at their disposal and maximise it where it matters in the championship) come from a different era and they all have an entirely different approach to the game than the one that someone like Tommy Lyons could bring to us right now.   Will Tommy Lyons bring a different perspective than someone like John O'Mahony, whose management style is of the same era?  I don't think he would.

James Horan, by contrast, is cut from the same cloth as the likes of James MacCartan, Kieran McGeeney, Pat Gilroy and Kevin Walsh and, with the right team around him, we can I reckon be confident that the foundations for significant improvements in our fortunes will be painstakingly laid, based on the ethics of hard work and commitment and leaving no stone unturned to ensure that all available talent is utilised to the full.  Can we have the same confidence that a management team led by Tommy Lyons would lead us down this same road?  I don't think we can.

And that's the nub of it.  The other factors that have been dragged into the debate – such as the media bullshit, arseboxing and whether or not his roots are really in the county – simply aren't relevant.  It's a question of who is the best man for the job and which one of them has the best team around him.  That man has to be James Horan.

If the selection panel is prepared to put petty politics and all the rest to one side on this one crucial decision that could determine so profoundly the direction the county team goes in over the next few years, then there is only way this appointment process can go.  It's a big call for them to make but, if they stand back and take their decision in a dispassionate manner, it should also be an easy one. There's still time for them to make the right decision – that time is now.

[boosabum]

It will be Tommy Lyons with Denis Kearney and Declan Ronaldson  .

F*ck no! I had the "pleasure" of being managed by him for two years and he ain't up to much!
I also heard James Horan's proposed backroom trio, a bit underwhelmed to be honest.

been a bit harsh on the shrule man there, had a few seaons of his exposure myself and found him to be at the least a good trainer and motivator in the dressing room. His downfall was really due to lack of tactics and ability to make quick changes, plus having to deal with the brothers mort

[Farrandeelin]

It will be Tommy Lyons with Denis Kearney and Declan Ronaldson  .

F*ck no! I had the "pleasure" of being managed by him for two years and he ain't up to much!
I also heard James Horan's proposed backroom trio, a bit underwhelmed to be honest.

been a bit harsh on the shrule man there, had a few seaons of his exposure myself and found him to be at the least a good trainer and motivator in the dressing room. His downfall was really due to lack of tactics and ability to make quick changes, plus having to deal with the brothers mort

Well he may well need to change his downfalls then! Because he needs to be able to make changes, devise tactics and deal with the Mortimers if they're still involved.

[muppet]

I take it that the critics of Ronaldson senior above were county minors?

Amazing how many county minors who look so tactically naive on the pitch, were actually all Gary Kasparovs.

[Chimley]

Niaive young players need good coaching so that they look like intelligent footballers. You won't see many clueless Tyrone minors in Croke Park.

[muppet]

Niaive young players need good coaching so that they look like intelligent footballers. You won't see many clueless Tyrone minors in Croke Park.

I saw them give plenty of turnovers in their own half particularly in the second half.

[Cosmo Kramer]

By contrast, Tommy Lyons is, from what I gather, likely to pitch up as a one-man band who will rely on the County Board to fit him out with a local backroom team.  All that Tommy Lyons has to offer is, as a result, the Tommy Lyons brand and, as I understand it, even his backers may now be beginning to see that this simply isn't a proposition that will fly.

This bit is interesting given Willie Joe's links to Club Mayo. Maybe someone is having second thoughts about stumping up the cash?

[IolarCoisCuain]

According to Mayo reporter on Radio 1 this evening at 7, Horan is in pole position and he claimed he heard it from people in the know.  Herad the interview and would not fancy the 1/10 odds on Lyons.

Spot on as normal Moysider with your last post.

Listened to the Melvin interview on the RTÉ player. What he said was that the Chairman vehemently denied that Lyons appointment was already in the bag. By the end of the interview Melvin was saying it was a flip of a coin between them.

What I did think was interesting was that Melvin said it would be time for the delegates to stand up and be counted tonight. So I'm sure they were thrilled when they heard that. Imagine someone in Ireland saying what they believed and taking responsibility for their actions?

God help us. I think it's Lyons.

[moysider]

Just in response to point Kosmo was making above.

Maybe they realise that their man would go down like a lead baloon. Maybe they realise that he would not be the all-dancing, all-singing appointment that the natives were craving. Maybe they realise they would be no gratitude, only mostly resentment for spending hard cash on this project. Maybe the board also realise that the gates would continue to drop off for sure. Maybe everybody realised, before it was too late, that it was all lose lose.

[ildanach]

I have a feeling that if it goes to a vote (although i doubt it will) then horan will get it.