So Grimley isn't God after all

[crossfire]

Some of the Armagh posters on this board would have you believe that Paul Grimley was a tactical genius, making assertions that he was "the brains" behind Joe Kernan in 2002 and "the brains" behind Kieran Mc Geeney at Kildare.
Consequently you would have thought that when he joined Monaghan they would at least have won an Ulster title.
However they appear to have gone downhill since he arrived as their two worst performances since Banty took over were against Tyrone and Kildare this year.
Perhaps Paul is not all he is hyped up to be by his fans, or maybe Banty just didn't take his advice. 

[Puckoon]

Eh - Peter Canavan is God. How could you not know this?

[TacadoirArdMhacha]

Silly rant against a very good coach who I'd still hope to see trying his hand at managing Armagh one day.

[ogshead]

Some of the Armagh posters on this board would have you believe that Paul Grimley was a tactical genius, making assertions that he was "the brains" behind Joe Kernan in 2002 and "the brains" behind Kieran Mc Geeney at Kildare.
Consequently you would have thought that when he joined Monaghan they would at least have won an Ulster title.
However they appear to have gone downhill since he arrived as their two worst performances since Banty took over were against Tyrone and Kildare this year.
Perhaps Paul is not all he is hyped up to be by his fans, or maybe Banty just didn't take his advice. 

Kernan done well this year with an established county I see 

[imtommygunn]

He got a team to an ulster final and Mickey Harte out thought him with tactics. Mickey Harte would out think any current , or probably any ever, football manager. There is no shame in any of it. (That is not to mention Mickey Harte has a considerably better crop of players at his disposal)

The qualifier system screws provincial losers when they have to wait 6 days to lick their physical and emotional wounds. Sligo got beat by about 20 points by down for god sake.

Based on the above I would have said he probably isn't doing that bad at all.

[ogshead]

He got a team to an ulster final and Mickey Harte out thought him with tactics. Mickey Harte would out think any current , or probably any ever, football manager. There is no shame in any of it. (That is not to mention Mickey Harte has a considerably better crop of players at his disposal)

The qualifier system screws provincial losers when they have to wait 6 days to lick their physical and emotional wounds. Sligo got beat by about 20 points by down for god sake.

Based on the above I would have said he probably isn't doing that bad at all.

Crossfire is just shit stirring... he actually knows Grimley is a great coach!!

[thewanderer]

Some of the Armagh posters on this board would have you believe that Paul Grimley was a tactical genius, making assertions that he was "the brains" behind Joe Kernan in 2002 and "the brains" behind Kieran Mc Geeney at Kildare.
Consequently you would have thought that when he joined Monaghan they would at least have won an Ulster title.
However they appear to have gone downhill since he arrived as their two worst performances since Banty took over were against Tyrone and Kildare this year.
Perhaps Paul is not all he is hyped up to be by his fans, or maybe Banty just didn't take his advice. 

You know well you cant get success if u dont have the players and i think Grimley has over achieved with a poor monaghan panel. Kernan,s success with cross came about because he had the players, i think most good managers would have won all-irelands with their panel, but now he is in Galway it shows how limited he is to try and put a team together.

[The Konica]

Grimley is a good coach.
He's been well regarded by most of those he's worked with and few people have much bad to say about him.

He didn't 'over' achieve with Monaghan either, that's absolute bo!!ox. He didn't make them any worse either, but he certainly didn't over achieve. Monaghan are a decent team, but perhaps they've missed their chance. Like I think someone else said, there's too far too many cooks spoiling the broth in Monaghan.

In fairness it's hard to rate Grimley, he'd have to admit that too. It's easy to be second in command. If you look at Kildare this year and Monaghan, based on previous results you could nearly argue (wrongly) that he improved Kildare by leaving and made Monaghan worse! But that's not the case. He's a good addition to a sideline, a shrewd reader of a game and good coach and confidante of the players. Might never get to judge him properly though if he never take the Number one job.

As regards Kernan, you can't compare the two men. Kernan is a far better motivator and organizer than most and they worked well together.

BUT the ONLY one common theme that has been shown clearly by this year with both Grimley and Kernan - It doesn't matter who you are - you need good footballers to win!!!

[crossfire]

It looks as if Kieran Mc Geeney is doing quite well without his "brains".

[ONeill]

The Grimley interview in the Gaelic Life was a decent insight into the man. Only winning the one All-Ireland sems to be something that haunts him and Big Joe. Interesting what he said about 2004 - that they were too preocuppied about meeting Tyrone in the semis and so took the eye of the ball v Fermanagh. He reckons that result impacted on Tyrone v Mayo and even suggests Harte agreed with this analysis.

Says he'll not manage Armagh, well, 'very unlikely' says he.

[Applesisapples]

Some of the Armagh posters on this board would have you believe that Paul Grimley was a tactical genius, making assertions that he was "the brains" behind Joe Kernan in 2002 and "the brains" behind Kieran Mc Geeney at Kildare.
Consequently you would have thought that when he joined Monaghan they would at least have won an Ulster title.
However they appear to have gone downhill since he arrived as their two worst performances since Banty took over were against Tyrone and Kildare this year.
Perhaps Paul is not all he is hyped up to be by his fans, or maybe Banty just didn't take his advice. 

Kernan done well this year with an established county I see 

Big Joe put the finishing touches to a team built by the two Brians, and like wee James got some luck along the way.

[Maiden1]

I'm sure he is a good coach but there is too much hype about him.  He has been number 2 for Kernan, McGeeney and McEnaney.  He took the hump because he had to do a couple of interviews like everyone else to get the Armagh job.  Joe Kernan had won 3 AI club titles when he took over Armagh.  Has Grimley coached anyone to any great heights that would suggest that he is going to be the greatest coach ever for Armagh?  Surely he should at least be able to coach some club team like Pearce Ogs to a county title to show his pedigree before he gets the Armagh job?

[Logan]

Anyone care to post the Irish News interview?

Where will he go now?
Looks like the Monaghan well has dried up - where next for him?

[ONeill]

Twas in the Gaelic Life:

BY DECLAN BOGUE
d.bogue@gaeliclife.com
TWO weeks after Seamus McEnaney steps down from the Monaghan job, Paul Grimley gets his chance to talk about the botched appointment and reflect on his own experiences with the Armagh county board. In a wide-ranging interview, the Pearse Óg man also reflects on the 2002 All-Ireland, the ones that got away, and why he will probably never manage Armagh.

Declan Bogue: Your family were Armagh Harps, yet you played for Pearse Ógs.
Paul Grimley: My father played for Harps, and the twins [brothers Mark and John Grimley] also. I played one underage game in my life, and that was for the Harps - against the Ógs!
I transferred to the Ógs because my friends were there. Up until that point I had never played Gaelic football. I played a bit of soccer for Milford Everton, and Armagh Thistle in the Irish 'B' division, at centre-forward.

DB: How was it, playing in those Armagh city derby games and coming up against your brothers?
PG: It was funny. We played in the county final in 1985 and I lined out directly against Mark. At that time it was very difficult for me, we had a bit more experience and won out in a very droll affair. Good crowd at it, but a very poor game.

DB: But your paths always crossed. You were part of the Ógs management that won a county title in '92, and then you took Harps as manager to the county final in 1995.
PG: Yeah, we played Mullaghbawn in that final, and my brother Mark had hurt his ankle. The week before, we went down to Dublin to play a Bank of Ireland All-Star selection, and the pitch was brutal. He went over on his ankle, and it was one of the worst mistakes I ever made, letting that game go ahead. If we had him that day, things would have been different.

DB: Was it galling to watch Mullaghbawn go on to win Ulster after that?
PG: No, they were a mean side then. They were packed with very good players; McNultys, McGeeneys, Tierney, Neil Smyth, a lad McParland. Fair play to them.

DB: Shortly after that though, during the Crossmaglen dominance, you brought Madden to the county final, who were hanging out towards the bottom of division three.
PG: That was probably the most enjoyable time. Cross were All-Ireland champions, and we were two rungs below them, in danger of dropping even further. We beat Keady and Cullyhanna along the way, big wins and very tight affairs.
Madden had the best build-up possible, and we enjoyed the build up, because I realised that the final was as far as we could go. I took them to Sean Boylan, and he took them for a training session, I got the likes of Tony Scullion and Pete McGrath to take them for sessions. I wanted to make it memorable for them, knowing in my heart of hearts we would never be able to beat Cross. When they were marching around the field before the game, it dawned on me the difference in stature between the two sides, the physicality and size of Cross compared to us was noticeable. They were packed with county men, and seasoned campaigners.

DB: Where did the interest in coaching come from?
PG: I suppose I finished playing in 1991, and went into training the Pearse Óg side the following year, it was just something that was expected of you.

DB: And you took Ballymacnab to their first ever title - the Junior Championship in 1999.
PG: That was special. Colm Marley was the manager and I was coaching, but after the game there were grown men walking across the pitch crying their eyes out. Those were great days to look back on, and I will never forget them. It's fantastic to have been a part of those days.

DB: You played for Armagh during a fallow period, where plenty of good players gave long service for no reward, really.
PG: I was first on the panel in '79, and it would have been '89 when I quit. The panels changed completely between McKenna Cup, National League and Championship. Boys were brought in an out, if you did well in the county Championship you could find yourself on the county panel in the morning, and I missed out on the 1982 Ulster title like that. 
I was a very average county player, and I don't have any problem saying that. I enjoyed it though, and made good friends with the likes of Kieran McGurk, Martin McQuillan, Jim McCorry.

DB: Do you mind the stereotype of you and the brothers as being men who liked to turn games into, ahem, physical contests?
PG: What people don't understand is that different areas require different tools for the job! The era of the '80s and '90s, were characterised by big men, but if you look at say, Brian McGilligan, he wouldn't have been so successful unless he could play a fair bit. As the years went on, the game became different - when Peter Canavan came on the scene he was a full-forward, and people had never seen a small full-forward before.
People began to realise that playing a small man on a big fella could work. As the years went on, people then thought, well maybe we don't need a big full-back line, just good markers. But the big men back then maybe wouldn't fit into today's' game.

DB: What about the tunnel punch-ups, those stories don't be long growing into legends.
PG: Well, I was involved in that, I was there in Omagh at that time. As the years go by, they get talked about too much. There was a bit of a punch-up, but there was nothing really after that.

DB: Your brothers were offered contracts to go and play in Aussie Rules football, but turned them down.
PG: They were home birds. They were lukewarm offers, and both of them were engaged to be married the following year, so nothing came of it.

DB: Tell us about your time in Armagh - you brought the wives and girlfriends in for a meeting with all the players and management as soon as it became clear who was the new management.
PG: That was an idea Joe [Kernan] had. The wives would have to know the sacrifice the players would have to make, Joe believed in rewarding them. Players came under a lot of stress and Joe was very good at that man-management side of things.

DB: Do you feel you got that team at a good time?
PG: The opinion and feeling at the time was that team had its day, the two Brians got all they could out of them. Joe was the obvious candidate for the job because of his success with Cross, but people still said it was three years too late for him. The bones of that side went on for another six or seven years.

DB: That team defined themselves by the pursuit of the second All-Ireland, but did they make a rod for their own back?
PG: There's no getting away from the fact we only won one All-Ireland. That will always be a problem for myself, Joe, John McCloskey and the players. We will always have that burden and despite what people thought if us, despite what the media built us up to be, we still only won one All-Ireland, and we threw away at least two others.
We desperately wanted a second one. In 2003, Diarmuid Marsden's sending-off was such a blow for us. Fermanagh beat us in '04. We played Tyrone in a very controversial Ulster final in 2005, and knew we would not have to look too hard for them coming behind us. That semi-final in '05 was the hardest to take. The softest one that got away was '04, when we took our eye off the ball.

   
DB: When you talk about '04, in what way precisely did you take your eye off the ball?
PG: We were looking at Tyrone, and another eye on Fermanagh on the day. We didn't concentrate on our next 70 minutes, because we were thinking of the 70 minutes after it. I believe it had the same effect on Tyrone - they were so shocked that they lost their motivation. I'm only surmising here though I said it to Mickey Harte and I think he agreed.
We tried to guard against complacency that day, and I think Joe had talked since about players on their mobile phones on the bus and that carry-on. At the end of the day, we should have been more professional on that day, because we were known to be professional in every other context.
The following year we tried to get back and Tyrone beat us, and I believe that was the beginning of the end.

DB: In Oisín McConville's autobiography, he described you as a lunatic in training, and talked of your love of tackling grids. Yourselves and Tyrone introduced the tackle to a forwards' repertoire of skills.
PG: We believed the best form of defence was attack, because full-backs and corner backs were becoming much more mobile, Tyrone were the standard-bearers in that regard.
We had players like Diarmuid Marsden, Steven McDonnell and John McEntee who responded very well to it. Marsden in particular - he was the best tackler in the team. He always paired off with McGeeney, but Marsden was built like a middleweight boxer, with lightning fast hands. Kieran was robust and strong, but Diarmuid was very efficient in the tackle - very concentrated - and that gave us the idea to maul players.
Now, we weren't as good at the swarming tackle as Tyrone became, they brought it to a different level, but if we could get in around people, we could over turn a lot of ball.

[ONeill]

DB: With all the history with yourself and Armagh, does the snub by the county board in 2008 when they turned you down as manager still hurt?
PG: At the time, I left at the end of '06 and went to Cavan with Donal Keogan for a year. The Armagh job came up when Joe stepped down, and I believed I was a strong candidate. I received nominations from the clubs, went for the interview. It wasn't that I lost the job or anything - I felt that Peter McDonnell was a good enough man to take the job, but I think the way I was treated was the biggest problem. There was a lot of stuff that went on behind the scenes, which people were queuing up to tell me about after. People called to my house to tell me what had went on, to make sure I didn't get the job. After spending five years with Armagh I didn't deserve that. When it happened, I stood up for myself.

DB: In a recent interview with Gaelic Life, Peter McDonnell talked about the 'contamination' of the team by outside forces. It seems that the change in personnel in key areas has straightened out a lot of problems in Armagh football.
PG: Certainly, the people who are involved now, people like Peader Murray; he's an honourable man. Paul Duggan, who is the new Chairman, I believe is an honourable man. Jarlath Burns is an honourable man. Peader would never have failed to text me and wish me good luck in any game I was involved with after 2008, same as he would with Kieran [McGeeney]. Peader is one of the straightest guys around the county, the country maybe. Paul McGrane is as straight as you can get.
I believe Armagh have moved forward. The people involved now are keen to be transparent and not be labelled as a quango.

DB: If circumstances were right, if the Armagh job came up again and clubs nominated you again, would you let your name go forward?     
PG: Very unlikely that I'd ever let my name go forward as a manager. There is a possibility of me doing some other role, in coaching. At the same time, if you look throughout the country, Kildare were the first county to appoint a player who literally stepped out of the shorts and into the tracksuit in Kieran. It has proved very popular, and the trend is going towards the younger manager.

DB: After your years with Armagh, was that season with Cavan a nice change of environment?
PG: Donal Keogan was a good man, loved Cavan football, and would have had good ideas about how it should be played. I would have stayed on there, happily stayed, if the Armagh job hadn't come up at the end of the year. I genuinely wanted to stay, but I thought the job wouldn't come around again for years. So I resigned to let the county board people see that I was serious about the job.
When I didn't get the job, that left a vacuum. Kieran called me and said he wanted me with Kildare, and that's how it went.

DB: In your first Championship game with Kildare [a shock defeat to Wicklow], the players were not suited to the kind of game plan they were expected to play. Kieran was man enough to admit it after the game. In the meantime, you had been given the label 'forwards coach' in the media, so how hard was it to realise your football philosophy was all wrong for your team?
PG: The problem was that we had a half-forward line who were dropping back to the half-back line to create a blanket. So whenever we won the ball, we were putting diagonal ball in from 70 yards away, which is impossible. The Wicklow players did not track back with the Kildare forwards, so they were easily intercepting the ball. At half-time I tried to get it through to the players that we needed to get up those twenty yards and then deliver the ball.
We went away, Kieran and I, and met for five hours on the Tuesday night after it. We actually cut lumps out of each other, because we had so many different ideas. We put a flip-chart up and wrote everything down, stroked a lot of stuff out. At the end of the meeting, we came out with a train of thought that the problem lay in our mindsets - particularly mine, moreso than Kieran's. It was my mistake to believe that one model would work for everything.
There is a different mentality. Southern counties have a pure footballing outlook. Ulster sides see that if they are not good enough, they won't let the opposition be good either.

DB: Does the Kildare panel now remind you of Armagh in 2001?
PG: When Kieran and I took over, we asked ourselves what could we do, and it was the Leinster title. Imminently, there is a Leinster title in them now, an All-Ireland could be three years away - you have to be playing in the last stages of the All-Ireland for a few years. No matter how much you replicate composure, keeping the ball in training, it's still only training.
The only way of becoming profoundly professional in that, is by being there in front of a packed house, in the white heat of the Championship. If you can't do it, you have to get back to experience it as soon as possible. You need to be acclimatised to playing under severe pressure in tight situations.

DB: A coming team like Kildare need that, but are Down a special case in coming out of nowhere?
PG: Put it like this - it was a bigger issue for Kildare to deal with Down's history, than Down to deal with Down's history. All the talk was of when Down beat Kerry, they go on to win the All-Ireland. It's those kind of things you need to overcome. It's like a sprinter lining up alongside Usain Bolt - they just have to run as hard as they can and not pass any remarks on him.
You have to go to the well so many times to get a confidence that will carry you. At the moment, Kildare are heartbroken, but they will look at that game as one they should have won. They will gain confidence from that and come back next year. If they were beat out the gate by ten points, we might not see them back.

DB: With the job seemingly yours in Armagh last year, all of a sudden you were with Monaghan. It was a huge surprise, one that nobody had predicted.
PG: Banty came last year and asked me off the cuff could he meet with me. I went to see him and he drew out his plans for the year ahead. Good lads, good players, very driven, fantastic trainers, high turn outs. So I went.
We held our own in the league, and looked as if we were going to blow everybody away against Armagh and Fermanagh. We got to the Ulster final, and whether it was the weight of expectation, the media building our team up, I do not know, but we did not perform. Whenever you have 11 or 12 of your team not performing, it would not matter if you had God Almighty managing, you will not win, especially against a team like Tyrone.

DB: How was it to be back in Ulster? In some ways, you were getting them at a similar stage of their development as the teams you got in Armagh and Kildare?
PG: I told them that, they had a lot of youngsters and then you had the kind of Damien Freeman - who is 34 and could play another year, no bother. Jap [Paul Finlay], JP [Mone], Vinnie Corey, Tommy [Freeman], all great players, but we lost our leadership with Vinnie and JP for the final. It was a serious blow in terms of leadership. The blend reminded me of Armagh.

DB: The decision to play Darren Hughes in goals for the Armagh game - how did this come about?
PG: That decision was made in a day. Shane Duffy was given until 6pm on Saturday evening to see if he was fit to start. Once we realised he couldn't possibly play, I was particularly worried that Ronan Clarke would be in full forward for Armagh.
The problem with Sean Gorman - great lad, super, super lad, good goalkeeper - size was the problem. Sean was pulled aside and we explained our position. Sean's reply to me was that; 'I didn't grow any more than six months ago when we played Cork.'
Sean reminded me of that, so I reminded Sean that against Cork, he let in three goals. Two of them were generated from long, high balls into the square. If he wanted to remind me of something, he picked the wrong game, it only compounded the reasons. If it had have been any other team, we would have picked him.

DB: That's the sort of thing normally scuppers the chemistry of a team. That didn't happen though.
PG: It didn't. The players were told about it right away, and it was a shock to them, no doubt about it. We pleaded with Sean to stay on the panel, we didn't want him to go away, but he felt he couldn't do it. That's fine, I understood.
But I begged him to stay, he still had a role to play, and I knew that by walking away, it would make it difficult for him. Darren Hughes was told he would play, and that's it. In training, Darren would have filled in as goalkeeper when we played conditioned games anyway, and we had Paul O'Dowd in as goal-keeping coach, who set to work right away.

DB: The management situation in Monaghan is in a strange place right now, and the county Chairman Paul Curran has had his say in the media. Were Seamus, Martin and yourself geared up for another big push before the controversy?
PG: I believe Paul Curran, Sean McKenna and John Connolly met Seamus and went over a number of points in the Fiddlers Bar. I think they went over nine or ten points, and we included the three years. There was a query from them on the three-year term, Seamus wanted the three years because he felt we had a lot of work to do in bringing players forward.
Paul Curran, Sean and John; the County Executive, basically, agreed with Seamus. I would have felt then, that it was their job to sell that to the clubs, and outline what it was for.
Again, I'm not privy to what went on in the meetings, but I was told that didn't happen. It wasn't sold to the clubs, and in fact the clubs were misled in what they were voting for.
It's disappointing. Here's a man who brought a team up four divisions. In between, he brought them to two Ulster finals. Alright, he was beaten in both, but he kept the division one status, and this year brought on four or five young players. If that isn't success, then you have to ask yourself. Obviously, the next step is to go on and get an Ulster title, and that could have been done in the next couple of years.
Seamus inherited a team. He got the maximum out of that team, and was starting for another kick at it - they wouldn't back him, after telling him they would.

DB: Has there been much soul-searching between the management team as to how to proceed, or was it solely Seamus' decision?
PG: It was Banty's decision, flat out. It obviously impacted upon me, and because of that I will not be involved next year. I stand by Seamus McEnaney.

DB: Theoretically, if the three-year deal had have been ratified by the clubs, how far could Monaghan have gone?
PG: I believe Monaghan could have won an Ulster title, within a year. But the three-year deal could have been sold in a simple way. It could have been a three-year term, but could come under review annually. They had done this every year before.

DB: Why is it that every time a managerial reign comes to an end on Ulster, there is always a huge fall-out? Is there a lack of communication between management and administration, because very few step down on good terms any more.
PG: Change is very difficult to manage, particularly if you have management that have been there several years. Administrators feel that a lot of management teams are stronger than they should be, that they have too much to say. They feel that management can have too much control over the county; over club fixtures, over players, expenses, everything. At this time of year, they always regroup and say, 'we want to get our team back here.'   
It isn't their team to get back, it belongs to the clubs. You get these guys who come into a job, and the first thing they want to do is show how tough they are, and how strong they are going to be. In actual fact, all that is about, is them. Not about the team, not about the players.
Whenever you get a statement where 30 players are wanting the management to stay, they believe that is the best chance of success, and then you have county board and delegates going against it, whose interests is that in?
We have delegates here who did not consult with the county players in their own club. What right have they to do that? They have a right to express their opinion, but they showed no respect. They didn't respect players in their own club, and the County Executive showed no respect for Seamus McEnaney. That's just the bottom line.

DB: Is there an element of hiding behind the clubs?
PG: I have no problem in saying this. Paul Curran should have showed more leadership in this. He is talking about democracy, but I have since been told that the County Board have sent letters out to certain individuals within the county, asking them to apply for the job. That's hardly democracy. Paul Curran is using the clubs here to escape his responsibility.
To sit in front of Seamus, and pledge his backing. And now blame the clubs for not wanting him. It's just unheard of.
In Armagh, when the clubs wanted me, the County Board over-ruled them. It didn't go in my favour, but people will say, 'well, they showed leadership because they wanted Peter McDonnell to get the job.' Fine! No problem. But at the end of the day, I thought they would put the thing out, and the club management would be ultimately responsible for appointing the manager.

DB: So what are your own plans for the near-future?
PG: Well, I was sick there and had pneumonia, the week after the Kildare game - I think that game brought it on! I'm just going to sit tight, take my time and explore one or two offers here. I'm gonna take my time and see if it's the right move or not.
I will probably have another couple of years at county level, and that will do me. I don't see a big demand for the likes of me beyond the next two years, people like myself will be natural wastage.
At that stage, I would like to finish off with a couple of years with Pearse Ógs, and that would be me. I'll just be like everybody else, going along to watch matches. I don't think I will ever be involved in administration because I'm too hot-tempered, and I'm not the easiest fella to get on with, as McGeeney and them boys will tell you!