Paddy O'Rourke Out!

[naka]

Thats certainly not what i've heard but maybe you have a link to the story naka?

was texted by one of the guys at club and then rang same guy( used to be our chairman we are south armagh club) he told me a done deal , dont doubt him but he may be wrong.

[Groucho]

Fcuk sake....the "Judge" would be a better manager.

Agent O'Rourke completes his mission then

[Rufus T Firefly]

Prophetic post from one of the elder statesmen of this Board

More crystal ball gazing from back then;

Armagh's internal strife - Orchard hit by a classic tale of forbidden fruit

Ewan MacKenna

Armagh football is sick and it has been for a little while now. This week's ambiguous statements from former manager Peter McDonnell may be the first public admission that something is wrong, but those close to this side will have known that for some time now. This season the county found themselves with a manager lacking confidence, a team lacking anywhere near the talent that had gone before, a trophy that was never going to be defended and a county board unwilling to take its share of the blame in all of this. Yet worse still, the Armagh panel had reverted to the geographical cliques and frustrations that once blighted the county. Catastrophe was imminent.

To this day, people underestimate what Brian McAlinden and Brian Canavan did for Armagh. Their Ulster wins may have been acknowledged briefly before such success became normality but what they faced when taking up the role as joint managers is often forgotten. Many of the players from that golden era of football in the county talk about the first step on the way to an All Ireland being a smoothing out of relations before there were trophies. That Joe Kernan took over a side that was no longer splintered is a testament to how the two Brians brought Armagh together.

However the events of the past week have shown that Armagh football has reverted to type and while talk of leaked tactics (believed to be from a well-known substitute but unable to be named by McDonnell due to a lack of hard proof) emerging from within the side are alarming, the underlying reason is the camp is again divided and members of the set up are annoyed. Until that is sorted out, this is a side going nowhere.

Losing McDonnell may not have been a bad starting point. Any manager would have struggled to compete after losing so many quality players but while this made it difficult, the lurking shadow of his appointment made the position untenable. That was far from his own making but ever since he took the job late in 2007, his time was ticking as the majority of clubs in the county never wanted him there in the first place.

Take a glimpse back at the trophy presentation from the 2008 Ulster final. Accepting the cup was Paul McGrane, a leader off the pitch and a player on it that could cover for the increasing limitations around him. On the steps was Peter McDonnell, a manger too insecure to thoroughly enjoy his finest achievement and who was weighed down from the minute he took over the county. McGrane tried to involve his manager by acknowledging Peter the Great is his speech. There was little response. The manner of his appointment was something McDonnell could never climb above. For this the county board must take responsibility just as they should for exiling key men within the county that are unlikely to go near the job on this occasion.

McDonnell was never going to achieve what went before as more and more senior players headed for retirement but his problem was surviving without those senior players. And when they went, so did his prospects. But what was most irritating to Armagh this year was not losing to Tyrone and Monaghan after extra-time - in normal circumstances a departure after such results would seem harsh - rather the lack of growth and fruition that had taken place since the loss to Wexford in last year's quarter-finals. In the 10 months between championship exits, Armagh suffered the same problems on the field. Nothing had been learned.

And those on-field problems magnified by the off-field back stabbing is why the next man is so important. Just like McAlinden and Canavan were so important to any success long after they had gone because of their dealings with the internal strife in the county, history will repeat itself here. After winning the Ulster title, the Armagh minor side is already favourite for this year's All Ireland but whoever takes the reigns needs to make sure they have a steady platform to advance to. And that's all that can be expected because at present this is a senior side bustling with good players, but very few great ones.

Success will not be associated with the next Armagh manager. Stability must be.

July 26, 2009


Comments
#1 Benny Asquith commented, on July 27, 2009 at 8:42 a.m.:

The County Board's refusal to face down the petty jealousies and small minded agendas of a few influential people back in 2007, set in motion a sequence of events that has culminated in this terrible situation.
The opportunity now presents itself to make a fresh start and learn from previous mistakes. This though would necessarily mean the County Board acknowledging these mistakes, and reversing a decision that was taken two years earlier, when they refused to listen to the wishes of a majority of the Clubs, and install Paul Grimley as manager.
They now need to consider what is in the interests of Armagh football, and not what is in the interests of those wielding power.
Historical precedent however would suggest that there is little appetite for humble pie in the Armagh corridors of power, and it is likely that another opportunity will be spurned.

[Armamike]

Good article by Peter Mackem this week in the observer. Talks a lot of sense on the bigger thinking thats needed, rather than focusing solely on the manager.

[ck]

Good article by Peter Mackem this week in the observer. Talks a lot of sense on the bigger thinking thats needed, rather than focusing solely on the manager.

What were the main points?

[BennyCake]

Can anyone confirm if Paddy O'Rourke has been offered another year in the Armagh job?

[David McKeown]

Can anyone confirm if Paddy O'Rourke has been offered another year in the Armagh job?

Speaking to our club reps who were at the cb meeting when he was appointed 2 years ago, they are both certain he was appointed for a 3 year term so he'd need to be sacked otherwise he will be there next year. He doesn't need formally reappointed.

[ardal]

Can anyone confirm if Paddy O'Rourke has been offered another year in the Armagh job?

Speaking to our club reps who were at the cb meeting when he was appointed 2 years ago, they are both certain he was appointed for a 3 year term so he'd need to be sacked otherwise he will be there next year. He doesn't need formally reappointed.

In what successful organisation in the 21st century is there no review of progress over the previous twelve months?

Governments?

[Armamike]

J

Good article by Peter Mackem this week in the observer. Talks a lot of sense on the bigger thinking thats needed, rather than focusing solely on the manager.

What were the main points?

Basically that the cb needs to rethink the structures around the county team and look at new ways of training and system of play. Argues that too much onus is on one person, ie the manager whereas the environment needs to be right. Makes the point too that underage structures are good and that the senior set up isnt at the same level.

[armaghniac]

Micky Harte might fancy a new challenge!

[Carbery]

Good article by Peter Mackem this week in the observer. Talks a lot of sense on the bigger thinking thats needed, rather than focusing solely on the manager.

What were the main points?

Armagh must act now or face total decline
By Peter Makem

There's a difference between the problem of Armagh senior football and the problem of the current management.
In an article two years ago and largely repeated this time last year, I proposed that whoever became the new Armagh senior manager was on a loser if totally fresh foundations were not laid beforehand. I proposed that the problem was bigger than any manager and we were fooling ourselves unless competent people within the county sat down and took long and serious stock of the situation to undo the decline that had set in since the demise of the All-Ireland team around 2004-2005. We needed to go back behind the starting line, create a whole new system, develop players in a new manner and push back the boundaries of the game even further.

I also pointed out in last year's article that if the above development was not undertaken, we would be no further on in twelve months time, nor in the year after nor the year following that and so on. In other words the decline would continue, and that we would end up where we were in the mid-nineties and indeed back to the mid-seventies. That's exactly where we are now.

The past few championships have seen the tide go out as far as it did in those days. But even then, it was only marginally a problem of a manager. As a general rule going away back into the sixties, the managers were competent people who knew their football, Paddy O'Hara, Jimmy Whan, Mal McEvoy and so on and there were plenty of good and very good players around. That was not the problem. There was nothing to manage. There was no structure or order of things, and it was a good night when five or six turned up for training at all – with the dressing room before a match full of strangers to each other.

By structure does not mean an assembly of training and weight "specialists", specialist coaches, psychologists, stats people, and so on. Armagh has all that now and is going nowhere. In fact every county in Ireland has such an array of staff but again, it makes no difference to the vast majority. All the psychology in the world, all the weights programming and huddles is useless if the player doesn't know what to do when he gets the ball, or where to take a pass. All the physical fitness in the world is useless in the long run if players have no system to perform in.

Structure is a basic simple thing and the approach to it will vary from county to county depending on how high they genuinely aim. To achieve a new structure in Armagh – as the old one is dead and gone – it means first of all clearing the decks totally of everybody involved including the players and management setup. Next, people of experience and thought in the county will sit down and work out how the game can be brought to a new level through a new system of play. They will then carefully select players of potential – some of whom are already on the panel – and fit these into an effective system of football where everybody knows their role and all it geared toward the maximum scoring facility. It will take five or six months from now to do this preparatory work involving setting up a system of individual training to bring the player toward a new level of physical and mental ability – but only after he knows his role in the grand design. The bringing in of a manger is part of this new structure and system, in other words, he is the pilot of the new ship that is built.

CANNOT HIDE BEHIND EXCUSES
But although there has been no development of the Armagh team under his management, Paddy O'Rourke is not the source of our ills. The problem is not managerial but structural. Paddy had limited success with Down and there was no evidence that he would have any more with Armagh, especially an Armagh with little momentum left. The mindset that made the appointment instead of concentrating on the creation of a whole new system and structure is the problem. Armagh were not facing up to the deep realities of what was wrong and instead threw the job at somebody and get that much off their backs. But that merely of course, merely deepened the problem.

The real issue at present is the very mindset that allows the current situation to continue. All the underage work – which is very substantial and well organised including the Minor achievements of recent years – disintegrates when things reach senior level because the very thing it aspires to, that is, the senior team, is a void, emptiness. There are good structures everywhere in Armagh except at the very place when they are most required for ultimate development. It's like a hypothetical system in education where children go to primary school into secondary, get their 'A' Levels or other qualifications but find the Third Level institutions like Queen's and Jordanstown no longer offer degrees.

Accordingly there is a real sense that O'Rourke is a scapegoat and a cover for deeper failures in Armagh to address the points I mention. The bottom line, and it seems to be obvious to everybody, is that the County Board simply cannot continue with present setup or dress it up in some other way as this is not facing up to the reality of the problem.

Decline sets in to very institution and it goes on and on unless deliberately stopped. This is why every so often, a totally new momentum has to be created, a new and original system thought out and the whole train set in fresh motion. To realistically aim for the Sam Maguire in the near future Armagh requires the creation of a team to do extensive groundwork as indicated in new ways of team building and training before even thinking of a manger. As things stand, it doesn't matter who we appoint as there is no system to manage. But under a new system, the appointment is critical.

What is happening is all wrong. Promising players throughout the League have just vanished from the scene, one after the other. Our talented midfielders have not progressed at all nor is there proper cover in this department. Younger players from the Minor grade have not appeared. The team keeps changing from game to game and Stephen McDonnell, lone survivor of 2002 and one of Armagh's three or four greatest footballers of all time, is still the central figure on the team. Nobody appears to know what anybody else is doing on the field and things change from game to game. This is all because a total halt was not called to the drift some years ago, and a totally new system introduced.

Talk of maintaining Division One status as a sign of progress is nonsense. Many of the teams in Division One because they can stay there without breaking sweat in a competition that in reality is a series of challenge games that confers no status at all. It is not like the English Premiership where the league is the championship for the GAA; the All-Ireland champions could have Division Two status. If Armagh's Division One status is a sign of progress why are we collapsing in the championship?

Nor can we hide behind the usual waffle that "the players are just not there." Only last year Armagh gave Donegal a bad beating at Crossmaglen, a Donegal side that contained twelve of the players who are now in the All-Ireland semi-final. I met Brian McEniff over month ago in Bundoran and he said that Donegal were now a very different proposition and was confident they would win in Ulster at least, that Jim McGuinness had restructured the whole scene, that Donegal went back behind to the drawing board an took stock as to what had been going wrong for the past nineteen years and moved in a new direction.

It's never a question of the talent available. It's what you do with the talent available and Armagh are drifting year by year toward disintegration at senior level – not because of lack of talent – but because of lack of organisation.

Tyrone had players as good in the past as now but they were never remotely as organised. Their system has remained unchanged for the past ten yeas and new players just fit into it. Kevin Heffernan won an All-Ireland with Dublin in 1974 in his first year as manager with a group of players who struggled earlier in the National League of that year. He created a system and moulded the talents available into a superb team where not six months previous people were saying that "the players were simply not there". From a superficial perspective it always appears that success comes because a group of talented players arrive on the scene at the same time and the logic of tis is that you have to wait on this to happen for success. All the evidence points to the opposite. Success comes through the intensity of organising the planning and in the case of teams who have no tradition; it involves creating a totally new system of play and approach.

Armagh did this to win the All-Ireland in 2002 – which was perfected by Tyrone to win their three All-Irelands – and adopted by every other successful team including Kerry and taken to a new intensity recently by Donegal.

The proof of this is the great innovation by Down in the late fifties, a county that had scant tradition at senior level and whose mentors in 1957 decided to stop waiting on the fates and take things into their own hands by working out how to create an All-Ireland winning team. They build the players available into an idea, into a totally innovate structure of training and teamwork so that it appeared in hindsight that Down were lucky that a group of exceptional players just happened to arrive at the one time. But the truth is that there was only a blank sheet in 1957 when the new structures were set up and not an All-Ireland winning player in sight. It was a supreme victory of organisation and innovation.

However, Down went into a slow decline as the sixties progressed culminating in a serious defeat by Cavan in the Ulster final of 1967. It was at this point that mentors decided to sit down and take stock and find out what had gone wrong and to end the drift. So they brought out the blank sheet again, took back the best of the old team of 60/61 merged with largely members of the Minor team of two years previous and began a fresh momentum with a new system of play to end the drift. The following year they won the National League and the Sam Maguire.

COUNTY BOARD NO CHOICE
This is a much darker hour for the Armagh senior team than we imagine. The truth is this, that the powers that be have no choice but to do something radical regarding the critical situation at present, and a patchwork job, which is always the temptation, will merely mock the present generation of up and coming footballers who want to represent us at the highest level of completion.

To repeat, Armagh will continue to drift at senior level, moving deeper and deeper into the fog of the bad old times unless we go back behind the starting line with a blank sheet and work out a totally new enterprise. There is absolutely no hope without this.

We did it twice before in the mid seventies and the mid nineties and we have a solemn duty to do it again for the dignity and pride of Armagh and for the thousands of supporters and the new generation of footballers who all long for a return to the glorious days.

INSPIRED
I am always inspired by the heroic figure of former chairman Tommy Lynch back in 1974 when single handily, lit Horatio on the bridge, he held Armagh together in their darkest hour, and initiated the revival of the county team in one of the great acts of leadership in the county's history.

Conversely, I always feel bad when I think of the Armagh team of 1961 whom I saw as a boy narrowly losing the Ulster final 2-10 to 1-10 to All-Ireland champions Down at Casement Park, and still cannot forget the lost potential of that outstanding group of footballers who had the class to be All-Ireland champions the following year instead of being allowed to slide into oblivion.

I remember giving a talk at the O'Fiaich Library a few years ago to a group that included many of this team. I had one question for them. What happened the following year? Why did they disintegrate whereas they should have been primed to win the 1962 All-Ireland which was there for the taking? No one was saying much, but the real reason I suggested was that they were allowed to disintegrate. No genuine effort was made to sit everybody down, take stock of what went wrong, work out deeply what was needed in the team and plan a new assault on the coming championships. I looked down the hall and saw Kevin Halfpenny, Jimmy Whan, Harry Loughran, Johnny McGeary, Harry Hoy, Felix McKnight and the others who formed that side, and one thought arrived that would not go away – "We let that generation down". I remember standing on the podium while a debate went on realising that the say was true of the Armagh senior players of the thirties and forties who did not win an Ulster title and were narrowly beaten by Cavan or Monaghan time and time again. The county let them down as well. A good measure of justice was done to the footballers of the early fifties with two Ulster's and an All-Ireland appearance and efforts made to develop the minors of '49. But the 1953 side quickly disintegrated and apart from the single promise of 1961, several generations of footballers were allowed to drift into oblivion, into a barren age that lasted a quarter of a century until the mid seventies.

So as a new generation of Armagh players begin to knock at the door of destiny, I hope that we will be true to them and that somebody down the years ahead will not sit down and lift their pen to write – "We let that generation down".

Taken from www.armaghgaa.net

[Orangemac]

When you are talking about the county board then things are not good within any given county.

The most important thing they can do at senior county level is appoint the best man possible and within financial constraints give him everything he needs. Outside of that if there aren't good enough players there won't be success.

Any county can look back on previous eras and think what might have been. There are good enough players in Armagh to be consistently in and around the top 10 and wins at national club, senior and underage intercounty level in the last 10/15 years mean that Armagh players will not have the inferiority complex Armagh teams had in the past.

[lawnseed]

would the two brians be up for it again... anything to get rid of por

[mackers]

That's an excellent article by Peter Makem who is obviously a passionate Armagh man. I would agree with a lot of what he says there and I would have been one of the guys who said we don't have enough good players to compete with the big guns. Donegal's progression from the mauling we gave them last year should act as a huge incentive for all involved with Armagh football. We have a talented bunch of players in the 18 to 21 age group and they should be used in a similar way that the 92 and 94 minor teams were used. There's a huge onus on those with the authority to make sure this group and indeed all the work that was put into these players by guys like Paul McShane isn't wasted.

[David McKeown]

Obviously not all sorted out yet.

http://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/championship/2011/0809/armagh.html