New Meath Manager

[Hardy]

Tom Carr would have been the perfect choice as Meath team boss.

Hayes does talk some awful shite.

I hate the idea of a manager brought in from outside and cringe at the suggestion that the likes of Carr or Luke Dempsey were under consideration. But when names like Jack O'Connor and Joe Kernan are mentioned I have to re-think. How could you reject men with their records and obvious abilities? That's without getting into the whole payment debate (where Hayes, for a change, maybe makes some sense).

[Dinny Breen]

Sorry's lads but it is Dempsey, I know someone who was asked to be part of his back-room team, it's to be announced today.

[Hardy]

Ah please Dinny!

[AZOffaly]

Luke Dempsey? where's Victor Meldrew when you need him. Ah, here he is...

[lynchbhoy]

Sorry's lads but it is Dempsey, I know someone who was asked to be part of his back-room team, it's to be announced today.

youd think crofton would stay away form that kind of thing after his prev fiasco !

[lynchbhoy]

Don't think i know him - whats his record like?

is mick lyons not involved with NOM ?

meath panelist in late 80's early 90's, prob 40 years old this year, played for dunderry, joined (and left) the Christian brothers.
Has been doing a bit of managing for the past couple of years heard good things about him.
Doesnt like being called 'drugsy' !

still think davy nelson would be the best man meath could get!

Davy nelson - you are having a laugh!!! What has achieved in recent years?

Monaghan senior championship with latton yesterday which is no mean feat - arguably only the 3/4 best team in monaghan

I didnt even know he took a team this year....
imo hes good enough  ...

[shark]

The word in Mullingar (from people in Dempseys club) is that he has it, or at least he believes he has it.

[magpie seanie]

Looks like I am going to be shocked so. I could never in a million years pick Luke Dempsey as a Meath manager.

[Jinxy]

This is the worst outrage in the history of the universe.

[Hardy]

I hope it's a joke. It is lads, isn' it? Come on now.

[lynchbhoy]

He'll have a field day in the media if he is managing 2 Counties 

well hes a money mad fecker and it wouldnt surprise me if he'd try it ! 

[The GAA]

What "alluding" did hayes do?

[LaurelEye]

 

Sympathies from all in Longford.

On the other hand, if any of the Meath lads are looking for work in hotel gyms or morkeshing, the job is oxo 

And LMFM will have no shortage of material...

[Hardy]

From yesterday's Tribune:


Professionals in the bainisteoir's bib would take GAA to next level
Liam Hayes Football Analyst

Genuinely, I'm ever so aware of using the words 'crisis' or 'meltdown' on the Tribune's pure and earnest pages of sport. We've got enough of that going on up front these days. This is where we mix fun and passion, and wild extremes of joy and great portions of disappointment, all of which pass fleetingly enough in the end. But, we've got a problem!

We have not got 32 managers at work in our counties this morning, and that's because 10 of them (or at least that's when I stopped counting) departed their places of part-time work during the course of the last five months.

When all of the senior managerial slots all over the country are finally filled, however, the country is still unlikely to have 32 senior football managers at work, who are fully aware of what they are about to get themselves into, and who are physically, emotionally and psychologically equipped to get the job done.

What's missing, in every single county, is a contract of work. We hear all the time of managers being given three-year terms, but nobody ever actually signs sheet of paper. Is there one county in Ireland which has a detailed job description for the vitally important role of 'senior manager' condensed into four or five sheets of paper and held together by a one impressive paper clip? I doubt it.

Nobody ever signs a name to anything. Everything is built quite perilously on a handshake and a "Hope to God" that it all works out. And that's not good enough. Our game deserves better. So too do our supporters and our sponsors, who are paying great whacks of money to see games of football (and hurling, folks) which have homemade sheets of cardboard with €8 and €10, and sometimes more, nailed above entrance stiles.

There are 'professional' managers in our game today or, to be correct, men who live their lives as amateur Gaelic football team bosses in a very professional manner. Pat O'Shea and Mickey Harte are two of them, but equally thorough in every degree and dimension of the job is John O'Mahony and a handful of others – I've got to be careful here that I do not insult a whole lorry-load of managers in one fell swoop. That would be just my luck! Instead, I'll say that Cavan are immensely lucky to have Tom Carr installed as their bainisteoir for 2009.

They are lucky that Carr decided to get back into things after a break of three years, and they are especially lucky that the gentlemen who sit at the top table of the Meath county board got lost in a giant plate of sandwiches for a few weeks. Tom Carr would have been the perfect choice as Meath team boss.

Pat Gilroy (below) was a surprise choice for The Dubs. Nobody saw that one coming – mainly because the Gilroy/Mickey Whelan managerial pairing was arrived at "very late in the day". It was a last-minute choice. It was also a compromise choice. It was the Dublin county board, in a state of mild panic, quickly deciding to get back to basics after the heady, high-tech four-year reign of Paul Caffrey, and there is nothing more assuring in the long and great history of Dublin football than a pair of St Vincent's hands.

Better still, two pairs of St Vincent's hands! Gilroy and Whelan really does have a whiff of the FAI's 'Staunton and Robson Show' about it. Gilroy is a 100 per cent rookie, and Whelan a crusty, wise and still brilliantly refreshing old veteran. We'll see.

The interesting, and slightly hilarious backdrop, to the search by both Meath and Dublin for a new manager over the last two months, is that both county boards initially set their hearts on the same man. No, not Brian Mullins.

Dublin gave up on this individual quickly enough and moved down through their list of possible candidates and Meath, most likely, will follow their neighbours in the next few days when they name Luke Dempsey or Eamonn O'Brien (or somebody else entirely) as a successor to Colm Coyle. However, Meath officials did not give up so quickly and have journeyed across the county boundaries to have several lengthy and impassioned meetings over the last couple of weeks with the man they really want, and one last plea from them to him is likely.

The departure of Colm Coyle was disastrous for Meath. Life still has not returned to anywhere near normal since Seán Boylan's departure and Coyle was viewed as somebody who could guide the county, over a five- or six-year period, into a bright new future. Everyone trusted him, and nearly everyone admired him, even despite the horrendous exit in this year's championship.

Meath are now at a most anxious of crossroads. Hence, county board officials have been hitting the high road and looking well outside their own parishes and way beyond the hopeful faces of candidates all around them.

With Meath and Dublin where they have been for the last two months, imagine how dismal things look at the bottom of the Gaelic football ladder! This last week we had Paul Bealin resign as Carlow team boss, just nine months after he and the Carlow county board started into a body of work which both parties agreed might take up to five years. Minimum. Carlow have now said hello and goodbye to five managers in six years, and as some of you know that number included me doing my bit for a year and a half.

I'd go back as Carlow manager in the morning. I would indeed, but I'd probably only last another year and a half! Hardly anyone in the entire country knows just how hard that job is. I wouldn't give Pat O'Shea or Jack O'Connor anymore than two years in my county of birth – and I would give Páidí six months, God love him! It's not that the people of Carlow are awful or horrible. They're fine, decent people! The Carlow county board is as serious and hard-working as any other county board I've ever known!

How can I put it?

Carlow, if you like, is Gaelic football's very own 'Ground Zero'. However, there are so many other counties, a couple of dozen of them in fact, which are also without any worthwhile structures of any kind when it comes to building a future as a successful Gaelic football entity.

It is staring the GAA leadership in the face, that counties need to put in place 'professional' structures (and we're actually talking real, live full-time jobs here) which will cater for the best Gaelic footballers in each county, and which will guide individual counties to a better place.

We're talking professional, not semi-professional. What we're really talking about is taking a good, hard look at the managerial structures which are at work for the good of the Leinster, Munster, Ulster, and Connacht rugby teams. And we need to talk very fast, and take immediate action.

Too many counties are floundering around. And, as we saw reported in Carlow this week, floundering around and at the same time spending €250,000 on their county teams. Spending this sort of money on a 'handshake' and a "Hope to God" is madness.

All of our counties need to start spending most of their hard-earned money on appointing someone, call him a Director of Football if you like, call him anything you wish, whose job is to build sound, workable and long-lasting structures around him. Carlow, for instance, do not need a new manager, now that Paul Bealin has hit the road. They need a Director of Football who will take responsibility for the county's under-18, under-21 and senior teams.

There are over two dozen other counties who could decide to follow the same course, tomorrow, and slowly but surely benefit. Included in this number is not just my county of birth, but also the county in which I lived for 25 years. Dublin and Meath need to think about putting such structure in place.

These are indeed crisis-filled times for the GAA. There are too many teams gambling on the next man, and the next man after him, and putting down too much money on the table, and losing it all, year after year. Too many counties are going broke, and too many county teams are going nowhere.

lhayes@tribune.ie

October 12, 2008

[Billys Boots]

Sympathies from all in Longford.

Seconded.