Sunday Tribune Article

[Rossfan]

Ah Mr Shannon, forever a favourite of us Rossies. Gave a more accurate description of the whole Maughan - Ros supporters issue, than all the other alleged sports journalists combined.

"If Roscommon supporters were customers, they would have taken their business elsewhere a long time ago"

priceless.Good man Mr Shannon I do enjoy your articles, unlike the other plagiarised, regurgitated rubbish.

Rudi - I think it was Ewen McKenna who did the favourable article about us after Tanman's silly outburst.
As for those Mayoites who think scoring a goal in a FBD game is funny -- it's not half as fcukin hilarious as Mayo's efforts against Kerry in all Ireland finals.

[RedandGreenSniper]

Ah Mr Shannon, forever a favourite of us Rossies. Gave a more accurate description of the whole Maughan - Ros supporters issue, than all the other alleged sports journalists combined.

"If Roscommon supporters were customers, they would have taken their business elsewhere a long time ago"

priceless.Good man Mr Shannon I do enjoy your articles, unlike the other plagiarised, regurgitated rubbish.

Rudi - I think it was Ewen McKenna who did the favourable article about us after Tanman's silly outburst.
As for those Mayoites who think scoring a goal in a FBD game is funny -- it's not half as fcukin hilarious as Mayo's efforts against Kerry in all Ireland finals.

Ah relax, have a sense of humour . Pretty sure twas Shannon that did that article by the way.

[Mike Sheehy]

"For the next few days you're Joe Kernan. I'll be back to you on Tuesday and then tell me what way you're thinking."

I'll bet he spent the weekend thinking of burgers 

[spectator]

Rudi - I think it was Ewen McKenna who did the favourable article about us after Tanman's silly outburst.

True, Ian McEwan was first into the breach when everyone else rushed lemming-like to condemn the 'customers' but Shannon soon saw the light and wrote quite a damning article on Maughan's man-management and footballing philosophies subsequently.


ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Kieran Shannon  18-05-2008
     

John Maughan's exit was the right move for Roscommon but with Michael Ryan now in the driver's seat they have a lot of mileage to make up over the summer

JOHN Whyte laughed softly, and as he did, so did everyone else. "I suppose it's being a strange year alright, " the Roscommon veteran responded to a question at a press conference in Ballinasloe last Monday, "though maybe not so strange because we've been here before a few times."

About every three years, actually, it seems to happen, this cycle of managerial casualties and interim managers. In 2002 there was that notorious game of naked pool, the trigger for John Tobin to walk away. In 2005 Tommy Carr had enough of them as well. This year then they had enough of John Maughan.

It wasn't reported like that, of course. Who do you think the national media was going to side with - a media-friendly, multi-All Ireland finalist manager, or a group of players who've never or hardly won anything and supporters that media never heard and will never see? The truth is the only tears shed following Maughan's departure were in the media. Not a single tear dropped from a Roscommon eye.

From the off Maughan's reign was contentious, with his decision to cull the side's biggest names. Four immediately caught the casual eye - Frankie Dolan, Francie Grehan, Shane Curran and Nigel Dineen - but locally, a fifth did as well, a then 27-year-old, and now current county manager, Michael Ryan.

"I thought it was a complete over-reaction, " says Ryan. "There were discipline problems but no manager ever came out and said what the actual problems were. You'd have thought everyone would have started with a clean slate but instead a lot of us were tarred with the same brush. I wasn't bitter about it, otherwise I wouldn't be back helping out now, but lads were treated shabbily after giving great service to Roscommon."

Yet after his first year, Maughan's cull was generally approved. There was an acceptance locally that there was a Monday Social Club that had to be broken up, and in Maughan's first year in charge, the side had come within a game of promotion and had pushed Galway hard in Connacht. The side's tame exit in the first round of the qualifiers, a hammering to Meath in Navan, was glossed over.

Last year serious doubts were raised.

Maughan had prided himself and his teams on their fitness and stamina, yet in the last 30 minutes against Sligo in Hyde Park, his men had been outscored nine points to one. His appreciation and handling of leadership was also dubious. For that Connacht semi-final David Casey had been his captain, yet by the time of the first-round qualifier against Kildare Casey wasn't even there, after a flare-up between the pair when Maughan had accused him of being too vocal in the dressing room against Sligo.

For a county without the likes of Curran, Grehan and Ryan, not to mention subsequent casualties like Brian Higgins, John Rogers and the injured Whyte, Roscommon could hardly do without a leader like Casey.

This year the leadership deficit was even more pronounced as Maughan went with a panel including 11 under-21s. It was hardly part of a master three-year plan; everyone forgets now, but on the eve of the 2006 championship and after Maughan's mildly successful first league campaign, Fergal O'Donnell's minors hadn't won a game of any description, and had scored just one point in a 17-point challenge game defeat to Armagh. It was hardly the most efficient one-year plan either, with the under-21 championship running in tandem with a demanding league schedule.

In the hours after his now infamous last game, against Westmeath in Kiltoom, Maughan would partly attribute the heavy defeat to the fact that four of his starting 15 had played just 24 hours earlier in a Connacht under-21 semi-final. What he conveniently failed to mention was that his entire half-back line consisted of three of those under-21s and that two of that triumvirate had played in completely different units of the field the previous day - his wing-back David O'Gara had played at midfield; his centre-back, Enda Kenny, had kicked a goal and a point from full-forward; and his one genuine half-back, David Keenan, who had worn number six for the 21s, was shoved to the wing, leaving Kenny, a natural forward, manning the centre.

The Mayo man has always had an admirable soft spot for ball-playing half-backs - the likes of James Nallen, Noel Connelly and Peadar Gardiner all thrived under his tenure, while it was as a centre-back that Fermanagh's Marty McGrath was handed his championship debut by Maughan - but this was patently a step or two too far. It wasn't merely that a forward was being asked to a back's job, but that a kid was being asked to do a man's. In one passage of play Kenny went to shoulder Martin Flanagan yet it was Kenny who ended up on the seat of his pants, brushed aside like he was repeatedly by Cork's Pearse O'Neill weeks earlier.

If Westmeath was everyone's breaking point, Armagh in Crossmaglen had been the turning point, that 24-point defeat the heaviest in Roscommon history. The next night in training Maughan had the team training with a rugby ball. It might have been a noble attempt to lighten the mood but it did not work, and for the panel's few remaining veterans who had been previously worked under as advanced a games and skills coach as John Tobin, that night and exercise was a depressing reminder of how far their place and Roscommon's had slumped in the world.

It wasn't the maddening crowd that pushed Maughan, because there was none. There was a crowd alright gathered outside the Kiltoom clubroom, but beyond one punter jibing "Bye, bye, John" and another proclaiming, "You're a f***n' disgrace, Maughan", there was little to it. The board executive were getting some heat though and on the Monday the county secretary, Seamus Maher, inferred to Maughan that his future was bound to be on the agenda of an upcoming board meeting and he'd be doing well to survive it. There was indeed a meeting scheduled for the following night but Maughan's management wasn't its concern, yet the call unsettled Maughan to the point he phoned the county chairman Michael McGuire to declare he was resigning.

After that, the Kiltoom "mob" became the scapegoat, and for the most part, people swallowed it. Days later though county treasurer Larry Brennan resigned, claiming the saga had highlighted that there were people he "could no longer trust".

It is little wonder that in such an environment former minor manager and miracle worker Fergal O'Donnell passed on stepping into the breach, but luckily for the board, others didn't. Paul Earley's interregnum stint has been universally applauded. Instead of catching players doing something wrong, he'd catch them doing something right. While his predecessor had emphasised weights, Earley emphasised ball.

"You'd have to say the players responded to the change, " says '06 minor star Donie Shine.

"Paul worked on support play and us playing more direct football. Instead of working the ball back with looped passes and static play, we tried to keep things moving and it showed in the win over Cavan."

Now it's Ryan who finds himself as interim manager. Again, the board have been fortunate. For all his inexperience - the county under-21s this year was his first official coaching post - Ryan won the respect of O'Donnell's minors, losing out to Mayo in the provincial final by only a goal in a high-scoring game. He always had the respect of the veterans.

"If you were playing a good tough team, Michael would be the first out the door, " says one colleague from the 2001 Connacht-winning team for whom Ryan played at wing-back.

"Even if you were playing Kerry, he'd be convinced that he was better than his opposite number down the other end of the field." They say a leader puts on the face his team need to see and in the lead-up to entering Pearse Stadium given all that's gone on, Ryan's type of boldness and brashness is precisely what this group of players has needed to see. With Seamus O'Neill back and Joe Bergin gone, he has his players truly believing they can win midfield and win the game.

He's brought more than that. He's brought common sense, leaving some of his under-21s back down to the juniors ("They knew themselves it was too much too soon"), and bringing back veterans like Whyte, Higgins, Casey and Derek Connellan, even if today has come that bit too soon for them and they're on the bench. So is Maughan's all-under-21 half-back line. The future is soon, but not quite yet.

In a way Roscommon can't lose today but after this they can't afford to lose another two or three years.

[RedandGreenSniper]

It wasn't the maddening crowd that pushed Maughan, because there was none. There was a crowd alright gathered outside the Kiltoom clubroom, but beyond one punter jibing "Bye, bye, John" and another proclaiming, "You're a f***n' disgrace, Maughan", there was little to it. The board executive were getting some heat though and on the Monday the county secretary, Seamus Maher, inferred to Maughan that his future was bound to be on the agenda of an upcoming board meeting and he'd be doing well to survive it. There was indeed a meeting scheduled for the following night but Maughan's management wasn't its concern, yet the call unsettled Maughan to the point he phoned the county chairman Michael McGuire to declare he was resigning.

I don't argue wit shannon on a lot of points but he's pretty much calling Maughan a liar here. On who's say so? Shannon wasn't in Kiltoom so ho can he report with such certainty that these were the only things said? He's also way too quick to knock someone if, for even one night, the training isn't cutting edge. Maughan bringing a rugby ball to training wasn't a bad idea at all but because its in no sports manuals, Shannon dishes it. Great writer but his opinion can be smoothering at times

[Rossfan]

Maughtan took in all his media mates with the"abuse" tale.
I WAS  there and apart from a few shouts  as mentioned in the article there was NO OTHER ABUSE.
Even Tan admitted on 2FM the following weekend that he overstated things a bit.
Looking at the way we played and were organised under Fergie and then reading the above and also digging out a copy of McKenna's article showed what a dark time we lived through and what a breath of fresh air we now have.

UP ROS [/color]