Seeds of success are often sown in autumn

ON GAELIC GAMES:The broader issues of intercounty managerial appointments tend to fall into two categories: experience or freshness?

AT THE GAA box office autumn has become the season of mists and mellow fruitlessness. With the exception of what has become an erratic international rules’ presence there is little high-profile activity until the club championships get really serious in November and even that doesn’t exactly stop the traffic.

Nowadays this time of the year is probably best known for the intrigues that surround the appointment and disappointment of intercounty managers.

There are few vacancies remaining, albeit the preponderance of what’s left to be filled will be the most interesting appointments. That’s probably obvious, as controversy is more likely to settle in longer-running sagas such as are in train in Meath and Monaghan.

Monaghan is a more common type of situation. Séamus McEnaney was right to stand on his dignity and decline to be interviewed. After six years in charge there was hardly a need for formal presentation to acquaint the county officers with his views and techniques.

From the administration point of view, it should be a matter of either thanking him for the effort he put into making Monaghan a championship, if not a title winning, force and opting for change or else, if convinced he has more to offer or at least more than any other candidates, re-appointing him.

Then again, David Fitzgerald in Waterford wasn’t too proud to submit himself to the process despite having won a Munster title and taken the team to an All-Ireland final. But there had been enough rumbling in the undergrowth for Fitzgerald to know if he wanted to keep the position he wouldn’t be best advised to try to call the shots.

Is improvement likely or even possible? That has to be the biggest imponderable for officials looking at a county set-up. Has a team gone as far as a particular manager’s going to take it?

What happened in Meath was sufficiently bizarre not to conform to any known precedent. Essentially delegates, annoyed at being left out of the loop during the Leinster final fiasco, took it out on Eamon O’Brien, a manager who had delivered an All-Ireland semi-final appearance and a Leinster title, however counterfeit.

In this O’Brien was simply collateral damage. The root causes of his predicament can be addressed but there wasn’t much that could have been done at the time. The whole question of video review has been debated at length and it’s likely at some stage such technology will be introduced, even if there doesn’t appear to be any immediate appetite for it at administrative level – although it’s unlikely to signal a new era of palm-tree justice for all. Had it been available Louth would have been provincial champions and it would have been up to Meath to make a compelling case for their manager in the qualifiers.

The other part of the dilemma has been previously detailed in this column, the impossibility under rule of ordering a refixture unless it was offered by Meath. The question to those who insist “someone should have found a way” is simply what would have been the likely outcome of Meath’s case at the Disputes Resolution Authority had any attempt been made to coerce them? Ultimately the problem was the officials wanted to offer a rematch but the players didn’t. That’s a pretty intractable problem these days given the delicate relationship between county boards and senior panels.

Should Meath officials have been obliged to create a rift with their own players and order them to re-play the Leinster final? What if the players had refused? In the absence of video review it is obvious the mechanism whereby a team unfairly advantaged can offer a rematch should be removed from the official guide. Otherwise there will be campaigns for refixtures launched at nearly all teams that win in controversial circumstances.

Croke Park tried to crack down on this at the turn of the last decade but since the arrival of the DRA, the only way of cracking down is to change the rules.

Thankfully not all managers have to cope with such chaotic events and the broader issues of managerial appointments fall into two categories: experience or freshness? This year’s All-Ireland football semi-finals were contested by four counties, all of whom had first-time intercounty managers. Only Down’s James McCartan was in his rookie year but both Kieran McGeeney in Kildare and Dublin’s Pat Gilroy were to a greater or lesser extent pulled out of the hat three and two years ago respectively. Paradoxically, McCartan probably had more of a CV even though 2010 was his first intercounty season, as his Sigerson Cup work with Queen’s was well known.

Even Conor Counihan, for all his credentials as a selector, hadn’t managed extensively when asked to take over Cork in the aftermath of the awful mess created in the county three years ago.

New managers tend to be self-selecting. If they are former players they have had to exhibit an interest in coaching and all of the modern techniques involved in optimising team preparation. If they aren’t well known they have generally achieved at club level and impressed with their grasp of tactics and team dynamics.

But there is also a category of permanent or recidivist county manager, who knows the scene inside out. At present six managers (and two who stepped down this year) are on at least their second county assignment and that number could rise to eight depending on the outcome to the selection processes in Mayo and Galway where Tommy Lyons and Gerry Fahy are strongly in contention.

Mayo presents an interesting dilemma in choosing between the categories. Lyons won silverware in both Offaly and Dublin although the latter appointment ended disappointingly but he hasn’t managed a county team for six years. James Horan, his closest rival, is doing strikingly well as a club coach but the step up represents a risk.

Then there is the blockbuster appointment, someone with a management career that includes significant successes. The problem with these is that sometimes the terroir is more important than realised and the stardust doesn’t travel.

The GAA’s structures don’t allow for managers to bring their favourite players with them and often the new dressingrooms aren’t as receptive to the message – as Ger Loughnane and Joe Kernan both discovered in Galway.

Autumn’s not naturally a time of renewal but frequently the proudly recounted narratives of success begin with decisions taken on nights like these.

Good luck.