LOCKER ROOM: The evidence mounts that epic deeds in the heat of battle are no guarantee of eventual success as a general.

MANAGEMENT. Celebrity bainisteoirí or big-name bainisteoirí or quiet fellas with cute-hoor faces? Who knows what works? It's strange and instructive to watch great players attempt the transition from the jersey to the management bib. From Jack O'Shea to Bryan Robson, history teaches us there are no guarantees that your inspirational, heart-of-the-lion performer will necessarily be able to transmit the best of his character to a dressingroom full of lesser mortals.

Kieran McGeeney spent most of the second half in Croke Park yesterday rooted to the same spot under the Hogan Stand. His arms were folded and his face bore an expression of distaste and disappointment as his Kildare side floundered about on the grass without apparent design or purpose.

Few players of recent generations have been as inspirational or indeed as symbolic of inspiration as McGeeney. A smart, cerebral man driven by some unfathomable hunger - the brooding image which persists of him is of a man relentlessly pumping iron in some solitary room with a small mountain range of fresh fruit beside him for sustenance and Al Pacino's "Inches" speech playing on the ghettoblaster.

On the field his indestructibility, his cool reading of the requirements of almost any situation and his ability to lift those around him through the illustration of his passion were the hallmarks of Armagh's glorious era. If ever there was a player who seemed genetically programmed for management it was McGeeney. When he went to Kildare last year with slightly surprising haste and an evident unhappiness with the unravellings in Armagh, the smart money (well, mine) would have piled on a Lilywhite revival. Kildare, one of those eternally sorrowful mystery counties who annually contrive to be less than the sum of their parts, seemed like the sort of outfit who could benefit from the transfusion of a little iron into the blood.

Yesterday's first ever championship defeat to Wicklow will have been hard to stomach in Kildare generally and will have made McGeeney more than a little queasy. Fortunate to be on level terms at half-time, his side showed their gratitude with a shockingly inept second-half performance.

Kieran broke his trance-like pose of disillusionment only to consult on a series of substitutions and stare down at the ground looking for a hole to open up and conveniently swallow him.

These things happen and the jury will remain out on McGeeney's talents until such time as we see if he can deliver a kiss of life to a team freshly dumped into the hell of the qualifiers.

We can only wonder what was going through Kieran McGeeney's mind as John Bannon (a beloved figure among Armagh footballers anyway) blew the final whistle and the Wicklow bench emptied itself onto the field in a carnival of celebration.

Mick O'Dwyer, who turned 117 on last birthday, is still pulling great strokes, and in the excitement and jubilation the old fox was knocked to the ground by excited confederates. Wicklow's drift-net style of defence and smart use of the counterattack had delivered another O'Dwyer coup.

By contrast McGeeney walked alone across the field to the dressingroom area under the Cusack Stand. Lonely at the top? Not half as lonely as where McGeeney was yesterday.

O'Dwyer's management formula has been much the same wherever he has gone in his epic career. Players aren't quite able to finger the reason but he is the great cajoler, teasing and coaxing performances out of players.

Wicklow (imagine how potent they would look had O'Dwyer's Dan Doona coup come to fruition) are a team of fixed talents but have two midfielders who can win ball, a few decent forwards, a disciplined defence, a level of fitness which is the mark of all O'Dwyer teams and the ability to adhere faithfully to O'Dwyer's gameplan. Simple!

O'Dwyer as a player wasn't one of those roll-up-the-sleeves-and-drag-your-team-up-the-hill-on-your-back types. But those who played with him and against him recall many of the traits he has brought to management.

He could run a club game with his mouth while still looking after his own patch capably.

Charlie Nelligan recalls as a teenager facing O'Dwyer, who was taking a penalty for South Kerry against Castleisland Desmonds. O'Dwyer, while simultaneously arguing with Nelligan as well as the referee, slotted the penalty away without breaking to take a breath.

O'Dwyer has often spoken of the experience as a young minor of being overlooked at county level, and one suspects the sense of being an outsider from South Kerry might have honed the powers he has to look into a game and diagnose what is required.

It is interesting to note in the Kingdom that from the team of all talents which O'Dwyer reared Páidí Ó Sé is the only conspicuous managerial success. The current wellbeing of the county has been brought forth by Jack O'Connor and Pat O'Shea, two men who have never staked a claim in the Kingdom's pantheon of the pigskin. As usual, perhaps Kerry can offer us a lesson. (It being one of those days at Croke Park we have had plenty of time to muse on this.)

Meath and Carlow played out a mismatch with two familiar faces watching from the sidelines.

Neither Paul Bealin nor Colm Coyle would have been among those you would have listed as obvious management material when they were playing with Dublin or Meath in their pomp.

Bealin is the latest in a line of midfielders Carlow have recruited from outside (Liam Hayes and Alan Larkin have had stints), but always in his time in a Dublin jersey he seemed a quiet and reserved presence.

Coyle cut his teeth in a Meath team housing such forces of nature as Colm O'Rourke, Joe Cassells and Gerry McEntee but managed with quiet genius by Seán Boylan, who played football but not in such a way that many people remember.

Through the final years of O'Rourke's epic tenure in a Meath jersey it was widely thought he was biding his time, waiting to become the manager after the manger who would succeed Boylan. And yet Colm Coyle looks comfortable in that spot now and is producing a Meath team which may yet continue the lineage.

Yesterday's confident demolition of Carlow suggests that day may come sooner rather than later.

It is, as I like to observe, a funny old game. It has often been commented that once a sense of irony enters a dressingroom the team spirit exits. What works for the inspirational player is often ineffectual for the manager. In this day and age the old table-thumping, bottle-throwing bainisteoir is more likely to induce laughter than fear in his charges.

The secret of good management is probably in the cajoling. As Jock Stein used to say, it's about keeping the six players who don't mind me away from the five who hate me.