With Dublin's current travails temporarily on the back-burner, it's interesting to look back on over 10 years of chaos in relation to selecting football managers for the county. Lorcan Redmond's elevation from selector to caretaker manager gives the county board some breathing space but precedent is not encouraging.

Whereas the board can't be held responsible for Whelan's sudden and unexpected departure - they were caught on the hop as much as anyone else when the departing manager stuck his head upstairs and announced that he had resigned - the collective instinct was as daft as ever.

Attempts were made to suppress the news until last night's county committee meeting. Eventually county secretary John Costello admitted the resignation after it was pointed out that the players had spun out of the dressing-room like charged particles, buzzing with the news.

Taken by surprise the county board may have been but the fault lay with officialdom in one very direct way. They should never have confirmed Whelan in the post for a third year after the dismal performance against Meath last June.

Anyway - and notwithstanding the unfairness of being held so bitterly to account for League matches in October and November - now that he has left the stage, what are the chances of Whelan's successor being appointed smoothly and without controversy? Not great, if history is any guide.

Whelan's appointment two years ago was peculiar not merely because there seemed so little contemporary justification for the decision but also because Tommy Lyons, now Offaly's manager and then a plausible option for Dublin, believed that he had been offered the job by a senior official.

The current method of soliciting nominations - and ultimate approval - from the clubs for the appointment is thought to have been devised to avoid a repetition of two years ago when a number of clubs believed that the board's inter-county sub-committee had bounced them into accepting Whelan with little or no consultation.

In the light of his ultimate success at All-Ireland level, it's easy to forget that Pat O'Neill's own appointment was absolutely chaotic back in October 1992. Paddy Cullen's position as manager came under pressure after that year's All-Ireland defeat by Donegal.

There had been a public row between O'Neill and Cullen in the Mansion House, the day after the final. In the days that followed, players' misgivings about the manager were communicated to the county board and an air of inevitability settled on the whole affair.

In the end, though, it was only Cullen's good-humoured acceptance of the situation that prevented a very ugly scenario. Having returned from holidays in America, he took one look at the way the wind was blowing and stepped down immediately with generous, good grace.

O'Neill was the obvious successor but the county board, for reasons best known to itself, stalled on the appointment. O'Neill took this as tantamount to a statement of no-confidence and immediately withdrew his name from consideration.

Eventually after representations from several influential figures in the Dublin GAA, most notably Tony Hanahoe, O'Neill reconsidered, accepted the post and confirmed in place the management team - Jim Brogan, Bobby Doyle and Fran Ryder were already involved - which was to bring the All-Ireland back to the county three years later.

In September 1990, Cullen's appointment was a bolt from the blue. There had been a great deal of speculation after Gerry McCaul had stepped down following a Leinster final defeat by Meath. Alan Larkin and Tony Hanahoe, who ruled himself out, were mentioned as strong possibilities but Brian Mullins appeared to be close to landing the job.

Both Pat O'Neill and Jim Brogan were under the impression that they were accepting the role of Mullins's selectors. For whatever reason, this never happened and Cullen was pulled out of the hat.

Back in 1986, after the Leinster final which Dublin lost to Meath, giving their opponents a first provincial title in 16 years, the triumvirate of Brian Mullins, Robbie Kelleher and Sean Doherty stepped down after only a year in charge. That was August.

Despite having what seemed plenty of time to put a new management in place, Dublin waited until the week before the opening NFL fixture against Meath before giving the job to McCaul who had led Ballymun Kickhams to a Dublin title. Not surprisingly, the team was beaten out the gate.

Dublin is not unique in experiencing controversial difficulties in filling the county manager's position but only the Galway hurling team have come close to having such a consistent record of complicating the task.