John Fogarty
PETER FITZPATRICK TD was on RTE’s Morning Ireland on Monday. Spoke well. Neatly pre-empted the question about what has he got himself in for as he attempts to juggle the position with his role as Louth manager.
“A lot of people were kind of worried that if I got elected into the Dáil I wouldn’t be able to do the two jobs,” he told Darren Frehill. “But I’m a young man and a fit man and please God I’ll be able to do the two jobs.”
But what of those incredible demands, Frehill reasonably asked. “Politics and football are very alike and you have to build a team around you. In fairness, in the Gaelic football set-up in Louth, I’ve a fantastic management team.”
That he has. Peter McDonnell and Brian McEniff are two excellent lieutenants to call on.
But in answering the question, Fitzpatrick alluded to something long suspected about his management style.
The word chairman has been used in the analysis pages of newspapers to describe Enda Kenny’s leadership skills. His admirers say he delegates well and is not too proud to defer. Whether that’s a nicer way of saying something else is up for discussion.
What isn’t for debate is the fact Fitzpatrick was already a chairman in his position as Louth manager. He might voice the shots but he empowers those in his management team. He leans on them and is happy to let them take the lead in their areas of expertise, which he wouldn’t specialise in.
Up the M1 in Down, James McCartan also has a former inter-county manager in his backroom team in Brian McIver but McCartan’s sideline pedigree is considerably more established than Fitzpatrick’s.
McIver’s is also more of a counsel position compared to McDonnell in Louth, who enjoys more of a hands-on role than that title of advisor suggests.
It’s a happy medium and one that works as seen by their fascinating but ultimately cruel season in 2010 and an unbeaten start to Division 3 this year.
However, that dynamic is sure to change in the coming months. McDonnell is sure to be entrusted with power as Fitzpatrick juggles his many commitments. That just makes sense.
Even if Fitzpatrick’s Fine Gael party colleague John O’Mahony’s commute between Ballaghaderreen and Dublin was considerably longer when he was Mayo manager than the Louth boss’ now, parallels will rightly be drawn between their situations.
Try as O’Mahony might, he couldn’t split his commitments between Kildare Street and McHale Park sufficiently enough to work his magic in the latter - or anything close to a trick.
He was far from an absentee manager and his renowned attention to detail was still spot on but it was hardly surprising he lost his Midas touch as a manager during his first term in the Dáil.
He just couldn’t commit as much as he wanted. There were nights, mostly during the league, when he couldn’t get home to training and Tommy Lyons and Kieran Gallagher supervised training.
By the end of his second coming in charge of Mayo, O’Mahony had lost seven of 12 championship matches, the final one of those against Longford in last year’s qualifiers compelling him to quit.
Fitzpatrick made all the right noises over the weekend when he refused to let the delay in the Louth election count keep him away from the team’s Division 3 trip to Wexford.
He was letting it be known his entry into public life wasn’t going to affect his football management duties. At least not in the first weekend, anyway.
There’s a lot to admire about Fitzpatrick. Physically, the man is in great shape. He handled the fall-out of last year’s Leinster final debacle with grace and diplomacy.
The thing is something will have to give. As he says, he is fit but no matter how fast is his he can’t be in two places at the same time. That’s not being facetious; it’s the truth.
If he is delegating now, he will soon be handing his proxy to somebody else. Nobody can expect him to be able to give his best to both duties. Sure, he might be able to cope but that will be the extent of it.
Politics is a ruthless game and the context of his election will make things more difficult. It must be remembered he was initially reluctant to run for a seat. He also has to shake off the moniker of celebrity politician and the suspicion he earned a major sympathy vote after what happened in Croke Park last July.
How ironic, then, that the primary reason for him getting a seat in the Dáil could be undermined by his new job.
Peter Fitzpatrick TD or ML (Manager of Louth)? Chairman or chief? It’s one or the other. Definitely not both.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/OGODs6itRak/post.aspx
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