Diarmuid O’Flynn
LAST year it was hurling managers falling like ninepins, changes at the top in four of the five Munster counties alone (Cork, Clare, Waterford, Limerick); this year it’s their football equivalents. Not surprising really.
In the modern game an inter-county player turns up for training and games and expects everything to be perfectly in place, thus freeing him up to focus totally on his training and preparation. The man charged with making sure all that pre-training work is done? The manager.
But of course that’s only a small part of the job. Long before that, that same manager and his backroom team will have gone through a long process just to select who those players are going to be; theirs is also the task of getting the training programme in place for those players, then getting game-plans in place from game to game. They’re fielding questions from the media, local and national, they’re addressing problems, answering critics - a non-stop merry-go-round that very often isn’t so merry at all.
Their biggest problem of all, however - expectation. With all the money being poured into almost every county senior team nowadays, county boards and county supporters expect a return, and for many of those counties that expected return is an All-Ireland title. But of course there’s only one senior All-Ireland title every year in the two sports, hurling and gaelic football and thus only one manager in each of those sports who is going to fully satisfy all those demands.
The one senior hurling manager in Munster who didn’t walk last year was Declan Ryan. Tipperary did manage to win the Munster title, also managed to reach an All-Ireland final where they were favoured to win, but of course we all know what happened - a rejuvenated Kilkenny came out and stole Tipp’s thunder.
There was massive disappointment in the county, right across the board (pun intended), but given the amount of work he had put in, given the amount of himself he had put in, how do you think Declan Ryan must have felt? How long do you think it took before he could bring himself to even look at the DVD of the game?
“Any game you lose - no matter what it is – it’s difficult to watch afterwards and the All-Ireland final was no different in that regard,” he said this week, as he readies his side for another crack at Kilkenny, this time in Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final (Croke Park, 3.30pm).
“I’ve seen snippets of it from time to time but to watch it from start to finish was pretty difficult alright. It was nearly Christmas before I watched it. The most disappointing thing from it, like any game, is when you don’t play to your potential.”
Whose fault is it though when that happens, when a team doesn’t play to its potential? Too often in these circumstances the blame falls on the manager and on his selectors but what about the players’ individual personal responsibility?
Those who say that a manager doesn’t win or lose a game are wrong. It’s a pivotal position, as critical as having a good centre-back or centre-forward, and a good manager can mean the difference between a team winning or losing, just as can a bad manager. But, and this is a very big but, there is only so much ANY manager can do and in every game there comes a time when it’s all down to the players on the field.
Dublin’s second-half collapse against Clare in the All-Ireland qualifiers this year is a case in point. It was into the second half, Clare had had a man sent off, Dublin then tacked on two quick points to extend their lead to six, were well ahead, well in control.
And out on that field in Cusack Park they simply stopped hurling, assumed the game was over, changed their mental attitude, and Clare struck. Anthony Daly’s fault? I don’t think so – that was the Dublin players, no-one else.
This Sunday Tipperary take on Kilkenny again. At this stage, just a few days before the game, Declan Ryan and his management team have done almost everything they can do. If you want an analogy, they’re in the final quarter and it would have to be said, they’ve done very well. They’ve gotten the team back to this stage again, everyone looks fit and sharp, the team and the bench have been strengthened – if Tipperary lose, at whom should the finger be pointed?
But, says Declan, they’re not contemplating losing. They’ll be fit, they’ll have their tactics and game-plan in place, but the one over-riding element? Hunger, and that will have to come from the players themselves.
“It was a word that was used a lot after the All-Ireland final last year, the fact that Kilkenny were hurting from the year before and that they had the hunger going into the game. It’s all down to the day now and whatever little edge you can get, wherever you get it from, that could be the vital score or the vital period of dominance that will win you the game.
“That’s the way it was in last year’s All-Ireland final. We will certainly be looking to improve our performance from that. The guys have put a massive effort into their physical preparation; mentally we’re in a better space than we were last year.
“Any day you go out not properly tuned in you are not going to get the results for the hard work put in; I think all those things have added to the fact that these guys are in a good space at the moment. It’s going to be a massive battle and if we’re on top of our game we have a massive chance.”
Regardless of who prevails, however, before you point your finger at the losing manager, think. There’s a limit to what any manager can do with a particular group of players.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/GE-Mq5C48vE/post.aspx
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