Kelly won’t rule out a return to Louth hot seat

FORMER Louth manager Colin Kelly isn’t ruling out what would be a sensational return to the vacant Wee County hotseat - but he insists a ‘lot of things would have to be right’ for it to actually happen.

The quest to find Pete McGrath’s successor should intensify over the next few weeks, with the window to submit applications and nominations for the position closing last Sunday.

At a recent county board meeting, county chairman Des Halpenny said he hoped the new manager would be appointed before the knockout stages of the club championship, which are pencilled in for mid-August.

After a difficult first season Kelly enjoyed a reasonably successful three-year tenure with the Reds, securing promotion from Divison 4 to Division 2, but without making much impact in the Championship.

He departed in acrimonious circumstances at the end of the 2017 campaign and with no major personnel changes at county board level since then, a re-union would seem unlikely.

Deep down Kelly doesn’t expect to get his old job back, but he admits he will always have a soft spot for his native county and for that reason he simply couldn’t rule out a return if the opportunity arose.

‘Obviously we’re speaking hypothetically, but you could never say never. It’s my county, it’s part of me. From the year dot I’ve been involved in one capacity or another, from ‘85 to ‘05 playing and from around 2002 to 2017 coaching, so it’s always been a part of my life.

‘I really enjoyed the experience of managing Westmeath and working with some great people and I don’t regret going over there for one minute, but I don’t see myself going outside of Louth again to manage.

‘So I suppose for all those reasons I couldn’t rule it out entirely, but having said all that, a lot of things would have to be right for me to go back [as senior manager].’

When pressed to elaborate, the former Newtown Blues attacker said it mostly comes down to resources and equipping the new manager, whoever it might be, to modern inter-county standards, including gym membership, nutrition and making sure that if players are committing to five or six sessions a week that their expenses reflect that. Ultimately, that is why he made the decision to leave in 2017.

‘It became tiresome, fighting for resources all the time. As a manager or coach you want to be concentrating on football and training sessions, but you spend as much time fighting for the players and basic resources. It became a constant battle and ultimately that is why I stepped away.’

But looking at the broader picture, Kelly feels that player development, a better games programme at club level and fund-raising are the biggest issues facing Louth football at the moment.

‘I think the whole development phase from minor through to senior football has to be addressed properly,’ he says. ‘We have to get the guys who have what it takes coming out of Minor and through to U-20 on to a proper development programme, because the step up to senior football is absolutely huge. You might get a Ryan Burns once in a blue moon who is good enough to go from minor to senior overnight, but by and large it takes a lot of hard work.

‘But development programmes and gyms and nutritionists, all of these things cost money and we just don’t fund-raise in Louth. Never mind Dublin, Meath and Kildare have brilliant programmes in place and they get the same coaching and games money as Louth. But they fund-raise and unless we do too we’ll always be swimming against the tide.

‘After last season we need to look at all of these things and ask ourselves where we’re going. We’re yo-yoing up and down for years now, so we need to come up with a plan to move to the next level, regardless of who the senior manager is.’

Returning to the subject of the hunt for a new manager, Kelly feels that Wee County officials should think long and hard about going with an ‘outside’ man again.

‘When you look back over the years I don’t think it [appointing an external manager] ever really worked. Eamon McEneaney was the exception, in that he’s from Monaghan, but he lived in Louth for many years before he took the job and he knew the county inside out,’ he added.

It became tiresome, fighting for resources all the time. As a manager you want to be concentrating on football and training sessions.