The pain and the pleasure of starting from scratch
KERRY and Wicklow. It is difficult to imagine two counties as far apart on the footballing spectrum. While the Kingdom sit proudly atop of any roll of honour that you care to mention, with 37 All-Ireland titles and 79 Munster crowns, the trophy cabinet in the Garden County has always been pretty bare.
Along with Fermanagh, Wicklow hold the dubious distinction of being one of two counties never to have won a provincial title. And the honours they have collected in 130 years of playing Gaelic Games are thin on the ground – a Tommy Murphy Cup in 2007, an All-Ireland B title in 1992, a Leinster minor title in the 1970s and the odd O’Byrne Cup. In footballing terms, this is a long way from Kerry.
Killorglin to Aughrim is a road that few have travelled but there are days when John Evans is on it, that he can see some similarities between Wicklow and his native county.
‘The people are very friendly and very passionate about GAA. That’s the thing, just because they haven’t had much success that hasn’t diluted their passion. And the terrain reminds of Kerry. Wicklow has the mountains, it has rivers and hills, and there is even the sea. The countryside of Wicklow is similar to Kerry,’ Evans explains.
‘In Wicklow, they talk about how the mountains divide them and that is one of the problems for football, that there is a mountain range down the middle of the county. But we have nothing but mountains in Kerry, mountains, mountains, mountains and they never divided us. Rather they made us stronger.’
This is typical Evans, able to look at things in a different way. Few would be able to equate Kerry and Wicklow but during his managerial career, he has always been able to think outside the box. Still, his decision to succeed Johnny Magee in the Garden hotseat did raise a few eyebrows.
While his native Kerry were league champions last year, Wicklow were propping up the Allianz Football League, only kept off the bottom of Division 4 by having conceded slightly less than London. They won a single game in 2017 – beating the Exiles in Aughrim. Evans knows that he was starting at a very low base.
‘It is extremely challenging, one of the most challenging jobs I ever took. But my purpose in Wicklow is to re-build an entirely new team. What they had here before wasn’t working, so we have to try and put in place a new system of play with a whole new group of players. That is going to take time.
‘There is no point in setting targets for a team that only won one game last year. You have to put a new team in place first and get them playing a certain system. But the end of the league, if we have done that, then we can start setting targets.’
Despite Wicklow being regarded as one of Gaelic football’s bottom-feeders, Evans insists that there is plenty of talent within the county and he has spent the past couple of months seeking that talent out. Gearóid Murphy and Padraig O’Toole have been drafted in from last year’s minor panel while Theo Smith has been called up after impressing in Rathnew’s journey to the Leinster club semi-final.
Evans has also managed to coax back veteran James Stafford, who had left the panel two years ago, while Kevin Murphy is also back after taking a year out.
‘There is talent in this county. I believe there is football talent in every county. It is all about harnessing it,’ says Evans. ‘If we can pull a few results out of the bag over this league campaign, it would be very pleasing for Wicklow and it would show that we would taking steps in the right direction.’
Given that Evans had fostered a fine reputation as manager with both Tipperary and Roscommon, it seemed odd that he would take over a team who were the worst on the island of Ireland last year. But the idea of starting from scratch appealed to him.
‘I was asked if I would be interested, and I decided I was,’ Evans says of the decision to take the job. ‘I had been sounded out for other jobs, that maybe wouldn’t have been as challenging, but in those other counties, there was a core group of players already established and you would have just been building on other people’s work.
‘This was a complete re-building job, from the bottom up. I was given a blank sheet in Wicklow. And when you are given an opportunity like that, it is hard to pass up. You have to take it. But I am just tip-toeing through it at the moment. It is only the start.’
The thing is he has been here before. His first managerial gig was as a 25-year-old who took over Knocknagoshel. They were in Division 5 of the Kerry leagues at the time and Evans instilled the belief to drive them up three divisions. Where Knocknagoshel were then, Wicklow are now.
His work in Tipperary – where he helped to ignite the footballing revolution that continues to this day – and Roscommon, where he set the foundations for last year’s Connacht title success, proves that Evans is a manager who can improve teams.
But there is a lot needed in Wicklow.
And the problem with the blank sheet is that it will take time to fill the page.
‘The games are going to come thick and fast in the League and we will still be in a rebuilding phase,’ he says with the first
My purpose is to rebuild an entirely new team here
match against Waterford in Aughrim tomorrow.
‘We will look to get a few wins in the league and see where we are, after that. We don’t know what to expect because we have at least 15 new players in the squad.’
He had heard stories of a fractured county before he went into Wicklow, but Evans says that anyone who could commit to the cause has done so.
‘There are a lot of young, fresh faces in Wicklow and they all want to be there. There hasn’t been any one club that has opted out, there has been no disunity.
‘Instead, there is a lot of harmony within the group. A lot of freshness. They all want to learn and improve. And that’s a good starting point.’
On the opening weekend of the league, there is hope in every county of what the year will bring.
While his native Kerry are dreaming of All-Ireland glory, Wicklow are just hoping for a few wins. That will be a good starting point and it will make that less travelled road from Killorglin to Aughrim feel a little shorter.