Super 8s will leave managers with nowhere to hide
THE training session, 30 years ago almost, in a Croke Park which certainly had had its day, was coming to an end when Mick Lally sidled up to me. ‘Any advice for me, then?’ he enquired, with that very happy smile which was usually the property of Miley Byrne spread across his face. I hadn’t spent much time with the late Glenroe star in the hour out on the pitch.
I had been asked to take Lally’s football team for the session.
He was the team boss in an upcoming run of The Man from
Clare at the Gaiety, and he looked the part in his raincoat and hat as he watched me running his boys through their passing and kicking drills, and a little seven-a-side game.
I also had Brendan Gleeson and his fellow cast do sets of press-ups, squat trusts, hamstring and groin stretches, and they didn’t hold any of it against me because we all retired to Quinn’s for a few pints after it all — Gleeson even offered me a lift on his push bike up to the pub, which I declined.
Gleeson was in the lead role in John B Keane’s triumphant telling of an ageing and fading Gaelic footballer who’s wondering if he has also had his day.
Lally was the man left with the hard decision to make.
It was the one day in Lally’s life when he got to walk up and down Croke Park and give the distinct impression that he had the world on his shoulders.
But he now stood in front of me awaiting a reply to his question. I was stumped, completely. I needed to tell him... SOMETHING!
‘Never look over your shoulder, Mick!’ ‘Why’s that?’ he asked. ‘You ever see Mick O’Dwyer or Kevin Heffernan look over their shoulder... or Sean Boylan?’
He said a quiet thanks, but I believe Lally was hoping for something a little more enlightening to bring back to the Gaiety.
IMANAGED a football team in Croke Park once myself. One Championship game when I had Carlow under my wing. It was a huge honour. Win or lose (and we lost by five points to Wexford) I imagined that it would be like having a shot at Everest.
And it was. Though standing on the sideline in Croke Park is also scary.
That same afternoon in Croke Park I also made one particularly colossal-sized mistake... yep, looked over my shoulder.
I had to do something midway through the second half, and without thinking I looked over my shoulder at my subs bench and looked at all those faces, and... there was no eureka moment. In actual fact, I hadn’t a clue what I needed to do next. My subs looked at me. I stared back at them. Only afterwards did I remember my advice to Mick Lally.
To stand on the sideline in Croker for 70 minutes is the greatest test of all. That 70 minutes can seperate geniuses from stubborn fools. It can isolate the chancers and the men acting the part of geniuses. There’s nowhere to hide. Jim Gavin, unlike many of his sideline opponents, chooses to sit a lot — and that’s a good idea, though you’ll see absolutely nothing on one of those little sideline bucket seats. But it seems to work for the Dublin manager.
You’ll see him sitting down this evening when the Super 8s, the biggest, most tantalising, and searching exercise in the history of the All-Ireland football Championship formally, gets underway.
Twelve games are going to brilliantly and painfully sort through the eight teams left standing. For the eight managers also standing it’s going to be a journey to an entirely undiscovered realm and back again. Never before at this late stage of the Championship is so much going to be asked of those eight men.
Gavin will be fine and dandy, and he knows for sure that after the complete farce of being crowned Leinster kingpins for the eighth successive time — with 24 bloodless victories contained in that time span — that the Super 8s will meticulously prime his team for their shot at an historic four in-a-row of All-Ireland titles.
Gavin has Declan Bonner, Kevin McStay and Mickey Harte for company in his Super 8s grouping. Two of those men have still to convince everyone watching of their true worth as managers of a county team. And, in the rival grouping there’s three more team bosses who, in the past, have been bossed around on the very biggest days of the season.
Bonner, McStay, Kevin Walsh, Cian O’Neill and Malachy O’Rourke are a bunch of clever and ambitious men, but unlike Gavin, Harte and Éamonn Fitzmaurice they have never conquered Everest as team managers. Not on the days that absolutely mattered.
Between them, before the 2018 season commenced, these five had already totalled 22 years service on seven different county sidelines. They’re neither fools nor newcomers, but they are still looking for that one credential that counts.
Proving themselves great at this tough business.
The Super 8s offer each of them a greater opportunity than ever before. Bonner, for instance, even if Donegal don’t quite measure up to Dublin this evening, gets to rethink
and rework in two more games, and possibly gets the chance to have a second big crack at the champions before the end of the summer.
Same for Kevin Walsh tomorrow in Croker. If Galway are overrun and bamboozled by Kerry’s flying kids then he too can go back to the drawing board. He and his team won’t get turfed out of the Championship on their ears.
For sure the Super 8s is the prize it appeared the minute the GAA hierarchy unveiled it last year. But it has the capacity to also leave any of the eight men looking like royal dunces, into the bargain, if they are not very careful.
The stakes have never been greater.
Naturally, I’m not going to doubt Gavin or his team. Their grouping looks exactly what Dublin require in mid July, without having any great danger lurking deep within it. Without Paddy McBrearty, Donegal are wounded before they even get to Croke Park, and Bonner and his boys will make mistakes.
Donegal are big and strong, but they have lots to learn. Roscommon are not as big or as strong, and they have no killer punch as a team. Same too for Tyrone — small, clever, and in danger of running up their own backsides at the most crucial moment in a game.
The second group containing Kerry, Galway, Kildare and Monaghan is a whole different scenario.
Kerry are everyone’s favourites, but they lack the strength, power and experience of the other three. If Kerry are stopped in their tracks and they have to fight, they’ll be in serious trouble.
With two Connacht titles and three wins over Mayo at their backs, Galway can be formidable and a great deal is rightly expected of them. Same with Monaghan who won an Ulster title three seasons ago and have less fear of Croke Park after downing Dublin there in the spring. And Kildare?
Kildare have spectacular momentum going into this weekend. O’Neill has the finest bunch of athletes of any team left in the Championship, and they have the support of most neutrals after facing down the powers-that-be.
O’Neill, Walsh and O’Rourke each have a golden opportunity to prove themselves on a personal level. Each man has an exceptional team to send into battle.
It’s time for Kildare, Galway and Monaghan to be brave and ruthless. Presuming, of course, that O’Neill, Walsh and O’Rourke are prepared to be brave and ruthless. Advice? Don’t look over your shoulder and, even more importantly, even if you have no idea what to do next just stare and frown, and like Mickey Harte, try to look like a genius hard at work on a game you know you are about to lose.