‘I was in first and got Fergal on board but it wasn’t working’
Axing old friend Fergal O’Donnell was difficult for Kevin McStay but ....
I have no doubt that he still feels quite sore about the decision I took
WHEN they reconvened yesterday at Athlone IT for a pre-season fitness screening session, the Roscommon footballers saw up close the consequences of their autumn of turmoil. Old team-mates gone, apart from the retired pair of Geoffrey Claffey and Niall Carthy; James McDermott, Seán Purcell, Donie Shine and David Keenan all failed to make the cut, while their manager Kevin McStay had gathered around him a whole new crew, with Declan O’Keeffe, David Joyce and Ger O’Dowd all fresh faces in his management team.
Change is a core part of the rhythm to which sport dances, but even that does not always numb the pain.
Of all the cuts McStay made in the close season, none sliced him deeper that his decision to drop his former Roscommon Gaels team-mate Fergal O’Donnell as his joint manager.
‘It was an awfully difficult decision for me to make,’ admits McStay.
‘The two of us tried everything we could to make it work. We really worked hard but ultimately the chemistry that we wanted to get out of it was just not happening as joint managers.’
In terms of the GAA landscape there would appear to be enough evidence to suggest that the concept of a joint manager is such a misnomer that it is doomed to fail anyhow.
There may be truth in that but, in reality, McStay was the senior member of the partnership, having been invited to take the job on by the Roscommon board in the autumn of 2015 while insisting he wanted O’Donnell with him.
There were all kinds of reasons for that, not least O’Donnell’s CV as an All-Ireland-winning minor and provincial senior winning manager providing the new management with some fire insurance. More than anything, however, it was because McStay held him in such high regard as a man as well as a manager.
That made his decision to go alone all the harder, as a friendship as well as a coaching relationship was exposed to white heat.
‘It is going to take time,’ admits McStay. ‘He was very hurt and upset by my decision and I have no doubt he still feels quite sore about it.
‘It surprised him if I can put it like that and that was the hard part. In terms of reflecting on it, he did not come to the same conclusions that I did. He thought we could make it work, tinker and change things around a bit but I wasn’t of that opinion.
‘That is the difficulty when there are friendships (involved), especially when you are close. I have huge respect for him, he is such an honest and decent fellow and his intentions were just for the best for Roscommon but so are mine and that is where I am coming from.
‘I was the one in first and got Fergal on board, but it wasn’t working. And when something is not working, you have to fix it.’
But then things were not as badly broken as some construed them to be, he argues.
With the management break-up stories leaked of a mutinous panel with claims that a significant minority were unhappy McStay was staying on. More than that, they were prepared to walk the walk.
‘A lot of that was not based on fact, it was based on rumours, on what was going around social media and poorly informed, and sometimes just lazy, journalism,’ suggests the Roscommon boss.
‘There was all this talk going about that there were players who were not going to play for Roscommon which was complete and utter nonsense. Every single one of the players that I approached had no issue whatsoever.
‘Did some players have strong opinions? Sure, of course they had but if you didn’t have players with strong opinions about things, where would you be?
‘But the vast majority were very happy to see me become the manager and those that had issues, well life moves on. Their concern has to be, and only has to be, playing for Roscommon, not who the manager is. Their view always has to be “I want to play for Roscommon” and not “I want to play for Kevin McStay or Fergal O’Donnell, Mickey Harte or whoever”. You play for your county that is what it has to be about.’
And, after that, you play to win. In the end, it could be argued that what did for the McStay/ O’Donnell double act was that they set the bar giddily high last spring and that when they crash landed in summer, the mood turned sour.
It wasn’t just that they stopped winning, but their own belly-ached that they also stopped playing by becoming too defensive. That frustrates McStay, who points out that the root of their problems was having to manufacture a midfield — Cathal Shine and Kevin Higgins effectively missed the whole season while injuries dogged likely replacements Cathal Compton and Tom Corcoran. It was compounded by a fixture schedule which rolled against them all summer, culminating with the six-day turnaround that preceded their qualifier exit to Clare. ‘If you have small midfielders marking big ones, it is going to be very difficult to kick out the ball long to them and we were under massive pressure when teams started pushing up on our kick-outs. ‘This game is predicated on good defence. Maybe we got caught between two stools to a certain degree, we were trying to be defensive but we never fully bedded the system in and the lads never truly believed in it. That is something that we have to work on again this year because we have to have a solid defence, whether that is a sweeper, a roaming defensive system with a double sweeper I don’t know.
‘We can’t go into these big games against the likes of Dublin, Mayo, Kerry or Tyrone thinking that we can go man-to-man and that everything will be fine. It does not work like that; these teams will rip you apart.’
And he is determined that will not happen. He dismisses the suggestion he has invited more pressure on himself, and instead believes that is something which they all need to embrace.
A kindly Championship draw — they will face Leitrim in the Connacht semi-final — invites a ‘season of possibilities’ and he has set the bar for his team to still be there at the last-eight stage next summer.
‘If that is putting pressure on us that is grand; let’s put that pressure on ourselves because that is where we need to be. If our players don’t have that ambition in their hearts, we are at nothing.
‘I know they do because we have spoken about this, about how the season ahead is full of great possibilities.’