MIND THE GAP
There may be signs of green shoots around Leinster but there’s still a long way to go to catch and match Jim Gavin’s high-flying Dublin
‘IF NOTHING WAS DONE, THERE WOULD BE NO POINT TO LEINSTER’
PAUL MANNION was polite enough to toe the party line when asked about the Leinster Football Championship last week. He insisted motivation is not a problem for Dublin footballers ahead of their annual stroll towards the Delaney Cup.
‘We are just measuring ourselves against our own standards,’ he offered. ‘I know that’s a cliché, but that is where the pressure comes from. Every team from Leinster, and elsewhere, can beat us, so we have to be right on our game and prepare properly for each performance. If we don’t, any team can turn us over, in Leinster or elsewhere.’
Evidence would suggest otherwise. Dublin’s dominance within their own province stands alone and is such now that it’s necessary to dust down the record books to find a parallel in the history of Gaelic football.
Even Kerry’s Golden Years team, with whom Jim Gavin’s side is so often compared, only managed to win 11 of 12 provincial titles in their era of dominance. The Dubs surpassed that last summer, with their 12th title in 13 years. And it doesn’t look like stopping any time soon. Between 1928 and ’42, Kerry won 13 of 14 Munster titles. Dublin will match that record this year and they will easily surpass the 14 Connacht titles that Galway won in 18 seasons from 1956 to 1974. The way things are going — if the GAA persist with the provincial Championship model for that long — Dublin may end up dominating Leinster in the same way that Cavan did Ulster in the first half of the 20th century when they won 26 of 32 titles between 1918 and 1949. But that was in a different age when both the GAA and a young nation was still finding its place in the big bad world. In modern times, the manner in which Dublin have dominated one province does not reflect well on their rivals, especially when in the five years before 2005, there were five different winners of the Leinster Football Championship — Westmeath, Laois, Dublin, Meath and Kildare. It’s telling that 2005 was the first year of this dominance as that was around the time that Dublin began to see the fruits of their revamped games development and coaching programme. And while they might be in the midst of a golden generation of footballers and have a wonderful manager in Jim Gavin, the quality of coaching from a young age has been the one thing that has set the Dubs apart from the rest. For those who are working at trying to stem the sky-blue tide, they view Dublin’s coaching and games development programme as the template to follow. Within the capital, they set about harnessing their vast playing resources by installing a games development officer in every club. The Leinster Council are now using that example for the bigger clubs in Kildare and Meath.
Offaly footballer Alan Mulhall, who will face the Dublin juggernaut if his side get past Wicklow next month, is helping to set the foundations for a more competitive Leinster Championship in the future in his role as Games manager for the Leinster Council.
‘When I came into the role three years ago, one of the first things we identified is getting the ratio of games development administrators to clubs down. In some cases, we had one GDA servicing 14 or 15 clubs. We had to try to get that down to a more manageable ratio of five or six clubs, so instead of visiting them once or twice a year, they would be going once or twice a month,’ says Mulhall.
‘Some of our bigger clubs, in towns with big populations, we had to get one GDA dealing just with that club, in places like Navan, Ashbourne, Celbridge, Kilcock. Somewhere like Naas, with its population, it has 85 teams in the club, so it wouldn’t be tenable for a GDA to service that club and another five clubs on top of that.’
When the decline of the rest of Leinster is brought up, more often than not, it is Meath and Kildare who are put under the microscope. Two counties with footballing pedigrees and with growing populations, one wonders why they were allowed to slip so badly.
Former Meath footballer Jamie Queeney has been games manager in his own county for five years. He can detect small signs of progress but says that this is going to take time. It will be a few years before the fruits of the labour are visible to all.
‘When I started in this job, there was only a staff of three in games development and one of those was part-time. And that was to service a county the size of Meath, with its population,’ Queeney pointed out. ‘Now under the East Leinster project that was approved by Central Council, we have a staff of 18. And in our six biggest clubs — the likes of Navan O’Mahonys and Dunboyne — we have a full-time games development officer that is focused solely on that club
‘So, there is work being done. Maybe some will argue that it should have been started earlier, but the point is that it has been started now. We needed more games development officers for Meath because the population of the county was growing so fast. Places like Navan and Bettystownjust Laytown, there are 40,000 people in both those areas, and that’s a lot of young people that need to be coached in Gaelic football.
‘We are getting there, but it is going to take time before we see the rewards,’ Queeney accepts. There have already been greenshoots. Last year, Meath’s Under17s won the Leinster Championship, beating Dublin twice along the way to collecting the trophy.
It may have been U17s but with Dublin’s dominance at senior level threatening to make Leinster irrelevant, it was an encouraging sign along the way.
‘The U17 Championship is not the be-all and end-all but it does show that the players are there, that the talent is there,’ said Queeney. ‘I keep saying this but I think we have the footballers in Meath, it is AT THE COALFACE: Offaly’s Alan Mulhall about getting the right coaching structures for them.’
The Central Council approved €1.5 million in funds to be placed in games development programmes in Meath, Kildare, Louth, Wexford and Wicklow under the East Leinster project. It pales in comparison to the money that Dublin have received in games development in the recent past, but it is a start.
It has taken time, but everyone has realised that something has to be done or else there will be no point to Leinster football. They have also accepted that talent like Con O’Callaghan and Colm Basquel don’t roll off the conveyor belt. Work is done on the ground to nurture their talent through games development.
Mulhall reckons the calibre of people employed in Games development in the Leinster counties is also a help, such as former Kildare star Johnny Doyle in his own county. ‘Having someone like Johnny Doyle going into a club, or into a school, that is worth its weight in gold,’ Mulhall said.
At U17 and U20 level, the Leinster Council have decided to run their championships off on a roundrobin format, simply to ensure the elite young players in these counties get more games.
It is all working towards a goal of stemming the Dublin tide. Or if not stemming it, at least making Leinster football competitive again, so that Kildare avoiding a double-digit defeat to the Dubs in a provincial final is not seen as some sort of a win.
Patience is needed but perhaps before Paul Mannion, who turns 25 next month, finishes up his Dublin career, he might know what it will be like to be under threat in his own province. Even to be turned over by another Leinster county.
Because the party-line from inside Jim Gavin’s squad — that they can be beaten in Leinster — is wearing thin pretty fast.