Monaghan great McManus knows time is running out on career
Monaghan veteran Conor is fully aware of the necessity of lockdown but it has made him think of his limited time in the inter-country game
LOST time is never found again. Like everyone else, Conor McManus has been left squinting into the dark to see the outline of a season. And if it’s there, when will it start? What shape will it take? What will it feel like? And if it happens, will it really be the worth the risk?
Questions followed by more questions and not an answer in sight.
Best, then, to start with what he knows for certain. He is missing his football and all that comes with it – the training, the camaraderie, the anticipation and, naturally, the games.
Above all, he is missing it all the more acutely because he is at that stage where the summers no longer come spread out in front of him, but instead are rationed by a miserly hand.
‘I am 32 now so it is not that you are thinking it, you know that you are in the latter stages of your career,’ he reasons.
‘This is year 14 for me so you are thinking that maybe you have two or three more years at the highest level. You would be hopeful of that and you would push on for that.
‘I was only thinking about this the other day, if I was 19 would I really be this annoyed about this?
‘I know I would rather be playing football but at the same time I would know that not only is next year there, but 10 years more after that.
‘My reality now is that I don’t have 10 more years ahead of me and the more you get closer to the exit door, you appreciate it more and more. ‘A missed year is a big miss now. ‘Time is so valuable but it is only when you get to this stage that you realise that and you start to wonder where the last 13 or 14 years have gone,’ he wonders.
It is a rhetorical question, yet one that teases an answer. It has passed for the most part in a giddy blur, from a teenager lost in the pack – he never played minor – to a two-time Ulster SFC winner and threetime All-Star.
But that feels like a legacy statement and he still has too much to play for to be thinking along those lines.
Like everything else, though, Covid-19 has offered perspective when it comes to football.
‘The most difficult thing about this is not being able to do what you normally do. But you have to take in the wider view and that, at the end of the day, this is only a game, it is only football and we have a situation now where people are losing their lives. So when you look at it like that it almost feels trivial compared to the bigger picture.
‘There are people I know who have had it. We have to be very conscious of those who have any underlying health conditions, and that includes players who might have asthma and they have to be extra vigilant as they may be more susceptible to this than someone who is fully fit.
‘And while many of us are fit and strong enough to carry this, it is what we do with it, after we get it, that matters and that is something we have to be conscious of.’
For now, what frustrates is the uncertainty even if it is in many ways unavoidable. This week, the only light the GAA managed to shine in that regards was an indication that there would be no resumption of activity until July.
That however did not sit well with Gaelic Players Association (GPA) squad reps who met on Wednesday night and have since voiced their displeasure that the GAA have not published detailed contingency plans on the season’s makeup in the event of a restart in July or the months beyond.
Training in isolation is hard enough but doing so in the dark makes it even more of a mental challenge, explains McManus.
‘All we can do is train away. We try and make do with what we have. Obviously access to gyms is very limited with everything closed and now access to the local pitch is gone.
Right up to the lockdown I was out on my own getting in some shooting practice, but you can’t even do that now.
‘We are resorting now to running around roads and parks, which again is not ideal from the point of view that running on a road is a lot tougher on you than running on grass.
‘We are working away off GPS units and we are doing our own gym work and we have programmes to work to but the problem is that you have all these players working away at home training but the biggest challenge is the motivation to do it.
‘What is your end goal when you don’t know when you will get out to play again?
‘We need some directive, and sooner rather than later, as to what the plan is as to when we can possibly get back, if we can get possibly back.
‘You can’t have players wondering and waiting and I know it is hard to make a decision but we need someone to start calling it. But the problem is they don’t know. Nobody knows.
‘You are realistically not looking at football until August or September and we are only in the middle of April now.
‘Players really need some direction as to where they are heading here. If there is going to be no games for three months you should really be easing off the training at this stage so that guys take a break.
‘You can’t expect players to do all that training and hanging on for the next three months. It is just not physically the right thing to do if you are trying to get back on the field,’ he insists.
And should they get back on the pitch, the likelihood is that it will not be the field of their dreams.
Any lingering hope that the somehow a delayed Championship would be greeted with the usual noise and colour was blown away by the HSE’s chief medical officer Tony Holohan’s assertion this week that mass gatherings will only be facilitated with the arrival of a vaccine.
There was little novel about the standout date in McManus’s football diary this summer – a fifth meeting in eight years with Cavan – but familiarity would have done little to turn down the heat on the border derby in Clones next month.
It would have been a cauldron of noise, Monaghan itching to put right last year’s provincial quarter-final loss and Cavan determined to stay that step ahead of their neighbours.
The chances now, though, is that it will be played in an empty stadium.
How does that sit?
‘As a player, Championship day is
‘WHAT IS YOUR GOAL WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHEN YOU WILL PLAY AGAIN?’
the big day that you want and what you were looking forward to was the atmosphere in Clones next month, with 10,000 Monaghan fans and 10,000 Cavan fans in there together and the rivalry that generates.
‘You want the fans to be there and you want them to be engaging in the whole spectacle, making that atmosphere. That is what makes it.
‘The idea of playing behind closed doors would not really ignite a fire in you but saying that, if it is the last option and it means getting out to play football this year then I suppose that is what it will have to be.
‘But, again, you are talking about putting 40 or 50 guys into a dressing room and if one those has an underlying condition such as asthma, do you want to be taking that chance?
‘And outside of that you are sending those 40 people back into 40 homes. One player could get it and then the whole group would have to self-isolate for 14 days and then you are back to square one again.’
Where there was once certainty to the GAA calendar, now speculation flourishes.
Up to this week, the GAA’s official line indicated that if the Championship got underway, every team would get two chances. That would no longer seem possible.
The likelihood is that if it now takes place, the current generation will navigate the path of their predecessors by playing in an oldfashioned knock-out provincialbased Championship with the four winners progressing to the All-Ireland series.
However, given the circumstances and the pressing need to save time which a uniform start would facilitate, there have been calls – among them the voice of former GAA president Seán Kelly – to go with an open draw 32-county knock-out Championship.
The last time the GAA tried that approach, Monaghan reached the final of the 1984 Centenary Cup.
‘The novelty of a 32-team competition would be attractive,’ admits McManus.
‘I mean we could be drawn in the first round at home to Kerry and you can just imagine the excitement that would generate.
‘Or even if it is a case you are drawn away to Wexford, it is just the whole novelty of it would grab the attention of players and I would imagine the public too.
‘I don’t think there would be too many who would object to it.
‘It might not go down too well with the provincial councils as it would not sit in their favour. It would impact on their revenue but it will come to a stage if we do get playing football, needs must and whatever we can get in, then we will take what we can get.
‘And if that is the only form of Championship we can get then I think people will be happy to have that.
‘Even talking to people in general, you sense the supporters are missing football every bit as much as the players are and they are starved for it.
‘That applies as well to club football, and they no longer have the option of going down to the field to watch a senior league game. People are starved of football and it is only when it is not there you realise how much you miss it.’
But it is not the only thing people are missing. Working lives as well as sporting ones have been thrown into uncertainty.
Almost two years ago, McManus left his job as an estate agent with Sherry Fitzgerald to go out on his own and take over a property dealership in Monaghan town.
Leading a football team has come easy to him, but leading a company brings a whole new level of responsibility.
‘You think of all the pitfalls that may be ahead and that you may have to overcome in business, but this certainly was not one of them.
‘We were working away at half pace for a couple of weeks when this thing came. We had one person in the office and four of us were working off our laptops from home and we were doing what we could while observing social distancing. Then Leo (Varadkar) put the whole country into lockdown and we had to close the office.
‘Property always tends to give you a guide as to where things are at. The biggest problem is that the last time we failed as a country it was a property-led downturn that started it but this is completely different and it has brought every sector to its knees.
‘Everything had gone down together and the only hope is that everything goes back up together as well but the longer it goes on the harder it is going to be to find a resolution to it.
‘The first thing that generally seems to be hit when something like this happens is the property market. Whatever plans people had for buying, building or moving are more often than not put on hold. And then you have to factor in the developer, is he going to have the same will or drive to put his money into a project?
‘You really need those questions answered and there is much uncertainty at the minute.
‘You would be hopeful that this is a pause in the economy rather than it falling asunder and when this pandemic is put to bed and we can get back to some form of normality, it might just pick up from where it left off.
‘But then that depends on just how long this goes on and the longer this goes on, the harder this will be. It is a very trying time being in business, having that hanging over your head and obviously it is not just you that you are thinking of, it is the people who are working in the office with you too.
‘It is just a very difficult time. Even purely from a GAA point of view, it is just very unusual not to be out meeting the boys getting ready for the big day. That is why you train and why you put the hard yards in over the winter for the big days in summer and it is hard to see where they are going to come now unfortunately.
‘It is quite difficult but I don’t want to be selfish and when you see what is going on around the country, once you have your health you feel lucky and it really puts everything into perspective.’