THE GARDEN
McConville latest to try his luck
Wicklow, you can’t go to a sponsor and say ‘We can guarantee you such a level of exposure because we are going to be on television so many times’.
“Teams like Wicklow are lucky to get a couple of minutes on The Sunday Game once or twice a year.”
That is something McConville will have to get used to. He is coming from a football mad club and county that has been streaming its own club games on Armagh TV for years.
Now he will have to get used to an off-Broadway existence, where playing county football is something you have to persuade players is worthwhile.
“Bigger teams go to train for the weekend in places like Carton House. Not a hope for that with the likes of Wicklow,’’ says Magee.
“From my time there, I could see there were good footballers in Wicklow, but you have to get them all out on the field.
“It comes back to the same thing, and I got fed up harping on about it. It’s all about resources. You go to a player and you have to try and sell the Wicklow jersey to them.
“There were players who said to me ‘No, Johnny, what’s the point?’ History tells you that Wicklow are usually out of the Championship very early.
“Selling that to a young man when they have the alternative of going to Australia or whatever ... it is a hard sell.”
On the surface, then it’s hard to see why so many high profile figures have been attracted to the Wicklow job.
Wicklow are a perennial Division Four team and winning a game in Leinster is a big deal for them — challenging for silverware is just unthinkable.
But maybe the scale of the challenge is a big part of the attraction.
In McConville, Wicklow have a serious football man, a born winner. It’s no surprise he has been in such demand as pundit and columnist, the Crossmaglen man is one of the most interesting voices on the game.
Knowledge
Even back in his playing days, if you talked to people in Armagh football, they’d rave about McConville’s knowledge, reading of the game and his shrewdness. There have been few players who embraced the big day to the same extent.
McConville was the man who’d come up with a game-breaking goal or winning point and had an incredible record in finals. His mental strength was incredible — especially when you consider that, off the field, he was battling a serious gambling addiction.
Think of how he shrugged off his first-half penalty miss in the 2002
All-Ireland final against Kerry to bury the second half goal to deliver Sam Maguire.
In McConville’s autobiography, he wrote about a talk former Ireland rugby captain Paul O’Connell gave to his Armagh team.
O’Connell told them that they didn’t need a captain — that instead they needed a leader in every line of the field.
Armagh took that on board and earmarked certain figures — like Francie Bellew, McGeeney, Paul McGrane, John McEntee and McConville himself — to lead the charge.
That’s a team that has produced coaches and managers at all levels, which doesn’t surprise McConville.
“I’ll be honest with you, a lot of boys in that dressing-room fancied themselves even before quitting football,’’ he said.
“That’s the natural progression for a lot of them, especially in the coaching side.”
McConville has cut his teeth at different levels, and is now ready for his first job at intercounty level.
It was coming. It says a lot that Ray Dempsey approached him to be part of his ticket when he applied for the Mayo job.
That would have entailed a huge amount of travel for McConville, but Dempsey was convinced he had a huge amount to offer.
With both Crossmaglen and Armagh, McConville was chasing All-Irelands.
Now he’s in a very different football world. The priority will be to get out of Division Four, win a game or two in Leinster and go as far as possible in the Tailteann Cup.
And McConville will also be keen to learn as much as he can from the experience.
This will hardly be his last intercounty job. McConville is intensely ambitious and he’ll want to leave his mark.
He’s talked the talk better than most for a while, it will be fascinating to see him walk the walk now.