GLASS HALF FULL
Shunned by his native Mayo, Kevin McStay was hurt – but he’s put that all behind him in his new job
WHEN Mayo grab an eyeful of Kevin McStay in his Roscommon’s bainisteoir’s bib today in Castlebar, they would not be human if they did not for a moment wistfully wonder what might have been had they played it with a straight hand.
They will argue that they got there in the end; appointing a native son who has proved his stripes by leading a club from a neighbouring county to an All-Ireland title.
But where Stephen Rochford stood this winter, McStay had 12 months earlier. Back then, Mayo did not just reject him, they sought to humiliate him.
Their cack-handed approach to an appointment process to find a successor to James Horan culminated with thenchairman Paddy McNicholas asking McStay to withdraw his application as Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly were the board’s preference, before subsequently inviting him in for a second interview for a job that did not exist. He naturally declined.
If he was of a vengeful nature, McStay might even reflect that the chaos which enveloped his native county in late autumn was down to a case of reaping what you sow.
But the future is too precious to be torched by the past, and McStay is now getting a shot at a job which he yearned for enough to park a thriving career in punditry that has seen him play a pivotal role in RTÉ’s flagship GAA programme, the Sunday Game, for the last 18 years.
He is flesh and blood, though, and the manner in which he was treated by his own still cuts deep.
‘Of course, I would not for a minute deny that I was wounded. I was disappointed and, yes, I was hurt by it; I had given a lot of service to the county. I went down there for that interview and I was the only candidate; there was noone else.
‘That was a fact and within three or four days, they had put their own spin on it. I have my own memories of what happened now, obviously they are going to stay with me but you have to move on.
‘I moved on about two months after that and I accepted I was finished with Mayo, that they would never allow me to manage them. It was my second time going for it; I went for it in 1996 as well so my face does not fit. That’s fine,’ he insists.
Mayo’s decision not to give him that chance may yet come back to bite, given that he has now got his hands on the team most likely to challenge them over the next three years in Connacht.
Taking on Roscommon should not be confused for a classic case of a manager on the rebound. Every time McStay looks in the mirror he sees the Mayo man who spearheaded the county’s attack through the ’80s looking back, but every time he looks around the breakfast table he sees his Roscommon family – he is married with three daughters – eyeballing him back.
He admits that despite living for 28 years in the county, having managed their minors, led St Brigid’s to an All-Ireland title and won county titles as a player and manager with Roscommon Gaels that the mark of the tribe is still so distinct that he would be viewed as an ‘outsider’. Which was one of the reasons he took this job on a joint-basis with Fergal O’Donnell.
O’DONNELL, an All-Ireland winning minor manager in 2006, led the Rossies to their last Connacht title in 2010, played alongside McStay in that Roscommon Gaels team in 1994, and under him 10 years later when they repeated the dose.
Without him on board, McStay would have been happy to stay in the glare of the TV lights.
‘Fergal, obviously, was the big hanging point. I was not going to do it on my own as an outsider, even though I am here longer at this stage than I have been in Mayo, and my kids are Rossies.
‘I am here a long, long time but I am still considered a Mayo guy I suppose. I felt that if I had Fergal with me we would be bomb-proof; that we would get three years and we would get a shot at it and that we were not going to be run out of town after a year because results could go against us.
‘We are realistic enough to know that, we are in there with the sharks now and things could go badly against us. We know that but even if we are relegated that would not be the end of the world for us, our ambition would be to come back up and get two years of Division 1 football and let the Championship take care of itself.’
There are no lines of demarcation in their partnership, and they have assembled a strong management team, which sees McStay’s brother in law Liam McHale – who also served with him at St Brigid’s and in a previous stint with the Mayo under-21s – share coaching duties with David Casey.
For all that he has done, he is aware that this is a challenge on a whole different level, but a football life well-spent will not go to waste.
When he dipped his toes back into management with St Brigid’s he reflected at the time that it broadened his mind and opened his eyes wider as a pundit. It can also work the other way.
The bones of two decades putting together 30-second video packages to use as evidence to prosecute arguments on national television is good practice for what lies ahead.
‘If you want to have a serious reflection with a young player these days, then you have to accept that they are bright and educated, they are not going to listen to you on how you thought they played, they will want proof. ‘They will want to look at a piece of tape and that can be very instructional and informative. ‘They will say “show me, I don’t think I was in the wrong position there”, and you have to be able to show that. There is no point trying to scratch that out in a conversation, they expect a far higher standard of analysis, and rightly so.
‘They also expect very high standards around the whole setup because they are coming out of colleges that are operating to very high standards. ‘Having looked down on Dublin, Kerry, Mayo and all these teams coming into Croke Park, see them arrive into the place, see the dynamic on match day, I have a very good sense of what the standards are and the challenge here is can we meet those standards.’ ‘This idea that we are all training as hard as Dublin and Kerry is wrong. That is not correct. Not a chance. We are in the process of educating our own lads to say “what you are doing is great but it is not at the level yet at what the top teams are doing. We have been in Division 3 and 2 for so long that there is a rhythm to things that is there that has become acceptable but that rhythm will not lead to survival at the top level.
‘Like the Mayos of this world, they live it every day; they live every day with the idea of winning Connacht and winning the All-Ireland. That is what they are trying to do every day; but I don’t think that the Roscommons are at that level yet. They are not training as hard because we would not have the same number of athletic players who can really push it on.
‘We might have in our squad 14 or 15 guys who train to their absolute max and give us everything, but we have another 14 or 15 who are not at that level and we need to push them and challenge them to get to that and maybe after two or three years in Division 1 we will have a real sense that we are training as hard as everyone else.
‘For now, no, we are getting there, I hope, day by day.’
His predecessor in Roscommon, John Evans, who led the team to back-to-back promotions which has secured their place in the league’s top flight, sought to put a bar in place for the team’s expectations last spring when he predicted that this group could be All-Ireland champions.
‘As far as I am concerned that has nothing to do with the team that I am involved in. It just hasn’t. If I heard a fella in our squad talking like that I would not be happy.
‘Last year we were beaten by two Division 3 teams in the Championship and that is where we are at. If you can round that with that statement from John then fair play, but I certainly can’t.
‘I would not even talk about a Connacht championship not to even mention about anything beyond that for a team that has proven absolutely nothing to date. That to me would be nonsense talk.’
And that is something he has never bothered with.
They would never allow me manage Mayo. My face doesn’t fit