SHANE McGRATH
Roscommon must look closer to home for their scapegoat
OUTSIDE managers can bring expertise and inspiration to a county, but they will forever be vulnerable to the charge of not understanding what the jersey truly means.
That was effectively the case made against Kevin McStay by Gay Sheerin when the former Roscommon manager spoke as an analyst after watching Mayo ease past their Connacht rivals last month.
Sheerin’s words caused controversy, and the story was stoked by the decision of McStay to respond last weekend.
The original contribution by Sheerin on Shannonside FM was not a froth-flecked attack.
It was, though, a man looking for neat answers that would easily explain the suffering of his team.
In those circumstances, identifying the manager as an outsider is an easy route to take. Highlighting his status as ‘other’ implies a difference between what the team means to him and to someone born and bred inside the county borders.
Sheerin complained that he did not like ‘seeing Mayomen on the line’, alluding to McStay’s roots in a neighbouring, rival county.
It was a comment unworthy of a serious analyst, but be sure that it is a view shared among an element of the Roscommon support.
He also said that some of the players not representing the county under McStay would be there if a Roscommon man was in charge of them. Ambitious footballers would presumably be more interested in having the best man in charge, not the one born closest to Hyde Park.
McStay vigorously defended himself talking after the subsequent defeat to Kerry but his words will not have convinced those sharing Sheerin’s view.
The truth is nothing he could say would sway that constituency, not because there is a uniquely virulent strain of isolationism among Roscommon football folk, but because the quickest way to go after an outside manager is by claiming life would be better under one of your own.
The particular circumstances in Roscommon are complicated by the departure last winter of Fergal O’Donnell as joint manager. Not only is he a distinguished former player, but he managed the county to an All-Ireland minor title in 2006.
McStay is then not merely an outsider in some eyes, but he is taking a role once shared with a hero. That he has spent the majority of his adult life living in Roscommon, that he has raised a family there, and that he led a club from there to an All-Ireland title, are not enough to dilute his status as a ‘Mayoman’ in some eyes.
Those factors do scent this one case of an outsider coming in to manage a team with fundamentalism, but even in less extreme interpretations the current controversy conforms to a type.
Vulnerability to attack on the grounds of insufficient passion is a fate McStay shares with outsider managers who have gone before him.
The entire issue is a problematic one, creating arguably more difficulty at club level than in the county arena. Anecdotal accounts are rife of clubs tangling themselves in terrible bother by committing to pay a manager money that they cannot generate, for instance.
There is an equally pressing point that applies to both club and county examples, however. If the GAA is celebrated as a triumph of the local, then it follows that those unique parishes, towns and counties should produce from within.
When, instead, clubs and counties swoop for outside managers, then what is supposed to be a unique culture starts to conform to the rules of any other marketplace.
That in turn has contributed to the growth of payments to managers, which Páraic Duffy tried in vain to address five years ago – and, it should be noted, there is no suggestion of that being an issue in the Roscommon case.
Interestingly, the moral pitfalls that can attend the use of an outside manager are rarely discussed now. Nor is the comment it makes on a county when it cannot appoint a local to the role.
Rather, the arrival of a new name can cause great excitement, as the impact of Davy Fitzgerald at Wexford illustrates.
When one sees what he has done and the potential his appointment has for bringing new competition to Leinster hurling, the notion of obliging counties to choose one of their own as manager is challenged.
However, it is when the glow fades that the problems start. That is true for all managers – but none is as exposed to the charge of not caring enough as the outsider.