ALL club championships are in full swing and for the majority of the GAA’s playing population, it is the culmination of eight months of hard slog.
Management teams will be feeling the pressure too.
Trying to prepare a team for a league is one thing.
A good championship run will dictate the mood in the club for the next 12 months.
Nobody wants to regress. For many, steady progress is the Modus operandi.
Realistically or not, some clubs will be seeking that championship trophy in the cabinet at the end of the season.
Planning when the team peaks can be a difficult thing to measure. If training is too hard, players start breaking down. Too easy and a championship game won’t be long in finding them out.
Most counties have restructured their championships to mirror the inter-county competition.
Second chances are now providing a safety net for many teams and indeed there is an element of tension and anxiety removed from the overall atmosphere as a result.
At club level, I enjoyed the straight knockout format.
League football was taken much more seriously also and county players were facilitated.
Now, providing your representative comes back from the county squad injury free, you are lucky to have them for the championship only.
For me, the split season gives the county manager the power to dictate the first six or seven months (depending on a county teams progress) of the calendar year.
County players are now not playing any club league football. This was never the way.
Cahair O’Kane makes the very same point this week (great minds!).
Our neighbouring parish Glenn will play senior championship football next year from Division Three of the league in Down. Has that ever happened before in any county?
They had their three best players on county duty until July this year and by that stage, the damage was done. Glenn hadn’t accumulated enough points in the league.
What you have then is a continuous guilty conscience from the county players’ perspective – lads wanting to participate in an elite environment at county level, while their club suffer for their non-participation.
I don’t think there is enough appetite to find a solution as yet, perhaps in part because every county structure is unique.
But in my view, the pattern is there across Ulster’s landscape.
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GOOD LUCK TO RAYMOND GALLIGAN
GIVEN it is club season, many of the new and reappointed managers at county level will be looking to attend and seek out potential new players for their respective squads in the next few months.
In Ulster, Donegal’s prodigal son Jim McGuinness returns a more experienced man from his consultative roles across many counties, such as Galway and my own Down.
As we know the soccer ambition hasn’t really worked out and while he will better know why, I cannot but feel that the Celtic gig was the best opportunity of them.
The landscape has changed since 2014 and the contribution McGuinness made to the game will always be contentious.
I doubt he will care.
What he achieved was revolutionary in terms of tactical approach.
No longer was the game to be bound to a variation of man-on-man defending and attacking.
The kick-out was no longer a ‘play’ of chance.
A third man midfielder became redeployed as a full-time sweeper.
Possession was now no limiting factor on the outcome of the game.
A fast counter-attacking style was as effective as it was efficient. All of it turned a middle-tier team in Donegal into Ulster and All-Ireland champions.
If they attacked fifteen times, they would score on thirteen occasions, with a goal or two possibly thrown into the mix.
They rarely allowed the opposition to get over twelve scores, few of which were goals.
It is easy to say now however that the players McGuinness inherited back in 2011 were much superior to those he inherits today.
Hindsight being that wonderful thing of course, however McGuinness made those players to a large extent who and what they became. It was his methods that built upon their natural talent.
Those same uncompromising standards and stubborn methods he employed will still be relevant even to a new generation of player in Donegal.
The big difference in all this is a certain player going by the name of Michael Murphy.
Without Murphy, Donegal would not have won an All-Ireland. He was a once in a generation player who carried a team largely in a similar way to David Clifford’s current influence in Kerry.
Should Murphy be persuaded to return in a semi-playing/selector capacity, you will likely see a re-invigorated Donegal – a team worthy of an Ulster championship yes, but an All-Ireland title, maybe not.
What it does do is create another narrative for us to dissect next year.
Raymond Galligan is appointed in Cavan and as a former player and captain, Galligan is taking the plunge knowing exactly what playing potential exists within the county.
He has enough expertise in the background to be successful and even should he still have the option to player-manage in some capacity, the lieutenants alongside him can easily run matchdays.
He has been a loyal Cavan player and has enjoyed the good and bad days, so he will the rhino skin needed to withstand any dissenting noise not rowing in behind him.
It is a brave step to go straight into managing the county side from playing and it was, in part, a natural stepping-stone for all the great inter-county managers down the years.
As you are probably aware, I was interested in the position and when I got further into the statistics and potential in Cavan, it confirmed that they are certainly in the right place now, having been promoted into Division Two.
The commitment to undertake the job is similar to that of a full-time employment position.
Your employment status, family commitment and life balance is something that must be right to consider such a role.
Maybe since 2014, the ground has changed so fundamentally at inter-county level, I am becoming a dinosaur among a new species.
Team psychologists have always been around, but Life Coaches now appear to have a role too.
Given how toxic any fan base can be, given that social media is such a sewer for anyone wanting to be heard, perhaps the life coaching is, in part, there to assist the managers and coaches and not just the players.
It is that old adage perhaps – when the psychiatrist himself needs a psychiatrist.
Anyone who takes on management at club or county level will probably agree – it will sometimes leave you needing a ‘shrink’ in the end!
In any regard, to Raymond and his team - to Cavan – the best of luck!
