I HAD the privilege of managing the Kerry senior football team in the late 1980s, and almost 20 years later, a similar honour with the Limerick senior football side.
There may be only 20 years between both roles, but there are light-years between both job descriptions.
When I was appointed by the Kerry County Board, I was to be the ‘chief cook and bottle washer.’ It was envisaged that everything that was associated with the team, from washing the jerseys to training the team, would be my responsibility.
On the other hand, when I was appointed as manager to the Limerick senior football team, my role was to set-up, lead, encourage and inspire a management structure that would enable the players to play to their full potential.
In the intervening years, team preparation has changed beyond all recognition.
The physical aspect of the game has become so technical now that only a highly-qualified graduate in sports science has the knowledge to devise and implement a comprehensive training programme.
On the coaching side, a list of skill drills is no longer sufficient, like it would have been 10 years ago.
Gaelic football has become a very technical sport as Tyrone proved last week in the All-Ireland final.
In order to be successful in the modern game, a team manager must have a comprehensive knowledge of the principles of defence and attack, and an ability, and knowledge, to be able to coach these principles to his panel.
Coaching a modern gaelic football team has become stimulating and challenging.
The game has evolved so much in the past five years that if the inter-county manager has not kept abreast with these recent developments, then he is lost.
Approaching the role with the traditional list of skills is just a recipe for disaster.
The modern inter-county manager can no longer do everything as he endeavoured to do 20 years ago. Instead, he must have the management skills to empower specialists in various roles, such as physical training, sports medicine, match analysis, etc, and get the best out of these people.
The cull of the football manager is a modern phenomenon, similar to the soccer manager in the Premier League.
If a county team loses, the first call is to sack the manager, therefore the modern inter-county manager is under far more pressure to produce the right results, then they would have been 20 years ago. Kerry are the exception to that, of course.
Traditionally, expectations have always been high in Kerry, therefore the Kerry manager has always been under pressure to produce results.
It is my opinion that when a team wins, the manager tends to get too much credit, and when a team loses, he then gets too much of the blame. Having said that, a manager should still shoulder the responsibility for the results of his team.
The manager’s objective is to get the best possible performance from the talent at his disposal.
Nowadays, people are not willing to accept that there is a limit to what a particular group of players can achieve, no matter now well trained and coached they are.
This has led to an increased acceleration in managerial turnover, which is a direct result of the lack of success, pressure from players to leave or pressure from supporters.
The responsibility for the lack of success is generally accepted by the manager, yet sometimes players can deflect the attention from themselves by re-directing the pressure on the manager.
The county board may also decide to change the manager for no logical reason but to be seen to be doing something, and to ease the pressure coming from clubs and supporters. It is only strong and stable county boards that can withstand this type of pressure.
On top of that, there are further pressures on modern managers that did not exist 20 years ago.
The disposable society demands instant success. Player power, as we know it, did not exist 20 years ago. Already this year, we saw how they disposed of Justin McCarthy in Waterford, even though he has guided them to three Munster titles in the previous six years.
20 years ago, there were no radio phone-in sports programmes, either at local or national level, and neither was the degree of gambling on the results of inter-county games so prevalent.
It is not uncommon for inter-county managers to be verbally abused by gamblers who lose big money on the outcome of a game. In most situations, these gamblers have very little interest in the intrinsic value of the game itself.
We have a modern managerial revolving door syndrome - if the manager doesn’t win something in two years, he is given the road.
There are only a few county board chairman strong enough to stand up to the pressure.
So much depends on the talent that is at the disposal of the manager. Goals and targets must also be realistic. If progress is being made, the county boards must stand up and be strong in the face of pressure, and back the manager.
There is no doubt that the role of the modern inter-county manager has become more pressurised and more demanding, yet it has also become more challenging and stimulating then it was 20 years ago.
The turnover rate has increased over the last few years and it will continue to do so into the future. The number of applicants for positions remains as plentiful as ever because the dream never dies.
