Managers need to be managed better

Maybe it's just a straining to uncover significance as the year declines, but there may be something more than dead leaves stirring in the autumnal landscapes. This time of the year has become a bit like the trade or draft seasons in professional sports in relation to GAA managers.

Just a year ago, I referred to the process as being akin to the hiring fairs of the past, but the signs are that potential managers are now operating in more of a sellers' market.

Team management has taken on more and more importance in the three decades since the emergence of Kevin Heffernan and Mick O'Dwyer was regarded with suspicion as smacking of an alien code. The trend hasn't been surprising.

There's no shortage of great players who have been unable to crown their careers with tangible recognition, but successful managers by definition win trophies.

But there's more to it than that. The manager who gets the best out of a panel energises the whole county. Inter-county success is the best marketing stratagem GAA officials can have. It impacts on the profile and has sponsorship benefits. So get the right candidate and the rewards are considerable.

Yet, at this time of the year you'd have to wonder whether that fact is widely appreciated. A cavalier attitude frequently informs the at times off-hand manner in which managers are sought and appointed and, at last, there looks like being consequences.

Donal O'Grady walked away from the Cork hurling job once his two-year appointment concluded despite having won the All-Ireland. He made no secret of what he regarded as the crippling demands imposed by trying to balance management and career.

Cork were fortunate to be able to effect a painless succession, but, in general, counties are having problems both in keeping managers and in filling the vacancies when they can't. The problem concerns the fraught fault line between amateurism and professionalism.

This isn't a reference to what managers may or may not receive, although the gallery of smoke and mirrors that houses these arrangements has become almost surreal.

Demands are on a professional level, but the obstacles of amateurism remain. The Gaelic Players Association has long been vexed by the reality, however elusive, of managers being paid while players struggle to get proper expenses. But it's not hard to see why the temptation is there to spend on managers.

And regardless of who gets more than strict expenses, big money is involved. The most comprehensive recent figures available come from a GAA survey of expenditure on county teams during the 2002 season. A figure of 11 million was spent on preparing teams for the championship.

That year's first-time All-Ireland football champions Armagh spent over half a million (538,560) on their breakthrough, which made them top spenders given that none of their other county teams progressed to any significant extent.

These figures refer only to expenditure by the county board. The financial input of followers outside of the official power structures, mainly supporters' clubs, but also from other, less visible donors, isn't included. It was also noted in the survey that 19 of the county boards ended the year in debt.

With this going on in the background, it's hard to argue that a manager is viewed as just an amateur going about his recreational business. Serious money is being spent and if the paymasters feel that they're not getting value they'll become restless.

Carlow is an illustrative case. Since winning its only Leinster title in 1944, the county has added only the All-Ireland B football title, 50 years later. Yet, the breeze of optimism that has been blowing through Leinster in recent years with the drastic levelling in standards is obviously fresh on the faces of some in the county.

While Mick O'Dwyer pondered his future with Laois last month, rumours were rife that a group of business interests in Carlow hoped to attract what was termed "a high-powered manager".

Luke Dempsey, one of football's in-demand managers, had taken over for this year's championship, but decided he couldn't stay on. A major consideration was the travel involved between Carlow and Mullingar where he lives.

This is a reality that doesn't often intrude into the more fevered speculations about possible managerial moves. Talk of John O'Mahony, for example, metamorphosing into the Road Warrior and blasting off from Ballaghdereen in the direction of Dublin or wherever he's being associated with at the time ignores the fact that teachers - for all their summertime flexibility - have to be at their desks every morning of the school year.

That's the consequence of amateurism. Managers generally have to work during the day. So Carlow have to look elsewhere. But all of this talk of lavish bankrolls and "high- powered managers" isn't that attractive to prospective candidates. It radiates unreasonable expectations, especially given Leinster's recent history as breakthrough central. But without the under-age achievements of Westmeath or Laois, Carlow has all the appearances of a poisoned chalice for whoever succeeds Dempsey.

Neither is Carlow unique in this. Expectations are top of the range all over the country. There are only two All-Irelands and seven provincial championships.

National League success might be an interim ambition in football (it's evidently not in hurling), but it rarely amounts to a successful season on its own. So room for manoeuvre is limited.

Sligo have yet to appoint a football manager and Dublin are in the same boat. Neither county board was overrun with enthusiastic applicants and both are interesting cases. Sligo have nowhere to go apart from winning a Connacht title and that's a daunting prescription for whoever takes over.

The travails of Dublin managers are well documented: the presence of a growing, ever-hungry media with no particular allegiance to the county and the vagaries of a volatile support base that believes All-Irelands are always within reach are the most frequently mentioned.

In both cases, the kernel of the difficulty is unreasonable expectation in a sporting environment unsure of whether it's amateur or professional.

One county official made this cautionary point: "In the past there was always a chance for fellas who thought they'd like to give managing the county a go, to try and step up from club or under-age level. These days no one wants to take that chance."