Full time manager necessary

AND so the Great Debate rages. Should the new man be full time or part time?

Ought his forays here be confined to international match weeks, and thereafter speaking engagements and recuperative fishing or golf trips away from the stresses of the game? Thus should he have a Charitonesque, hands off approach to the under age teams, the coaching structures and the National League? Or might he be employed to take a direct interest in all of the above? This is pretty important stuff.

It is clear that if some of the power brokers within the FAI Executive Council had their way then the next appointment would, in a sense, be merely more of the same. What disgruntlement there is with the Charlton era is confined to the under age set up, whereby Charlton was permitted to foist his cronies on the underage teams with little or no active participation by himself.

Determined not to allow a similar situation to evolve, this wing within the FAI would content itself with applying more control over the under age set up, while still allowing the new man to confine himself solely to the senior international team. Substitute Dalglish for Charlton, and the golf courses for the fishing streams, but with one or more former internationals such as Ronnie Whelan, Chris Hughton, Liam Brady, Mick McCarthy and the like co opted onto the underage coaching network.

Indeed, it is hard not to believe that some senior executives already have their man in place, and that a more onerous, all embracing job remit might scare off a candidate who sees himself as a Charlton Mark Two.

Yet it seems that the job specifications as agreed by the Executive Council at Thursday's meeting achieved just that, and thereby constitute a minor victory for the more progressive types who want the new man to pay more than just lip service to the under age and domestic games.

Thus, rather than select the new manager first and then bend the job specification to accommodate him, it seems that the executive felt compelled to do things the other way around. Furthermore, no clear strategy appears to have been in plan when first the five officers and general secretary Sean Connolly, then the 21 member Executive Council and finally the 50 member full Council met in a sequence of meetings last Tuesday. Then, when the Executive reconvened on Thursday they even went public (uncharacteristically for them) with their new job specification.

To regurgitate, it is as follows:

Management of the international senior team and active involvement in the structure below that level.

Planning and implementing policies to consolidate the current world status of the national team.

To work with the FAI to: 1, Develop the game at all levels, with particular emphasis on developing talent for international teams and to ensure the growth of the game locally; 2, Maximise the potential of all the vested interests in football in Ireland; 3, Coordinate the various constituents involved in the game into one cohesive unit; 4, Involvement, as required by the FAI, in commercial activities.

Admittedly, the final draft is sufficiently vague to leave the six man working party scope for flexibility when it comes to interviewing likely candidates. The new man could combine a club job with the Irish one until May before concentrating his efforts on the latter. Intriguingly, one or two of the prime movers behind Charlton's nudge - into retirement have let slip that the likeliest replacement hadn't been mentioned as of late this week, pointing to the Howard Wilkinsons, Joe Royles and so forth of the English game. Alternatively, it could be a red herring.

But if the job specification is carried out to the letter then the new man will have an obligation to have a more hands on approach to the under age coaching structures and international teams, and the national league, than was ever the case with Charlton. In essence therefore, he will have to be full time.

In the week that's in it, it seemed particularly instructive to talk to Charlton's three predecessors as Irish manager, Liam Tuohy, Johnny Giles and Eoin Hand. In almost everything, there is a surprising degree of uniformity in their views. Accepting that the job has changed drastically, all believe the new man should be a full time appointment, with a salary to match.

Tuohy says, he was "paid part time wages for a part time job. The princely sum of £500 per year." Giles recalls with a touch of irony how he was noted for being "a money man in those days, but I got off all. I wasn't doing it for the money. I wouldn't have got more than £6,000 a year. I got a lot of criticism for not doing certain things but it was always a part time job. Certainly I was on part time wages."

When Hand took over he said: "I felt it was full time work but I was being paid part time." Hand describes his annual wage of £12,000, which eventually rose to £16,000, as "pathetic" given that he travelled all around the country conducting seminars and so forth at his own expense.

Presuming the FAI pay the new man accordingly, perhaps doubling Charlton's basic wage of approximately £75,000 per annum, then Hand does not think it unreasonable that similar demands be placed on him.

do feel it's a hill time appointment. The guy who is in charge of the flagship, the senior team, must have an input into the under age teams or else you've got no continuity. To me that's logical. If he's full time he should make the time to go and watch kids that are liable to be playing for Ireland in the future. I think continuity is absolutely vital."

Like Hand, Giles also sought to manage the under 21s (in tandem with Alan Kelly) and youths (in harness with Ray Treacy and Eamonn Dunphy). Interestingly, he found this easier to do as a part time Irish manager while based in Ireland with Shamrock Rovers, rather than when initially based at Leeds. This suggests that for the new man to have the time to divest his interests in the domestic and under age games, he would be better off being employed on a full time basis.

"That's the ideal," says Giles, "because you don't have that much time to spend on it anyway. Say if it's one of the lads from England, Joe Kinnear or Mick McCarthy, it's better if they're full time. They can give it their full attention. I think it would be money well spent to make them full time and fully responsible for what's going on at under 21 level and so on. Times have changed a lot. There's very few other countries who have part time managers."

Tuohy concurs, adding that "if you're going to have a situation where he is involved as a club manager and also as an international manager, there's going to be problems at one end or the other as soon as either the international team or the club side start losing a few matches. Whether full time or part time, it should certainly be his only job."

As for regularly, or even occasionally attending National League matches, Tuohy says: "I do believe that one of the drawbacks of the last 10 years was that there didn't seem to be enough interest in the domestic game, and I'll leave it at that."

Giles says: "Why not? What else would be doing on a Sunday anyway? If you get a working manager who goes over to see League of Ireland managers, at least he's seeing the matches. There's no reason why somebody who's doing the job wouldn't have an input into the national coaching structures as well."

By extension, heading a new, pyramid like coaching structure with which he would also have some involvement is not unreasonable to ask. Says Tuohy: "Ideally the new man should be pulling the strings right down to the very bottom. The under age structure should be in alignment - right up to the very top.

"But can you get somebody who doesn't have a love of Irish football to see his job as something other than getting the senior team right? If you can get the right man then I think the whole structure can fall into place. You should have a pyramid system in football. That's the right way. But you have to have the right man."

To ease his load, those below the new man should be directly answerable to him. "The new manager wouldn't have to be the man standing on a hillside in Roscommon. But we badly need the next appointment to embrace all of football in Ireland," adds Tuohy.

When criticising the Charlton years in some quarters of Irish society you'd still want to leave the engine running, but no regime is perfect and in not tending to the roots Charlton's too had its flaws. As Tuohy says: "If you don't learn from what's gone before it's been a waste of time."

While favouring another fulltime appointment who will oversee the under 16s, 18s and 21s in direct liaison with the senior team manager, all under one umbrella, Tuohy doesn't feet that the FAI should dictate to the new man who is coaching subsidiaries should be. "If you're giving a manager a job to do and then you're telling him who's going to work with him I don't think that's a good start."

Though it may scare the power brokers to leave such appointments to the behest of the new manager, here again Giles concurs with Tuohy. "It's got to be his own choice. Oh definitely. There's one very vital thing in management and that's the hiring and firing of your own staff. Because you need loyalty around you, you need people you can trust and you need people who you are confident they can do the job. You have to have people whose ideas are compatible with your own, and if you're given somebody who's to say your ideas would be compatible? It's a very important thing. You want your own man in the dressing room.

"That's what I tried to do and I was criticised for it because they thought I was trying to be a dictator. But if you're working with under 21s, youths and under 16s the idea is to get them up to the full team, isn't it? Now if your ideas are not the same as the guy underneath then the players are getting conflicting advice and coaching.

"I think it would be good to have a national coaching set up and the manager should have an input into that. He should also have an input into the under 21s and the under 18s. That's why it's a full time job, to do that and to get the people to do it. That's the way the structure should be."

THE biggest change Hand wants to see happening is the new manager's "greater interest in the domestic scene. He must have an interest in domestic football because it's domestic people who pay money to go through the turnstiles. To ignore the domestic game is not doing the thing properly, and in depth. For the continuing development of football in Ireland you cannot do that in my opinion without an injection into the local situation. Impossible. How can the local people ultimately relate to what's going on with the international team?"

For Hand, establishing stronger structures with the senior international team manager also heading a new, pyramid like coaching network is paramount. Nor does he have any doubts as to who that man ought to be.

"If I had the choice I would pick McCarthy, because he's committed, knowledgeable and honest. That's enough in my opinion but he's also ambitious."

Giles and Tuohy prefer to keep their counsel on this issue, though the latter maintains that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. "I don't want the cheapest man for the job, that's all I'll say. I don't want somebody to get the job just because he's prepared to work cheaper than the others."

Making more excessive demands on the new man, and paying him accordingly, may make some FAI Executives shirk. A more specific job specification than has previously been the case may also make some potential candidates shy away from the job. All the better. Surely we want somebody who wants it badly, who wants to tend to the roots and the buds as well as the leaves.