Meticulous McStay carefully planning for victory - but not at any price

GAELIC GAMES:St Brigid's manager says his team will stick with their skilful style as they bid for a hat-trick of Connacht titles, writes KEITH DUGGAN

“Personally, I am a slogger. It’s all I can do,” Kevin McStay says of preparing for his summer role as an RTÉ commentator and analyst on The Sunday Game. Those who remember the Ballina man’s quicksilver turns as a light and audacious attacker with the Mayo team of the 1980s wouldn’t associate him with methodical endeavour. But what he means is that he applies the meticulousness of his day-job as an Adjutant in the Irish Army to his passion for Gaelic games, patiently scavenging for facts and statistics and information that will make him feel comfortable.

The same applies to his recent return to football management. Tomorrow, he will be on the sideline with St Brigid’s for the Connacht final for what will be a claustrophobically localised provincial final.

McStay is a broadcasting veteran at this stage: he has been a voice and face on The Sunday Game since 1997. He is what can only be described as a boyish 50-year-old. He lives in Roscommon Town, close enough to hear the cries from Dr Hyde Park on All-Ireland championship days.

Recognisable duo

On this afternoon, the big stadium is achingly empty and the sky above brackish. McStay has a rare day off and his plan is to watch some video tape with Liam McHale, his brother-in-law and coach with St Brigid’s. They must be the most recognisable duo in football coaching.

McStay is nationally known for his television analysis now but has a distinguished track record as a coach – he is a former U-21 Mayo manager and won a county championship with Roscommon Gaels in 2004. And McHale’s involvement makes the bitter winter nights when they are out training that bit easier. McStay marvels at the patience the big man has for coaching the fundamentals of the game and during a period of anxiety about the direction of Gaelic football, he points to the club championship as evidence of the game’s good health.

“I have seen some wonderful games at club level. The scores that Dr Crokes are putting up or Crossmaglen . . . these are fantastic scorelines for November. The quality of Crossmaglen’s play last week was of top order. This team we are coaching will play flat-out, high-tempo football with a complete emphasis on skill. We are trying to make them a kicking team. We want them to be the cleverest little team of all time with the ball in hand. And we have been working on that day in and day out.

“If we win, it will be the third Connacht title won by concentrating on football. So how bad can that be? Our theme is: the ball, the ball, the ball. I love watching our team when they play open, good football. So that idea that football is goosed? No. I don’t have that.”

McStay is a Mayo man. Football disillusionment is easily chased away in that part of the country. Two broken legs in successive seasons ended a scintillating talent too early but he sometimes feels he walked away a little bit too easily. He admired the tenacity of McHale who seemed capable of absorbing those seasons of Mayo heartbreak without ever breaking or becoming embittered.

Hornet’s nest

They grew up down the street from one another in Ballina and McHale has never lost that smooth confidence he had as a sportsman. For instance, on this afternoon, McHale was coaching a schools team in Ballaghaderreen. McStay was vaguely horrified about the idea of the big man mixing with people from Sunday’s opposition. He felt it would be like stirring a hornet’s nest.

McHale just laughed at him and asked him what he was worried about. “‘Who cares?’” is Liam’s attitude. He will just chat to people, get on with it. He has this appeal to people and thinks I’m being a ridiculous, conservative clot. Maybe I am.”

They make a delightfully odd football couple: McHale is a terrific worker but he has that it-will-be-all-right-on-the-night approach that set him apart as a prodigiously talented football and basketball player. McStay is more of a stickler and less relaxed: he happily admitted in a radio interview after St Brigid’s had defeated Salthill that when you are a manager, “you can never be far enough ahead”.

Pleasing as that Salthill victory was, he felt the match contained a subtle poison that is seeping through Gaelic games. Recently, he wrote a letter to President Liam O’Neill praising him on his intentions to deal with sideline indiscipline. McStay believes ‘sledging’ in general is out of control and felt the behaviour on the Salthill sideline was unacceptable.

“All season, what has gone on the sidelines is outrageous. Everyone saw what happened in the hurling final and the edginess that created. But this was different.

“Salthill is a club I greatly admire.

“But that game . . . if you moved down to the other side of the pitch and crossed their dug-out, it is like you have come into their house. There is a level of intimidation there now that shouldn’t be allowed. I can’t understand how grown men can go out with a set agenda to destabilise the management, let alone the players, of the other side. So I fully endorse what Liam is trying to do.”

McStay believes a kind of licensed lawlessness has been allowed to bloom within the GAA. It is not just the attitude of supporters; he regularly gets it from opposition supporters – about the Sunday Game or nonsense stuff about the money he is on.

And although he is always stunned by how people feel completely liberated by the wire meshing that separates them from him, he can accept that. But he feels there should be some measure of mutual respect between the opposition dug-outs.

“I was taken aback by what happened against Salthill. At one stage there was water squirted at me from the Salthill management side as I walked by the dug-out. Whoever it was waited until I has passed and then squirted a bottle at me. I just kept walking. But . . . I can’t understand how they have the time to do this.”

McStay has developed a reputation as a scrupulously fair GAA media voice. But he has been explicitly critical in his media analysis when he witnesses out-and-out dangerous play. “I can’t abide it,” he admits.

He played the game during a particularly dark period, playing Sigerson Cup games on Neanderthal afternoons when “there may as well not have been a referee”. He was often singled out for the brutality because he was stylish and nifty and best silenced. So he often saw stars – and not in the Patrick Moore sense.

Sledging

He doesn’t object to hard hitting – he rates Robbie O’Malley of Meath and James McHugh of Galway as being among the toughest and finest he encountered. But the callously late hits, the sledging, the decision – even if it is spontaneous – to do a guy simply because the opportunity presents itself – leaves him cold.

“I met some shocking lads as a player. I was concussed and clattered and just blackguarded out of it. You do have to have fellas who won’t back off – and there is nothing wrong with that. But there is something wrong with clocking a guy as you run past him or off the ball stuff or the sledging that goes on now. But if there is dirty play involved . . . that really drives me mad. It is a part of the game I can’t understand.

“I have to deal with it in any team I coach. Every team has guys who are very edgy. You are coaching guys to keep their head. I am a huge fan of Mickey Harte and a huge fan of Seán Boylan and Joe Kernan – and yet they managed teams that have people in them that were sometimes, I felt, out of control. But maybe they are not out of control. Maybe they are just in that place where they can hold the line.”

McStay comes from a county that has been categorised – not always flatteringly – as being saintly clean on the football field. In the past two years, the word on Mayo was that they had become “edgy”. The inference is that they had rid themselves of a softness of character.

“It is nonsense of the highest order. Did Mayo lose to Meath [in the 1996 All Ireland final] by a point because they were too clean? Players like TJ Kilgallon and Liam- they were clean, yes. But they were ferociously competitive. That tag is too comfortable. When Mayo win it, they will become something else. Look, I remember going to Leinster finals when Meath were horsed out of it. And then they became the hardest team ever. Donegal were the party team. Now they are the most dedicated ever.

“I was at that Armagh match when Donegal were hammered a few years ago and let me tell you: they were Duffy’s Circus. They were like a rabble. They were all over the shop. And I think Jim McGuinness was at that match, actually. So could they make that turnaround if that is all they were? Now, Jim is a special fella. But my point is when you are not successful; it is easy to have a label.”

Montrose make-up room

McStay acknowledges that in the summer, The Sunday Game has a major influence: it sets the agenda. He got into broadcasting accidentally: he was in the officer’s mess one day talking about football and Christy Rock told him straight out that he never shut up about football, that he should get himself on with them RTÉ fellas.

It was almost like a dare. And McStay knew Michael Lyster as their fathers had served in the barracks in Killererin. So he wrote to him. The letter reached Bill Lawlor, who was largely responsible for The Sunday Game concept. Lawlor phoned him. “Come down ’til we have a look at you,” he said. McStay’s first game was in Westmeath, co-commentating with Jimmy Magee. That was 15 years ago: he is a veteran of the Montrose make-up room now.

Live commentary remains his first passion. He has coined a few memorable phrases – the slightly hoarse yell of “He has it, he has it” for Kevin Cassidy’s translatlantic point in the dusk against Kildare in Croke Park and his pithy opening words during a heavy, edgy game between Armagh and Tyrone: “Welcome to the Pleasuredome.”

Sometimes he gets grief for his views. “Mainly from Kerry fellas. I have some great Kerry friends but they don’t like criticism of their team down there. It doesn’t sit well.”

He rejects the theory that The Sunday Game goes soft on the glamour teams when it comes to highlighting contentious issues. “I would defend them to the hilt . . . they have impeccable standards there.”

Liam McHale waltzes in, full of high humour. Kevin has the video ready, the note-pad ready. He is prepared. These are busy days. In his working life, McStay is Lieutenant Colonel, Adjutant responsible for Personnel of the 4th Western Brigade, which is being disestablished at the end of the month due to cutbacks. The emotional toll of reintegrating people is considerable. Football is an escape. And as always, he will do his homework. Liam gets amused when he has the jitters. Both families are going for a break in December. One day McStay remarked that it would be great if they were Connacht champions then.

“And I am sure Liam believes we will be. But he said: ‘Kevin, I have given this everything I can give. So whatever happens happens . . . my conscience is clear.

“And if our players have that, we will win it because we will have given it everything.’ And it was a great attitude. You know, isn’t that all anyone can do?”

That – and walk away afterwards with your name still good.