Pressure on managers unfair - McGeeney

GAELIC GAMES:Kieran McGeeney believes that the demands placed on intercounty managers to deliver instant success are unfair, writes SEAN MORAN

KILDARE MANAGER Kieran McGeeney touched on a familiar dilemma at the press conference after Sunday’s defeat of Leinster champions Meath. Asked about the pressure his counterpart Séamus McEnaney was under, the former Armagh captain spoke about the unfairness of the pressure to achieve instant results.

“It is easy to have a pot. I don’t know a manager out there that makes a decision that is going to be bad for his team. We all have opinions; that is a given. If you have a fella in, you have to give him a chance to test his opinions.

“You can’t just do that in 12 months. It takes a while, especially to try and change a style of football. I think the pressure on them – it’s easy to say it from the outside – has been unfair. I am sure you don’t know anybody that purposefully goes in and makes bad decisions. They mightn’t always make the right ones. But in my 20 years involved in county football they always make them for the right reasons.”

Although McGeeney has now assembled an enviable record by this, his fourth year in charge of Kildare in what was his first inter-county management appointment, it didn’t start that well. In his three years to date McGeeney has taken the county to two All-Ireland quarter-finals and one semi-final.

Three years ago his first championship match in Leinster ended, as did McEnaney’s at the weekend, in defeat, an outcome made all the more uncomfortable by the fact it was Wicklow’s first championship win at Croke Park.

At least McGeeney had the qualifiers in which to plot a recovery.

His adversary in 2008, the veteran Mick O’Dwyer, also knew how precarious life in Leinster could be for outside managers.

Having been appointed to the Kildare job in 1990, O’Dwyer guided the county to promotion from Division Two as well as that year’s NFL final against Dublin, which they narrowly lost. Hot favourites in their first championship match, against Louth in Drogheda 20 years ago, Kildare were beaten and in those days teams defeated in June stayed defeated.

It was a protégé of O’Dwyer’s, Páidí Ó Sé, who thrived best in these circumstances. Like O’Dwyer he had led Kerry to All-Irelands and after stepping down as manager, accepted the invitations to take over Westmeath, at that stage one of three counties (with Wicklow and Fermanagh) never to have won a provincial title.

In his first season, 2004, Ó Sé remedied that by taking the county to its first Leinster after a replayed final against champions Laois, then managed – in the circularity of these things – by O’Dwyer.

Meanwhile suggestions of unrest in Laois after the heavy defeat by Dublin on Sunday have been denied.

Corner forward MJ Tierney, who was replaced before the throw-in having been named on the team originally, is understood to have travelled back to Laois on the train rather than on the team bus.

His disgruntlement was broadcast on The Sunday Game, when his Twitter message, "disillusioned" was read out on the programme.

It was also reported after the match that a player on the bench had refused to take the field when asked to get ready in the latter stages of the match. Manager Justin McNulty, who declined to attend the post-match press conference, was still unavailable for comment yesterday.

But county PRO Pascal McEvoy denied there had been any discontent. “There were no problems afterwards. The mood was very disappointed, obviously, but nothing more than that.”

Asked about rumours that another player was about to leave the panel, McEvoy said: “No. I’m sure that’s not the case. I would have heard about that. I was speaking to the chairman of the football board and there was nothing like that.”

McEvoy added that a full diagnosis of the ankle injury sustained by forward Dáithí Carroll would have to wait until later this week.

“Dáithí went to the Mater after the match and then down to the orthopaedic unit in Tullamore. It was suspected that he might have a small fracture so the ankle was put in a cast. That will be taken off on Thursday and they should be in a position to know the extent of it then.”

Laois will be involved in the football qualifiers later this month but it’s unlikely Carroll will have recovered in time even if the injury is as initially believed ligament damage.