THE MIDDLE THIRD: DARRAGH Ó SÉsays Cork have the most talented team left in the All-Ireland championship – that fact alone means the stakes are higher for their manager than for his three remaining rivals
FOUR TEAMS standing. Four managers left in the football championship. You can see that times are changing just by looking at the ages and profiles of the men in charge. If Conor Counihan dreamed of this summer’s semi- finals early in the year he would hardly have imagined that at 50 he would be the grand old man among the managers taking part.
These are tough times in which to manage a team and what has happened this year on the sidelines is probably a glimpse of things to come. Jack O’Connor has spoken a few times about managerial burn-out and, when you look at how the game has changed, you can understand what he is talking about.
A manager can’t take anything for granted anymore. He can lose a dressingroom in jig time if he isn’t on the ball. And once it’s gone, that’s it. Three or four laps to kick off the evening and then telling the lads to stretch among themselves? It’s not at club level now. There is a circuit of guys going around to clubs training with good drills. There are a lot of good coaches around. A lot of information is out there.
Players know a spoofer straight away. Players know what is cutting edge, what is best practice. They don’t want to be doing the same routines and drills all the while. They don’t want to be doing what teams were doing three or four years ago.
Of the four bainisteoirs left, Conor Counihan has the most talented team. He also has the most pressure.
Imagine if you could take away all the parochialism and all the sense of place from the game and look at it cold-bloodedly the way a soccer manager might. If you were asked which panel of players in the country you would most like to manage, you would pick Cork. That’s a pressure in itself. And being the team expected to take the throne. That’s a pressure too.
My own gut feeling on Cork is that they seemed to be better this time last year than they are now.
Another question. If you could ask Conor Counihan in private and in confidence going into this semi-final if he could send out his Cork side in the form and in the mood they were in 12 months ago or the form that they are in now, well, he’d most likely pick the version of 12 months ago.
Look at how they dismantled Tyrone last year – a Tyrone side a year younger and a year fresher than they were when Dublin beat them. Cork were incredible that day. In the All-Ireland final last year it struck me that the match they gave us was the most physical and most bruising of any final I had ever played in. This year though they seem to have regressed more than progressed.
Earlier in the summer they should have taken Kerry on either day but to me it seemed they beat themselves if you like. The way they played the games, they just went down the wrong path. Wrong choices with teams and tactics.
To me it seemed like they beat themselves
With such a strong panel, Counihan is a small bit like Claudio Ranieri, when he was at Chelsea. The tinker man. Fiddling with this and that. He does a lot of chopping and changing. He has nearly too many options. But he still has the best six forwards around.
I know it looks like Ciarán Sheehan may be out injured for the semi-final and Paul Kerrigan hasn’t really kicked off since the first game in Killarney against Kerry but through the summer Daniel Goulding and Sheehan have been very consistent and Colm O’Neill has pushed them all the way.
In the second half against Roscommon they finally got back to playing their own game. That was the first time since Tyrone last year that we saw Pierce O’Neill taking the ball on the burst and Cork creating room for him. That was the most positive sign of the summer for Cork.
Maybe at this stage the injuries Cork are looking at might force Conor Counihan’s hand in a positive way. Had I been picking the team for him I would have picked Nicholas Murphy for the last couple of games.
In the last couple of games when he has come on he has brought the other players into the game. They have more ball coming in, more players lifted. Against John Galvin when he came on against Limerick. He had a huge influence. Before this championship is out he could be a huge player for Cork. In big championship games of all the players that are left in it, he has the most match experience.
The impact Nicholas has had suggests this championship is laid out for him. He is the best midfielder left in the championship for my money. He could have a huge influence but, so far, Cork are not getting him in there, where he does damage.
Conor Counihan has those problems but he has the solutions in his own hands. Even still you can see the pressure he is under. None of the other three managers are under that sort of stress at all.
Pat Gilroy has come through the flames this year. He has changed a team and he has changed its way of playing. Dublin are in a nice position in that their graph is going upwards. They started off slowly, getting loads of criticism. He could have been lynched if things got any worse but he stuck with his plan.
He is among that breed of young managers now doing really good work early in their careers and soon after they finished playing. Fergal O’Donnell in Roscommon had an incredible season which also outstripped the wildest hopes of the county and Jason Ryan’s work in Wexford has been hugely impressive.
Pat Gilroy has the confidence now to be able to take off Alan Brogan and put him back on again in the course of a game.
He has exceeded all expectations and he is in a better position than Conor Counihan going into the next day, despite not having the same quality of players.
He has brought Dublin from rock bottom. Whatever happens against Cork, whatever way the cards fall, Dublin can go out, with Tyrone under their belt, and play with more confidence this year and next year. If they aren’t good enough to win the All-Ireland in 2010 they will be around for another few years to have a crack.
In the other semi-final, Down’s James McCartan in his first season. I didn’t see them going as far as they went this year. I know James is a competitive man but I doubt if he saw them getting this far either.
They have done hugely well. After the beating they took from Armagh in the league final, I would imagine that Down privately felt that a good run in the Ulster championship would be a decent year’s work.
They are in a semi-final though and James McCartan has done a very good job getting them there. They will line out against Kildare with that huge confidence that Down always carry when they come to Croke Park for championship. In that sense, James McCartan is the right manager at the right time.
Confidence only takes you so far however. The quarter-final needs to be scrutinised. As bad and all as Kerry were against Down there were a few occasions when they ran at them, and every time they did that they made Down look very ordinary. Kerry had only three or four players playing to their own potential. Down played to their own potential.
My point is that I don’t think Down are as good yet as they are made out to be football-wise. I don’t think they would honestly have expected to be in an All-Ireland semi-final and they will have to continue improving to win this one.
That includes outperforming Kieran McGeeney.
Kieran McGeeney is the kind of competitor that is dangerous to have in there in the last four. A shark. If you asked him did he expect to be in a semi-final this year he might give the party line but in his heart McGeeney expects to win everything.
After Pat Gilroy, his path has been the toughest. When they lost to Louth early on, Kildare looked hopeless. They were written off everywhere. They were so poor. Fast-forward two months and they are in the All-Ireland semi-final having played the best football of the quarter-finals. A fine job of coaching.
McGeeney won’t be happy with a semi-final. I think with the quality of players he has they’ll be looking to edge in to the final and push on and take his opportunities from there.
We were talking earlier about Cork’s difficulty in setting up situations where Pierce O’Neill could come onto the ball at speed. Contrast that with Kildare.
In McGeeney’s time with Armagh he was an absolute leader along with Paul McGrane. I see flashes of that in the way Kildare play. When they go forward with the ball there is no wastage, their shot selection is brilliant, if the shot is not on they get the good guys in position on the ball. The John Doyles, the Kavanaghs. They aren’t happy till they get into that position. A huge amount of work and planning has gone into teaching Kildare that style.
That’s where younger managers have an advantage. As a player you come in to train, you’ve had your water drinking during the day and your diet is right but when you get there you just have to show up.
McGeeney (and the others) plans his training routine in detail the night before a session. He arrives early and talks to his management team for an hour before training. Just making sure everybody is on the same page. When players come in to work they aren’t trotting around cones and waiting for drills to be lined up. They see that professionalism and the work coming from the guys. They respond.
That is what younger managers are bringing. It passes on confidence and builds respect from both sides but for the manager it is always a tightrope. Four men left on the wire. One under pressure from outside. Another pushing himself from within. Conor Counihan and Kieran McGeeney to be left standing for September.
