From the Files of the LockerRoom I Can't Believe It's A GAA InterCounty Management Correspondence Course! Read the testimony of our successful pupils and graduates! Some names and addresses have been withheld, but all are 100 per cent genuine:

A Chara,

Many thanks for your recent dispatch of instructions and tutorials. I see now the point of Paranoia 101, and even though it is too late for its implementation this year, my team will certainly be operating in an atmosphere of healthy and acute paranoia next summer.

I read and reread the work study exercise involving the former manager "from the north" and his Technique in Random Atrocities Against the Media. And yes, as advertised, its bitter tones paved the way to my own Damascus. The avant garde use of such delicate phrases as "yiz all writ us off, ye b***ards (and then we lost)" was a revelation. Is there a corresponding course for teams which have been maliciously tipped as favourites?

I also found Ger Loughnane's essay on the history of human rights abuses within the GAA to be a most moving testimony.

My decision this summer to emphasise the positive character-building aspects of Gaelic games was ill-informed and naive. I shudder when I think of telling my players "we may not win any medals but we might end up better people!" Thanks for taking the scales from my eyes.

Mise le meas (name and address withheld)

A chairde,

I am a 1996 graduate of your course (you may remember the small controversy when my "highly commended" final year thesis, "Wearing Shorts on the Sideline in the Post-Impressionist Era", was submitted again in 1997 by a candidate from Derry under the title "Wearing Shorts and Funny Hats on the Sideline in the Post-All-Ireland Era"), and while I have derived many benefits from completion of the course, there are areas where I feel extra tuition would be beneficial.

I am interested in post-graduate study opportunities which might deal with the following areas: the Philosophical Basis and Justification of Football Without Forwards, which seems to offer a palliative which would be applicable here; and What is the Basis for Local Authority Legislation on Sealing County Borders to Prevent Forwards from Migrating? Can they be extradited back to the county?

I received a flyer from your school some weeks ago advertising opportunities for further study (the one with the stark picture of Paidi O Se and the Kerry team all gagging themselves), but I left it in my tailor's when he was taking my shorts up for the championship.

Please remit again.

Yours etc,

"Westerner"

Dear L.I.C.B.I.A.GAA.MCC!

How are you doing? I am willing to pay through the nose for some unusual advice. I am a very successful former manager of my county team and have, as per the advice given in Colm O'Rourke's six-week course on the True Meaning of Success, parlayed my own achievements into a fine lifestyle. I have also improvised a role for myself in quasi-management based on the Mick O'Dwyer Kerry Principles, that is, the subtle art of giving the impression that Everything Would be All Right if Only I was in Charge Again.

Things have taken a turn for the worst, however. Since being beaten out the gate in the championship, the county management team has resigned en masse and have been quietly conducting a campaign to "bring back big mouth, he seems to know it all". The team is full of fat, crumbling, prima donnas. No way will lightning strike twice. How do I do nothing while retaining credibility? There is a delegation of players coming on Tuesday and I need help quick.

Yours sincerely, "Confused"

Sirs, I have followed your instructions through the winter and during the championship, right to the Objection to Provincial Council After First Round Exit Stage. I seem to be missing subsequent modules of the course. People are asking the dreaded What Now Smartypants? question. I am interested in details on two courses beginning next semester. Firstly, Talking Up The League (I'm assuming this covers all aspects from championship failure to indignation at All Star selections, and will, as usual, involve field trips with the Offaly footballers and Dublin hurlers).

I am also interested in Waiting for Round Robin . . . Waiting for Round Robin: Conceptual Approaches to Why the World is Wrong and Not Your Team. I have done some extra curricular work already in the Waiting for the Round Robin area but am getting out my depth. Is it a migratory bird?

Yours etc.

Sirs,

Help! Howler Alert! I accidentally gave out a team to the media on Tuesday last week and played the same line-up on Sunday. How do I get back my credibility?

Yours Red-faced

Dear Sir,

I greatly enjoyed the modules I took last winter. Prof Pete McGrath's ideas on a Montessori Approach to Difficult Teams were invigorating. I also gained academic credits in Eamon Coleman's Long-Term Strategies for Getting Satisfactory Expenses from the County Board (Exile and Beyond), and enjoyed Danny Ball's contribution to the Peter Canavan Broken Jaw Memorial Lecture on Media-Created Divisions Within Hypothetical Northern Counties.

I am now manager of Cavan and have some time on my hands before the league starts. What should I study next? I feel Mattie Murphy's media relations course (I'm OK, You're All Mouldy Hoors) would be interesting.

Yours etc Val.

Hello,

I am enclosing $25. Expect to get the advanced section of 99 Ways Not to See Incidents at Club Games by return. Yours etc "Big Success"

Sirs,

Took bad advice in my first years in charge and am now seeking to undo damage done through promiscuous dealings with media. Have seen your course Media in the Age of Sponsorship: Marketing Allies or Same Old Spawn of Beelzebub advertised. Very interested.

"You Know Me"

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