The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
MICK O’Dwyer, one of the most admirable and legendary GAA figures, is quite simply above criticism. He has given too much to the GAA and, by extension, the country for anyone to attempt besmirching his innings at this stage.
Now that he is no longer the Clare manager, there isn’t much point in blaming him for the county’s humiliating 16-point hammering by Laois. What we can point to, however, is the absolute dearth of knowledge displayed by the committee and the county board who put him in place.
If they thought O’Dwyer was the answer in 2013, they clearly didn’t have an inkling as to the demands and requirements of inter-county football management. The committee who put him in place were, of course, fully supported by former county board chairman, Michael O’Neill, and current board chairman, Michael McDonagh, who didn’t find out until Sunday morning that O’Dwyer had publicly stated his intention not to seek a second term.
It’s imperative that the people asked to appoint a new manager know what they are doing and possess a working knowledge of the requirements. They must be actively involved in senior club or even inter-county management currently at the very least.
Of course, it’s naive to suggest or believe that Clare football issues are just about who is managing the senior county team. That’s not the case. Facilities were a huge issue at times this year. Early-season training was in Corofin but only thanks to the co-operation of the club, while Clare also trained in LIT and Mungret on several occasions.
Perhaps Caherlohan will be available for pre-season training this winter but for the season just ended, the footballers were not aided by the constant battle to find a decent floodlit pitch, in their own county, during the off-season months.
Believe it or not, there are footballers of sufficient quality in the county to get the county out of Division 4 of the NFL at a minimum. The current panel came very close to achieving this in 2010 and 2012 but this year, they regressed in the league, beating only London at home.
Mick O’Dwyer apologists cannot force themselves to acknowledge that Clare were better prepared under Micheál McDermott. What Clare needed was not necessarily a new manager, rather a top-class coach who could have got them over the line in the league.
While nobody will be in the form to dwell much on it this week, the current outgoing coaches, Ger Keane and Michael Neylon, should be encouraged to stay on. If they don’t, what they have learned following a trying season will be lost, leaving an entirely new management team having to start from scratch.
Strength and conditioning coach Micheál Cahill is departing to Dallas, Texas, to take up a position as head of sports science and his expertise will be a huge loss to Clare football. Unfortunately, there are people in Clare GAA who don’t realise the significance of his loss as their grasp on modern strength and conditioning requirements are, at best, flimsy and not based on experience or fact.
A rather significant group of people have yet to be mentioned with all of this management talk – the players. The outgoing management team didn’t drill into them the necessity to drop their heads and basically give up at the first semblance of a setback. Yet that’s exactly what happened.
Once John O’Loughlin goaled to put Laois 1-4 to 0-6 ahead, two minutes before half-time, the belief and fight was sucked out of Clare. From there on, there was very little sign of anything in the way of leadership or even collective pride. While management, the county board and the aforementioned committee have been signalled out for their respective contributions, it would be disingenuous not to highlight the role of the players in their own capitulation.
Most of them have given years of noble service to the county and it was not an edifying sight to see them collapse so tamely. They didn’t set out to do that but it is what happened.
It’s mid-July 2013. Clare football is in an uninspiring place. It’s easy to criticise and point out the obvious but who has the interest or inclination to start looking for a way forward?
