What’s the word around Galway about Joe Kernan taking it…
Positive enough. Never realized myself that his auld wan was from B’sloe. Theirs a few who reckon that his approach wouldn’t suit Galways natural ‘attacking style’ but I haven’t seen much evidence of this style myself save for a couple of half-baked league games in the March.
Wouldn’t say he’d come cheap though.
Joe Kernan has thrown his hat into the ring for the Galway job.
Nominations close on Friday.
Kernan stepped down from the Armagh post in 2007 after bringing one All-Ireland and one League title to the county, as well as four Ulster titles, during a six-year reign.
This is where Grimley has gone to, he’ll be a huge loss to McGeeney. I find it odd he’s not gone for the Armagh job, but perhaps it wasn’t open to him and he got sick of travelling to Kildare?
Monaghan football manager Seamus McEnaney will be joined by a mystery new face on his management team for next year, it has been revealed.
Monaghan County Board chairman John Connolly revealed that McEnaney’s management team will be the envy of the entire country when the new coach is unveiled.
Long serving boss McEnaney, along with trainer Marty McElkennon, confirmed to Connolly yesterday that he will remain in charge for a sixth season.
But the identity of the new appointment is the most intriguing news, and Connolly hopes to reveal the ‘high-profile’ coach today or tomorrow.
‘Seamus is staying on, he had a long and hard think about things and came up with the answer we hoped he would,’ Connolly said in the Irish Examiner.
‘He’ll be making a few changes to his backroom team. We probably have another surprise package to come in, let’s say a high-profile coach.’
Davy Fitzgerald wants to continue as Waterford hurling boss next year, despite the resignation of his selectors Maurice Geary and Peter Queally.
The pair handed in their resignations in the same week as Fitzgerald is due to undergo heart surgery.
But despite the possibility that doctors may advise the former Clare star to step away from management, Fitzgerald has Waterford officials that he will be continuing in his role next year.
John O’Mahoney will continue on as Mayo manager for 2010
Think he had sounded out the possibility of getting the Armagh job but hadn’t exactly been welcomed with open arms so he decided to take the offer that was available with Monaghan
Awakening the west - There’s no show like a Joe show
As the former Armagh boss closes in on a role in Galway the risks to both sides are obvious, but so are the benefits of an ambitious appointment
Ewan MacKenna
Second bite: Kernan says that he missed the buzz of management You may have heard the one about Joe Kernan and his half-time rant during the 2002 All Ireland final. The time the manager whipped out his runners-up medal from 1977, told his players how it felt to lose a decider to Kerry, smashed it off the wall in the Croke Park showers and demanded his team go out and win. Well, moments and victories like that were born out of a lifetime of disappointment in Armagh. Kernan’s desperation to see his own county finally succeed trickled down to players of a rare and similar mindset and was one of the main reasons why Armagh went so deep, so often, in search of greatness.
Kernan is now the only candidate for the Galway role, has said “I am 100 per cent interested” and looks sure to get the job in the coming days but as he closes in on a new life out west it remains to be seen if he can replicate that desperation in a place that hasn’t given him all the highs and lows of his sporting life. After Kernan’s father died when he was 11, each year his mother would travel to Australia where Kernan’s sisters were based. Single and out of work, every summer he rejected the chance to travel across the globe on the basis that he might never come back if he liked it too much. “To hell with it,” he said, “football means more to me.” But that football belonged to Armagh, not Galway.
Everything about this Galway role seems the opposite to what Kernan stumbled upon in 2002. Back then he took charge of a team he knew well and that famously went to any lengths to be the best. But going on the evidence of recent seasons it is hard to imagine many in this Galway set-up working out in a horses’ hydropool to get back from injury or spending hours plucking balloons from the air to improve their catching just like Paul McGrane did; it’s hard to imagine them partaking in white-water rafting during bonding exercises despite a fear of water and an inability to swim like Oisn McConville had; it’s hard to imagine them spending €35 every two days on fruit or travelling to New Zealand in the off-season to train with top rugby players like Kieran McGeeney did.
Those Armagh players helped Kernan become great just as he helped them become great and when he first found them, he came across a team that had won two of the previous three Ulster titles, had given eventual champions Meath a decent game in the 1999 semi-final despite being inexperienced and took eventual champions Kerry to two-and-a-half hours football in the 2000 last four. Contrast that with what Galway have been up to.
Should he take over the Connacht side he’ll be surrounded by a bunch that moaned and ousted Peter Ford for being too negative in his training and tactics, and then moaned and ousted Liam Salmon for being too honest. He’ll be surrounded by a group that haven’t been to an All Ireland semi since 2001 (a shocking indictment given the players and the province), that don’t know how to tackle for the most part, that rely on a pseudo-toughness as demonstrated by Nicky Joyce’s challenge in their qualifier exit to Donegal, and don’t do defence on the grounds of tradition.
On top of that, back in Armagh Kernan was fortunate enough to work with an exceptional management team whereas now his hand would be forced in this regard because of a lack of local knowledge. And if things were to go wrong, the 526-kilometre, seven hour and 28 minute round-trip between Galway and Crossmaglen will do little to sooth the turmoil.
If it’s a risk to Kernan, then that last fact makes it a risk for Galway as well. Not so long ago the county completed their impressive €1.5m training centre in Loughgeorge and in these days of doom and gloom their bank balance suggests they aren’t exactly living it up. And while the distance would be no fun for Kernan, 1,578 kilometres of expenses in two-training-sessions-and-one-home-game week wouldn’t be bringing smiles to the faces of county board bean counters.
But there is another way of looking at all this. From Galway’s perspective Kevin Walsh has only started to get comfortable in Sligo, there was no way they were going back to pluck another manager out of Mayo, the seeds they sowed at home had failed to grow, and this appointment would be dripping with ambition. And likewise on Kernan’s part. That he openly admitted wanting the job showed plenty of balls, after all how many modern football managers have succeeded in more than one county and how many walked away happy to become yesterday’s war heroes rather than today’s soldiers?
The truth is that Kernan misses the game too much and if he was ever going to come back it wouldn’t be to help the helpless like Mick O’Dwyer has so often done, but to turn a county like Galway into contenders. “I loved it,” he said in these pages after his retirement in 2007. “I loved it. There’d be times on big match days on the bus where you’d be saying, ‘Why the hell do I put myself through this?’, but once you got into that dressing room and were on the line, there’s nowhere else you’d want to be.”
The fact he is willing to go back shows he has no fear of losing just like Ger Loughnane did by taking the Galway hurling role in 2006 but there is a key difference between himself and Loughnane. The Clare man’s methods of motivation were negative and outdated. Kernan relies on science not sweat and he’s incredibly positive. And as the godfather of everything from the blanket defence to the target man (before Kieran Donaghy in Kerry there was Ronan Clarke in Armagh and before either of them, there was Gavin Cummiskey with Crossmaglen) his methods are trend-setting rather than of a different and darker era.
It would take three years to take Galway in the right direction and for his efforts to be deemed a success, provincial titles in Connacht wouldn’t cut it like they did when toughing it out in the crucible of champions in Ulster. In Galway a couple of All Ireland semi-finals need to be reached and for that to happen changes are needed fast within a group that this season have looked comfortable with mediocrity but now have no more excuses and must face themselves in the mirror rather than blaming others.
Pdraic Joyce needs to go due to influence in the dressing room and his lack of influence on the pitch – such a move would allow Michael Meehan and Sen Armstrong to properly prosper – and Barry Cullinane needs to decide if he wants to get fit and play county football or follow Joyce out the door. Then there’s the 2007 All Ireland minor team. From that side Colin Forde, Conor Doherty, Damien O’Reilly, Toms Fahy and John Joe Greaney all have an important part to play in the future of Galway football and need to follow Paul Conroy in their transition.
There’s another one you may not have heard about Joe Kernan. After he retired, he was asked about how his life was now that the noise had died down. “For 12 years between Cross and Armagh, I’m up here, my mind flying, phone hopping, thinking only football,” he sighed. “Like, I never went anywhere unless I had a notepad with me. All of a sudden the adrenalin stops and it’s the strangest thing.”
That adrenaline looks set to return and despite the risk, things in Galway are about to get interesting.
Aye, think you’re right there, the Monaghan position came up and he didnt wish to wait around on the chance he might get the Armagh job. Cant see either ending well.
I always liked Galway as a football team for some reason so happy to see Kernan there and hopefully he’ll do the business with them. Get them to a semi/final at least.
That said I think he underachieved with the bunch of players he had with Armagh.
[quote=“farmerinthecity”]I always liked Galway as a football team for some reason so happy to see Kernan there and hopefully he’ll do the business with them. Get them to a semi/final at least.
That said I think he underachieved with the bunch of players he had with Armagh.[/quote]
One All Ireland, as opposed to Harte’s three.
Has Mickey Harte underachieved because Kerry have won more All Ireland this decade than Tyrone? After all Tyrone have won 4 All Ireland Minor titles in 11 years, Harte’s had far more to work with than Kernan? That Armagh team were well on the road and had plenty of miles under the belt by the time Kernan came along.
I would have equated the two teams to be of similar quality. Thought that Armagh bunch of players were better than one All Ireland.
The Armagh players peaked winning their All Ireland in 02, after that they met Kerry and Tyrone teams at their peak and unlike Tyrone the Armagh team got little throguh to replenish it. I thought Kernan done well with what he had. Saying that, I doubt his tactics will work with Galway.
Eamonn McEneaney has quit Louth.
Breandan Hackett is the new manager of the Westmeath senior footballers
[quote=“farmerinthecity”]I always liked Galway as a football team for some reason so happy to see Kernan there and hopefully he’ll do the business with them. Get them to a semi/final at least.
That said I think he underachieved with the bunch of players he had with Armagh.[/quote]
I knew you’d be making your Kernan comments somewhere, just couldn’t find the thread. You’re still very wrong on this issue.
Joe Kernan will be the new manger of the Galway football team, it has been confirmed.
Kernan declared interest in the job last week and secured the post after having an interview with the Galway Football Board.
He gets the nod ahead of Tomas O’ Flatharta, who was also in contention.
There is no news yet of what coaching staff or selectors will work with Kernan.
Kernan replaces Liam Sammon after a disappointing 2009 for the Galway footballers.
They were beaten by Mayo in the Connacht final and then lost in the qualifiers to Donegal in Sligo soon after.
I’m not sure I’d call this sort of crack “extraordinary” any longer.
The Armagh Senior Football panel have taken the extraordinary step of releasing a statement to express their disappointment at the selection process for a new manager for the county.
Earlier this week the task of naming a new manager took a major back step when the five-man selection committee resigned after becoming frustration with a lack of progress.
The Armagh players believe the lack of support from county executive level was behind the decision.
The now Monaghan assistant Paul Grimley had been put forward for the job and the players identify in their statement that a ‘primary candidate’, thought to be Grimley, has the support of the panel, but outside forces are stopping him being appointed.
The statement said: 'The clubs via their nominations identified a primary candidate to whom the players remain supportive but due to what we see as personal agendas, and a flawed process, their voices have been overlooked.
‘We also believe that those entrusted with safeguarding this ideal are not acting accordingly and thus no longer retain our confidence.’
Grimley has denied speculation he will take the job if it is offered to him, claiming he will not go back on a decision to take the role with Monaghan.
He said: ‘I have given Seamus McEnaney my word and intend to stick by that.’
The players are now calling for a county board meeting to discuss what they call ‘the gravest of situation’ to allow their opinion to be aired.
McCartan appointed Down boss
New Down football manager James McCartan
11 September 2009
The Down County Board have confirmed James McCartan as the new manager of the county’s senior football team.
The appointment, for a three-year term, was ratified at a meeting of the County Committee earlier this evening with the new manager’s backroom team including Paddy Tally and Brian McIver.
McCartan won All-Ireland senior football medals in 1991 and 1994, as well as two All Stars and an All-Ireland minor title. He also represented Ireland in International Rules in 1990.
Since his retirement from playing he has managed Queen’s University to Sigerson Cup success in 2007, his own club Burren to a league title in 2005, Antrim club St Gall’s to a county senior championship in 2008 and most recently he has been at the helm at Derry club Ballinderry.
Paddy Tally was the trainer of Tyrone during their All-Ireland and NFL winning season in 2003. He has coached St Mary’s University College and was the Down senior football trainer during the past season.
Brian McIver managed Ballinderry to the 2002 Ulster and All-Ireland Club titles and Donegal to the National Football League in 2007.