As you say, too close to players and friends. Ok 5 years later and there is only a couple left. Lads who play forever are generally self sufficient and the coach/manager is pretty irrelivant to them.
No coaching experience. None. Go back to u16 for 2-3 years. I cannot say enough how valuable that is in the long term. Make mistakes with seniors and coaching career is fucked. Not so much with young lads who as henry Sheflin he will get away with murder. The Fenneallys won’t give a fuck who he is if he is not up to scratch
Management is the same though. All same problems exist when you start out. Its the lack of interest from some lads, the carry on of young lads etc. It rakes time to wrap your head around it
I think people are being a bit hard on Henry here. If he went off and managed another club to “cut his teeth” he would be called a money grabbing cunt.
Ballyhale are at a low ebb. I doubt there is a queue of lads within the club looking to take them on. I think it’s a measure of the man that he is willing to manage them at a time like this.
They just lost a county senior semi and are in an u21 Roinn A final. Most rural small clubs wouldn’t mind a low ebb like that. They’re an amazing club for the size of them. I’d give Henry the benefit of the doubt for putting it back into his own club. As has been said he could have named his price elsewhere
He has no business managing that team if he’s planning on Hurling next & even if he isn’t Hurling the absolute most he should be doing is a Selector role.
This smacks of intolerable levels of arrogance.
It’s a measure of his sense of Self Worth if he believes he can do a better job than Bonnar & Moloney who are 2 very experienced lads regardless of their list of achievements.
It’s Ballyhale Shamrocks he’s taking on. Not Real Madrid. He’ll come a lot cheaper than the 2 Tipp journeymen too.
This is his own club. He’s a recently retired great. How he can be called arrogant for agreeing to manage his own club is beyond me.
Is the so called decline being blamed on previous management by the panel?
It will get messy trying to get players straightened out when he’s soildered with them & effectively been a big part presence due to IC commitments with KK.
Okay, his name & predigree will command respect but if methods and his personality as a manager change as they will the panel will sulk. It’s the main reason so many clubs bring in outsiders to avoid such situations which can become very messy.
If the Ballyhale players don’t listen to Henry and continue to dine on past glories or in some cases be just “Too cool” then it says more about them than it does about Henry
I respect the fact hes willing to risk damaging his own reputation in the hope of restoring Ballyhale to the top table not pussy footing around junior or intermediate .
It’s very similar to Tony McEntee taking over Crossmaglen in 2010 after losing in 2009. We all know what happened next.
