Only in the 2012 final.
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Anybody care to share the colm Collins article with Kieran Shannon ? I am too tight to give the examiner €2 a week ? But I do enjoy Collins outlook on all things football
But not enough to spend €2 on it
It is only football
Here you go pal
Colm Collins and Cratloe - one of life’s constants
Colm Collins has been Cratloe manager for as long as anyone can remember. His latest trick has to be among the sweetest
SERVANT: Clare manager Colm Collins before the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Quarter-Final match between Clare and Derry at Croke Park, Dublin. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
FRI, 13 OCT, 2023 - 08:00
KIERAN SHANNON
He’s still at it and he still has it.
For a couple of years there Colm Collins was commonly known as The Longest-Serving Manager in County Football but what you may not be aware of is that he still has claim to be the longest-serving manager in the club game. Well before Clare, all during Clare and now after Clare, Cratloe has been a constant for him and he has been a constant with them: having a quiet word or a stern one with whoever has needed it, getting them to county finals.
His latest trick has to be among the sweetest, the equivalent of Donegal ambushing the Dubs in 2014. Going into last month’s county semi-final, Éire Óg had that same air of invincibility about them as Jim Gavin’s men had entering that watershed All-Ireland semi-final.
They had won the last two county championships comfortably. Nine of their starting 15 had played for Collins with Clare at some stage or another during his 10-year tenure. For sheer athleticism and football, no one in the county seemed within touching distance of them. Certainly not a supposedly declining force like Cratloe.
It had been nine years since they had last won a county final and three years since they’d reached one. In 2021 they couldn’t even get out of their group while when they did in 2022 they were beaten by six points in the quarter-final. They seemed to be relying on the same faces; of the eight men that Collins had played from midfield up in their 2009 county intermediate final win, six of them were still playing major minutes for him in 2023: Liam Markham, Cathal McInerney, Conor Ryan, Padraig Chaplin, and his own sons, Seán and Podge.
The game itself transpired much like that Dubs-Donegal game of 2014. Early on it seemed like it would be a procession for the champions: the first six scores of the game were all for Éire Óg. But crucially the underdogs struck for the first goal of the game and their manager, albeit in a more understated way than the messianic Mr McGuinness, was able to summon their own championship pedigree and come up with the perfect theme and game plan for his players. Win or lose, he told them, Cratloe were going to outwork Éire Óg. Whatever happened they were never going to relent.
Pause
Unmute
They didn’t, kicking four of the last five points to bring the game to extra-time and then four of the last six points to bring it to penalties in which Podge put away the last kick. Fourteen years on from that breakthrough intermediate final win, the six survivors from that day had kicked 14 points between them to qualify for another senior final, their fifth under Collins.
He has been their manager since God knows when. He doesn’t, or at least isn’t sure: it must be at least 16 years uninterrupted now, not to mention all the years he coached them at underage. Why has he stayed with them for so long? Why did he stay with them all through his 10 years over Clare? Logistics and some logic made it possible to stay on. Loyalty made it impossible to leave.
“Well for one thing I’m living 300 metres from the pitch so it’s not a major pain in my life to go down there a few times a week.
“But more than that I have three sons [Seán, Podge and David] involved. And I’ve been with a lot of the other lads since they were nine years of age. So I would have a tremendous loyalty to them and as long as they wanted me and no-one else was exactly knocking me down to take it, I was happy to stay and do it.
“The reason I got offered the Clare job in the first place was on the back of these players. If it had been a condition [to step down as Cratloe manager to manage Clare] I probably wouldn’t have taken it. Thankfully a bit of common sense came into play.”
Collins himself would personify such common sense, minimising the prospects of any flashpoints or accusations within the county of him having a conflict of interest. For one thing, as long as Clare were still playing in a given year, he wouldn’t be on the line with Cratloe. “If the club were playing Clondegad, I’d be behind on that bank in Ballynacally and watch it from there. You can’t be on the line roaring and bawling against players you’ll be coaching on Tuesday night.”
He’d even refrain from being abusive or critical of them in the sanctity of the Cratloe dressing room. Even after stepping away from Clare in the middle of the summer he still found himself in the lead-up to the Éire Óg game referring to almost every opponent by their first name.
“I don’t think that would be a normal thing for an opposition manager to be doing! But so many of them had represented Clare with such distinction, you could only have tremendous respect and fondness for every one of them.
“If Cratloe were playing Milltown [Malbay], naturally I’d be putting my best marker on Eoin Cleary. I wouldn’t be instructing anyone to take him out of it with a belt of the fist or anything like that. I’d just be saying, ‘He’s their danger man, you need to know where he is at all times, be tight on him.’ And he would know that was coming: sure it would be nothing new to him. He’d appreciate that it’s a contest and that we’d be highly competitive in Cratloe but you’d have lines you would not cross.”
The common sense of others out in Cratloe also facilitated him being able to juggle club with county, and for the players, football with hurling. Ten of his starting 15 hurl as do most of his subs. So early in the year the hurlers have a clear run at it: they get all the lads fit and then when they go into some stickwork, the handful of lads who play football only go over to a sidepitch and do some ballwork under the watchful eye of a Sean O’Dea or Brian O’Connell or John Ryan.
“One of the things that people don’t get about the whole dual thing is that it’s not like the lads who play both are doing double the amount of work,” says Collins. “Say in a normal football club you have 100 training sessions a year. Well in Cratloe you’d have the 50.
“The only difference is our lads play a competitive match every weekend. But in a football-only club they often organise a challenge game when they have a free weekend. In Cratloe we don’t play challenge games. So this idea, ‘Oh, they’re killed from playing both!’ Nonsense. The workload is almost identical.”
He also notes that the split season in recent years helped him. But just because it worked for him doesn’t mean he thinks it has worked for the GAA overall. Actually, he’s convinced that it hasn’t.
“In my view there was nothing wrong with the way it was if the rule that was there had been imposed properly – that no county manager was entitled to call on the players more than 13 days out from a match.
“I know I never asked for any longer than that. We didn’t throw any toy out of the pram. As long as we had them 13 days before a match we were happy. If we’d a training camp the lads would be back to play a league game for their club on the Sunday afternoon.
“The problem was that certain managers were insisting on total control, county boards didn’t stand up to them and the powers-that-be didn’t stand up to either of them. There just had to be a directive from the top – this is the story, no ifs, no buts.
“Look, I love watching almost every sport. I’m stuck into the rugby now, the Ryder Cup the other week, the Premier League. But my first love is GAA. And I know from being involved with kids here on with Limerick on our doorstep that we’re ultimately competing with these other sports for those kids and the way you compete is that you have circus better than their circus.
“In a normal year August and September belonged to the GAA. Almost every kid would watch the big matches on TV. What we have now might be grand if you’ve a family that are steeped in the GAA for several generations and you take your children in to watch a club game. But a lot of families aren’t like that. The kid will be at home watching the telly and what he’s watching on telly in August and September now isn’t GAA. I know from being a teacher the buzz you’d have coming back to school and the kids wanting to talk about or be some player they saw in the All-Ireland, no matter what county they were from.
“Now it’s soccer and rugby games they’re watching in those months. I just think we gave away precious primetime, precious prime territory, to those sports for no reason – or at least for not a good enough reason. We’ve lost more than we’ve gained. There was a better solution and that was to impose an already-existing rule.”
The reason why Colm Collins once had the title of Longest-Serving Manager in County Football was because for a long time nobody could do it better, at least with a Clare. He inherited a county where there was a generation of player and supporter who only knew of Clare playing in football’s basement league. Now there is a generation of player and supporter who have only known Clare playing in Division 2.
In 2023 he further added to his resume. On top of the Division 3 league won in 2016 and the seven successive seasons in Division 2 and a couple of All Ireland quarter-final appearances, he finally could include a Munster final appearance on account of their first championship win over Cork since 1997.
But the subsequent Munster final loss to Kerry took all the good out of the Cork win. They had already been relegated to Division 3. They went pointless in their Sam Maguire group. Collins would still have had more than enough credit in the bank to stay on if he had wanted to but for him it boiled down to what Clare needed.
“Why did I step down? Well, let’s be brutally honest, our results this year did not merit me looking for another year. That’s the approach I had to it from the start [of his Clare tenure]. I was asked to do three years and I said, ‘No, I’ll do one year and have a go at it. If it doesn’t work out, I’m quite happy to step aside, and if I do improve it, then maybe I should stay on.’
“I nearly went last year [2022]. We’d had a mediocre league and then we were beaten in Munster [by Limerick, on penalties] so coming into the qualifiers I met with the players and said, ‘Listen, lads, this is quite simple – we either go on a run here or I can’t justify staying on.’
“We ended up putting together a decent run. Had a great win against Roscommon in Croke Park. Now, the [All Ireland] quarter-final against Derry was a massive disappointment. We got so much wrong that day it wasn’t funny. But I had made the commitment to stay on after the Roscommon game. The players seemed to want me to stay on at the time and we seemed to be going in the right direction.
“This year there were three or four games that we should have won that we didn’t and someone has to be responsible for that. I was saying to myself, ‘In previous years we won those kind of matches, so why didn’t we this time? And in the end I concluded, ‘This needs to be freshened up. A new voice. Someone else.’”
What a ride it was though. He counts himself blessed, the players and support staff he got to work with, and even the opposing managers that crossed his path. “As I said to Vinny Corey the day of the Monaghan game, ‘The great thing about managing a county team is you get to meet all these former greats!’ For someone like myself who hardly played at that level, it was a pleasure to deal with them. Ninety-nine percent of them were the salt of the earth.”
There was a certain collegiality amongst them. Collins certainly felt they had an obligation to one another. Whenever Offaly were a division or two below Clare Collins would always accept their offer of a challenge game out of respect for all that John Maughan did for his own native county. The same with Limerick at a time when Collins could have turned his nose up to such a request from Billy Lee.
“I remember early on in my time with Clare I made a particular call and the [manager] who took it basically said, ‘I’m not playing a Division 4 team!’ So I said to myself that if ever the boot was on the other foot, I would never do that. I think it’s important to treat people with respect and also such games were good for us and our fringe players as well.”
Did the gig consume him? Well, even after a tough league or early championship loss he’d be able to switch the lights off in bed for 11 o’clock. By 7am though he’d be up, pen and pad at the ready, pressing play on the laptop.
“It’d take on average four and a half hours to watch a match back. You couldn’t just sprawl out and watch it like you might watch an All-Ireland final on the telly. You’d to repeatedly stop it and rewind back. ‘What just happened there? Why wasn’t he covered?’ There was no other way to do it.”
Multiple Clare players have spoken about just what a person-centred coach he was. But just because they knew they could always talk to him about anything didn’t mean he’d talk to them about anything. Ask him if he’d check in with a Cian O’Dea for instance over a cuppa and he shakes his head.
“I wouldn’t be talking unnecessarily to players. Now, if you saw something uncharacteristic, maybe a fella snapping at someone, you’d go fishing and find out what was really going on. And they all knew if there was something going on in their lives that they needed help with, we’d be there for them.
“But you didn’t want to be annoying fellas with BS. Everybody’s time is precious, including your own, so don’t be talking to them for the sake of them just because some book says you should constantly be talking to your players.
“I think players respect that. And if they saw me walking over to them, they’d be thinking, ‘He doesn’t normally do that. This is something I must obviously have to listen to.’”
He’s impressed who the job has been handed over to, not least because Mark Fitzgerald had the professionalism and courtesy to seek a handover.
“I’ve met him a few times now and he’s very impressive. We played Limerick in the last game of the league and walloped them even though we played a lot of fellas who had got little game-time up to then. By the time we played Limerick in the championship with a full team it was a one-score game. He had his homework done on us. He’s just one of those people cut out for it.
“Everybody in Clare football knows there’s going to be a period of transition. We’re down now in Division 3 and apologies to Mark and everyone else for that but it might not be a bad thing. There are young fellas now that will need to take up the mantle of being senior players but I believe they’re there. The ability is there to come back up. I think as a county we’ll be fine. There’s no fear of us.”
Over his 10 years more than Clare changed beyond recognition. So did football itself, and not always for the better.
“Look, I’m one of those people who will still prefer a bad game of football over a good game of anything else. But I’d like to see things change. I don’t like all the lateral passing and the ball going backwards. People want to be entertained and there’s no entertainment in that.
“I’m far from the guru who has the magic pill here and it may be impractical in football but I’m thinking of something like how the shot-clock revolutionised basketball. I mean, could you imagine a basketball game where LeBron and the lads could hold onto the ball all day long? You’d hardly fill the [Madison Square] Garden with that kind of craic.”
Some things though remain constant. Like Collins with Cratloe, and Cratloe with Collins. The year he got the Clare job they won the county. Now 10 years on they are 60 minutes away from winning another.
“When you’re managing these lads as long as I have, you make a genuine effort to vary things. But I suppose there are certain old chestnuts that I come back to because I believe that to get over the line you need to abide by them. Now, there might be the odd lad who’d be throwing his eyes to heaven when you say it again. But…”
From those old chestnuts they have a habit of lifting cups skywards as well.
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He’s BACK
Great work by Giller
Happy with that? Not a very attractive job at the moment I suppose
An absolute overwhelming feeling of apathy surrounds Laois GAA right now. I’d have given it to Billy O, at least he wanted the job. Going back to a fella who hasn’t managed since he left Laois, and whose football philosophy is rooted in another era just baffles me. Add in that he didn’t apply and they begged him to take it, ah Jaysus it would only depress you further. Half the squad are off travelling as well. Where would you start.
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Tis a killer when bad and all as things might be with them you can’t even get your best 15 to line out. Anything coming up?
Not particularly. There’s a few lads there you could do something with but the problem is just general apathy. Division 3 be as good as it can get anytime soon.
Paul Kelly confirmed as new Tipperary senior football manager on three-year term.
Wicklow’s Hugh Kenny is part of coaching team, Limerick’s Adrian O’Brien over S&C and former Tipperary goalkeeper Paul Fitzgerald also involved as selector & GK coach.
Is he the fella who got in trouble at Nass?
Yes.
Was ultimately exonerated though.
Jaysus Laois wouldn’t even take him
He’s been chomping at the bit since before the Christmas. Stack did well to get out of there alive.
He’s rapidly turning into Ray D’Arcy.
Michael duignan will be deleting tweets
Shortly.
He comes across as a bit of a cunt
What did he say wrong chief? Fair play to him for defending the players from those gobshites.