Can anyone post his most recent drivel?
Anyone able to post this up?
GAA hierarchy have allowed our game to become professional for everyone except the players
Pat Flanagan
January 01 2023 02:30 AM
And we laughed when Liz Truss only lasted 44 days. Compared to Pat Flanagan, Liz looks like Alex Ferguson.
Pat, who has been in more places than Phileas Fogg, was announced as the Ballinabrackey senior football manager on December 19. For the avoidance of doubt, thatâs the 19th of December, 2022. This was quite a coup for the Meath club, and in an atmosphere of considerable excitement, Pat met the senior squad and committee on that same date and outlined his plans for the coming season. It was a short season, as it turns out.
On December 22, four days later (if one rounds it up), the Sarsfields club in Kildare announced, in a triumphant tweet, that their new manager was ⌠Pat Flanagan.
âSarsfields GAA are delighted to announce the appointment of Pat Flanagan as our Menâs Senior Football Manager. We are also delighted to announce John Doran as our Menâs Senior Trainer for 2023. We wish them both and their management team all the very best in the upcoming season.â
The tweet concluded with a large green love heart, presumably a symbol from the club of their great love for Pat. Confusion ensued. Were there two Pat Flanagans? The photographs of the new manager on the respective clubsâ tweets looked remarkably similar. Perhaps they were twins, separated at birth? Was it a practical joke? David Rispin, the respected local GAA reporter with LMFM and avid Meath podcaster, tweeted, âAm I drunk?â
Ballinabrackey GAA clubâs tweet announcing the fact that Pat Flanagan would not be managing them in 2023.
The Ballinabrackey club, presumably after making a few bewildered calls, announced via social media that it was, indeed, the same Pat Flanagan, who has been in more places than Bus Ăireann.
âBallinabrackey GAA wish to note its disappointment in the news that our manager for 2023, Pat Flanagan, lasted only four days in the job after meeting the players and executives to finalise the coming year.â
No one should be surprised. Managing teams in the GAA has become an industry in itself.
Two years ago, having coached underage teams in my club for 15 years, spent countless hours on individual coaching and fundraising and all the rest, I was invited to apply for the post of senior manager of the club. By then, we had two under-16 âAâ championships and two minor âAâ finals, so it seemed the logical progression.
We were interviewed by a panel of club people we knew very well. I got a phone call from the head of the selection panel two days later and he started the call with: âThis is the most difficult phone call I have ever had to make.â I said: âIs someone dead?â The club hierarchy had decided to bring in an outsider to take the âjobâ as they called it.
What used to be an âhonourâ and a âdutyâ has become a mere transaction. No one had died, but in a way, it was like a death, casting a pall over a club I love and weakening the essential bonds of loyalty and togetherness.
The fact the appointment turned out a disaster is neither here nor there. A line had been crossed and things would never be the same. It was a deep humiliation I am still trying to shake off.
Around a decade ago, I strongly campaigned for a rule that only a club man could manage his club and only a county man his county. It was a simple rule that meant eligibility for management was the same as for playing. It would stop the fledgling managerial industry in its tracks, and more importantly, it would protect the amateur ideal that is supposed to be our core principle. The proposal was ignored.
Now, sadly, we have a fully professional element within the GAAâs managerial cartel. Some of them have even retired altogether from their day jobs.
Because managing in the GAA has become a profession, it follows then that managers will start to go to the highest bidder. Increasingly, we resemble some grassroots soccer clubs, where the senior manager is a full-time employee and the only people not paid are the players.
Celebrating Watty Grahamâs great Ulster club win at the final whistle, I was brought back to reality when the Wattyâs captain, in his victory speech, singled out their manager Malachy OâRourke and said he had transformed âour clubâ.
This is the problem. I thought of all the great volunteers in that club who had nurtured those lads for the last 25 years. All that fundraising and coaching and agonising. The unquestioning loyalty and the unquestioning gift of their precious time. Enda Gormley travelling the country, from Corofin to Crossmaglen, to learn best practice. Him and Fergal McCusker and Damien McCusker and many others creating perhaps the most imaginative underage training system ever seen on this island. A system and management that brought this small club an unbelievable four Ulster minor club championship titles in a row, now bearing fruit at senior level.
Sarsfields GAA club announcing Pat Flanagan as their new manager.
Yet it is the outside manager who gets the credit, just like soccer. Send him to Ballinabrackey and see how he gets on. As we saw when Jack OâConnor went to Kildare or Mick OâDwyer went to Wicklow, the players are the thing.
This is not a criticism of Malachy OâRourke, a sound manager and a good fellow. It is a criticism of the system and the GAA hierarchy who have allowed our game to become professional for everyone except the players. It has become so ridiculous that clubs and counties now routinely place job advertisements in the paper and on social media.
On Thursday, St Colmcilleâs in Meath tweeted: âWe invite expressions of interest in the role of senior menâs football manager for 2023. We enjoyed a super 2022 reaching a first-ever Division One league final and also won 3 premier championship games. Contact secretary.stcolmcilles.meath@gaa.ie.â
Colmcilleâs neednât worry. Pat Flanagan will probably be available again in four days.
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Paste any url in here
Archive.ph
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It really is absolutely ridiculous. Iâd say itâs probably the most prominent nod and wink brown envelope under the table old ireland thing that still goes on today.
Joe will be the greatest president the GAA have ever had
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Heâll certainly think so.
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Joe has some how omitted the fact the Wattys were going nowhere and on the verge of wasting the greatest underage team Ulster has ever seen until Malachy OâRourke took over.
Wherever would they have found a manager within their own club.
They had tried and failed with Enda Gormley and co.
They begged Mickey Moran but he wouldnât do it.
Because the hungry Cunt was elsewhere
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Anyone paying attention will tell you the amatuer ethos is dead for years. Get over it
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Tipperary ended the amateur ethos when they were going on training camps and paying players wages in the early 1920s.
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Ballygeehan did it in 1915
Iâve no idea where that is but Iâm sure everyone would prefer if we blamed Tipp
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Joe Brolly Obvious Mistake Watch
#1
Jorge Valdano did not score the winning goal in the 1986 World Cup final.
JORGE Valdano, the Argentinian striker who scored the winning goal in the 1986 World cup final (needless to say, from a classic Maradona pass), was interviewed in the Guardian a fortnight ago.
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Burruchaga no?
I would wager Joe knows it was Burruchaga but long ago developed a clickety click strategy of throwing in deliberate and obvious mistakes to keep people talking about him.
Joe could probably have the TNH thread dedicated to him at this point.
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The will griggs on fire thing he made up was his best tnh.
Actually all his opening paragraphs are.