Stan really was an awful joke by Delaney. By far his biggest fuck up in the CEO position to date. Despite being legends for the ROI side, you just feel that enough wasn’t got out of Duff and Keane’s prime years in the green jersey. I remember post 2002 thinking the ROI had a few great years ahead of them.
I don’t follow the soccer at all iv no idea
[quote=“gilgamboa, post:1407, topic:6151, full:true”]
Your ignoring his seasons as the forwards coach with Munster when they got to two consecutive European semi finals to be beaten away from home by clermont and toulon. Does that not count as any evidence of his coaching ability?[/quote]
I’d be cautious enough about it. It’s tricky to know how good position / support coaches are in any given set up, how much input or autonomy they have and whether their limitations are being covered by a strong head coach or the players themselves. I see it at professional football clubs where assistants / coaches are a constant presence through success and failure with different head coaches but it’s hard to know how competent they themselves are. The buck stops with the head coach though and we’re agreed that he was out of his depth in that role.
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Jerry Flannery doesnt have a clue and should be sacked from his role.
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As a TG4 commentator?
No need to wonder. I will tell you. He had full autonomy over a massively over performing pack both those seasons.
He had a couple of poor seasons as head coach. Wasnt the job for him and he got it because Munster were feeling the pinch at the time and they made a cheap appointment. They gave him very inexperienced back up with mick o driscoll and jerry Flannery only just starting out as coaches too. They hired a backs coach from the AIL who took a leave of absence from his job in a bank. The entire coaching team was poor. The quality of players he had was poor relative to previous seasons as well. It did not go well at all. None of this is in dispute. I doubt he would have disputed any of it himself.
But he was not an absolute rookie like Staunton when appointed that’s just not the case
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Good man yourself
I didnt know he graced TG4, for a Galway lad I’d say he doesnt have a word as gaeilge.
Nope mate. Rugby is never discussed
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A Galway lad?
Ya he is pal…born and bred.
He’s no reflection on Galway though.
Cunts are born everywhere.
One additional point here which is never mentioned really. On top of his inexperience etc detailed above. He was trying to manage an underperforming squad which was based in two locations. Who didn’t even train together every day. The single Base as much as anything is a driver of the improved performances this year.
It was an absolutely farcical situation
Why didn’t they train together? We’re talking cork and Limerick here, not exactly a million miles apart.
Its a cunt of a road pal.
It was a major political issue. Neither faction wanted to cede their training Base. They used to do maybe 2 sessions a week together…and the rest of the week apart. Not split by forwards and backs or anything literally just where you were from. Lot of the foreign players based themselves in Cork.
Huge amount of bitterness since the decision was made to set up the training Base in linerick. They left all the administration staff in Cork as a sophisticated to the cork crowd.
And yeah they are not too far apart but you wouldn’t drive from Cork city to limerick and back every day. It’s a dose of a drive. And I’d imagine for a pro it would be terrible preparation to be in the car for 90 mins each way every day.
Absolute joke it went on for as long as it did. Joke.
I tend to balance his investment in the vile JOE.ie out with his love for the Ultimate Warrior. He was at Benicassim a few years ago off his tits drunk and seemed a sound guy.
Whisper it, but they have the makings of a very good team again.
Irfu with another masterstroke. Stop buying greats on the way down and invest in projects instead. Win win win.
Nearly as good as getting their tenants to renovate the Aviva.
That’s GAAesque in its absolute stupidity. What sort of idiots are they?
Yep. Absolutely mental. They had huge success despite it for a long number of years so they obviously thought it wasn’t an issue.
Personally, I think they could probably have won another couple of European cups in a single base. Loads of single score defeats in knockout stages over the years. When you see the culture of marginal gains in top level sport now the fact your full squad only trained together half the time was a pretty big gain to target.
A few overseas players called it out over the years but took a long time to get the politics of it sorted. In the end UL funded the entire training base and I think it’s just rented back to them now. So it’s worked out well. Eventually. 15 years later
Oh…and they still haven’t centralised the academy fully.
That was there for the other coaches as well though.
In terms of his tenure as head coach you have to look at it in a couple of ways. The way he got the job didn’t feel right and some of his initial decisions/actions came across poorly. The Hanrahan thing might not have been wholly his fault but was indicative of the state of the place at the time.
Against that you have to balance the fact that the squad he inherited was poor. He had no proper 10. He had an aging O’Connell for one season (when they still got to a final). Of the two proper Munster stars left, O’Mahony and Murray, the former was injured for a whole season. Stander was the one really positive thing to emerge during his time there. Kilcoyne and Zebo were good internationals but not superstars. Outside of that you had a lot of sick notes and average players. Don’t forget that the Munster Academy and underage teams were a mess for years as Kidney and Fitzgerald let the systems rot whilst Leinster and Ulster (and then Connacht) raced ahead.
He was poor though, the game plan was a mess generally.
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