KEVIN WALSH SAYS his future as a coach with the Cork senior men’s footballers is undecided.
It was announced last week that John Cleary would stay on as manager for 2025.
The Castlehaven man will steer Cork for a fourth year and a third full season after taking interim charge in ’22.
But Walsh couldn’t offer an update on his future plans when asked by The 42 today.
The former Galway player and manager said he is in regular contact with Cleary, but nothing had been set in stone in the short space of time since the announcement.
“Johnny obviously committed again last week, so over the next few weeks we’ll sit down and see what’s best for everybody,” Walsh said. “But that conversation wouldn’t have taken place yet, so that will happen in the next few weeks.”
Walsh did reflect on a positive experience in Cork to date, though.
The two-time All-Ireland winner and three-time All-Star has been involved for two seasons, having joined the Rebels set-up in late 2022.
“It’s been great. It was kind of an open book when we went in there, as in they were maybe crying out for a different outside voices and stuff like that. Maybe they’re fed up of it at the minute, I don’t know!
“Lookit, it’s new, and it’s important that every team gets themselves in a position that they’re continuously competing to win.
“Cork last year, bar the first Donegal game, biggest loss was four points, the next was three points to Kerry away… they’re fighting in that area, and when everybody looks back at the end of this year with Kerry and Dublin gone fairly early, a lot of people will put themselves in the pack for next year, to say, ‘Hold on, we’ve got a chance here.’ It’s important to be there, ready to compete.”
Walsh believes we’ll continue to see the trend of former inter-county managers operating as coaches and selectors instead, honing their focus in on certain aspects of the game.
“I genuinely think going forward you’re going to see attacking stuff coming in now, trying to break that zone defence. It takes a massive amount of time and massive amount of workings to do.
“You can imagine, trying to manage a team of 40 players, county board, media, KPIs given to players, mental teams, injuries – how can you do that as a coach? Even if you’re a good coach and a manager, they are breaking apart to allow time to be invested in the coaching side. That is gone massive, coaching is massive at the minute.
“For me, I had 10 years managing, I had five great years in Sligo and five great years in Galway. Work suffers, everything else suffers, so it is nice to be able to step back a bit, and if you enjoy a certain section, maybe go at that for a while and give it more time.”
Now in their second summer as sponsor of the All-Ireland SFC, Allianz has been campaigning for children and young people to #StopTheDrop and remain involved in sport when transitioning from primary to secondary school.
