THE DONE THING IS to say that contracts, agreements, arrangements, call them what you will, mean nothing in reality.
After all, Martin O’Neill famously operated without one in his hot boy at the pool house period with Leicester City and Celtic. And when Derry appointed Mickey Harte as their new manager this time last year, it was on a three-year term.
Meaningless. Not worth the paper they are written on. That’s even if they are written at all!
Sometimes though, there’s a relevance attached. When Micheál Donoghue’s name goes before the Galway county board on Monday night to be ratified as the only candidate for the job of county hurling manager, it will be for a four-year term.
Pay attention to these things. These ‘contracts’ are more often than not for three years.
The workload of a manager only increases and burnout should be an issue. But is there a softening in attitudes after what has happened this year in the All Ireland hurling and Gaelic football titles?
Hurling was claimed by Brian Lohan, in his fifth year in charge of Clare.
Football was, famously, Kieran McGeeney’s triumph of persistence after he laboured in the role of Armagh manager for ten years.
What this tells us is that Donoghue desires time and certainty. His previous spell in charge was four years, cutting short an extension of a further year. He did the same with Dublin, stepping down after two years with a three-year term agreed.
Being blunt about it, Donoghue knows that this is a fixer-upper.
In his three seasons in charge, Henry Shefflin wasn’t prolific in blooding players. Instead, he was asking the veterans such as David Burke (35), Gearoid McInerney (34) and Joseph Cooney to keep going back to the well.
Further behind them, but not by much as Daithí Burke and Coonor Cooney, who are both 31.
Now, age being just a number, there is no point in dwelling on raw data alone. The All Ireland winning Clare side had an inordinate number of starters over the age of 30 and each of them were standout performers.
Galway have an ample group of performers elsewhere with the Mannion brother Pádraic and Cathal along with Conor Whelan.
A revamped gameplan, a bit of energy and a lot of the gloom around Galway that had bogged down into the panel during Shefflin’s final year lifted, and things can look very different in jig time.
Just recall the words of Joe Canning on punditry duty this summer as he watched the final Leinster group game as Shefflin’s Galway went down by six points in Salthill to Donoghue’s Dublin.
“I couldn’t see how they were playing, how they were working the ball out and how they were feeding it into the forwards. There was no real structure as such,” said Canning.
Imported managers have never had a great run of things in Galway. It seems that the balance and eco-system is a very delicate thing indeed.
It would have been prudent therefore for Shefflin to have gone with youth and encourage the younger talent to go after the jerseys of the Untouchables.
Addressing the issue of the lack of player breakthrough, Galway chairman Paul Bellew made a point of mentioning how many young players they were carrying in the training panel, there to learn their trade.
Which is fine and well. But you don’t have many players in their late 20’s and 30’s hanging around for training panel privileges if they are not gaining a proper shake of it.
Donoghue will now bring his long-time coaching colleagues Francis Forde and Noel Larkin, who he had in Dublin.
There may be the possibility of retaining Eamonn O’Shea in the backroom, though it might be best to have a clean break from all that went before in 2024.
Either way, there is talent in the likes of Declan McLaughlin while Donoghue’s Clarinbridge club mate Aaron Niland, younger brother of Evan, who was causing absolute wreck in the Leinster U20 championship this year.
The nature of Galway’s collapse this season was painful, especially when you take how close they were to sealing the 2023 Leinster title only for Cillian Buckley’s miraculous injury-time intervention for Kilkenny.
But there is little chance that Galway’s season will end at the Leinster championship for a second year in a row.
Donoghue will look around himself and will fear nothing out there. Antrim will be a novelty but Galway have never found it a struggle to polish them off, Davy Fitz or no Davy Fitz. Wexford are too streaky. Dublin not capable of making enough stick further up the pitch.
And Kilkenny look like a side that are on the wane. The aforementioned Cillian Buckley has already retired. There’s only so long TJ Reid can strap the team to his back and keep producing. Walter Walsh is on the go a long, long time now.
Galway now have a manager who is a proven winner. He is relevant, having managed for the last couple of seasons. He knows the landscape across the nation, and he has remained very close to Galway club hurling.
He is the perfect appointment. But the sleeves will need rolled up for the graft ahead.
