Declan Bogue

WHEN IT CAME TO finishing up, it was in Neil McManus’ head for such a long time that he was able to make peace with the ending of a hurling career that promised much and delivered in ways that are not always obvious.

Across 16 seasons for the Antrim seniors, he experienced it all. At times, they could catch a top end team on the hop. Other times it felt like a slaughter. Often, they came close together, a matter of days apart.

What McManus did however, was never lose the great enthusiasms and passion. So when Davy Fitzgerald asked if he might take a role in his new Antrim management set-up, after just one year away from the panel, he readily agreed.

It wouldn’t be in McManus’ nature though to take a passive role. Instead, he is going in as a Performance Coach, along with the wider coaching panel of Ruairí Óg Cushendall clubmate Aaron Graffin, Dunloy’s Paudie Shivers and Pat Bennett of Waterford.

Eagerness has always been one of his strengths. He cannot wait to get started, to get learning and apply his lessons on leadership as they approach 2025 and life in Division 1B and the Leinster championship thereafter.

“First of all, it’s been an area of huge interest to me for a long period of time, even when while I was playing,” McManus tells The 42.ie.

During his playing days, he made use of the opportunities available to him through the Gaelic Player’s Association. He went through the Jim Madden Leadership Programme and qualified from Maynooth College.

Within his Master Business Administration qualification, one of his modules was in Performance Management, while another was based around coaching. His approach is to take everything useful that he encounters in his working life, studies and bring it all into the hurling dressing room.

“But there is probably no better experience than your experience as a player. I am still playing. I am quite used to dealing with the issues that current players are dealing with. They are not new to me and I had the very same issues recently,” he said.

“And then look, just because of being in Ireland, it’s a tiny country. We have some performance coaches who are operating at the very highest level of sport and I have ongoing access to some of them.

“I’m really, really lucky in that regard. I work hard at it and we all work hardest at the things we are interested in.”

The arrival of Fitzgerald into Antrim has sparked a serious interest in the county side and no doubt, the seagulls will follow the trawler up to Corrigan Park in the Spring.

McManus believes it is incumbent on all involved in Antrim GAA to make the most of this bounce.

“For me, it’s an opportunity. Who can we get involved in all aspects who wasn’t previously involved? Involved in coaching and development squad levels, and the people who are involved who maybe don’t have the tools of coaching that we can help and learn from Davy while he is here?” he asks.

Davy Fitzgerald. Morgan Treacy / INPHO Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO

“People will think with the success he had with Clare and Wexford, can we copy those things? Can we build on what has already been done by the Saffron Business Forum to give our players to give our players the best opportunity to succeed?

“That’s all you want to do. As a player, I know that very recently being in that camp, I wanted to maximise my potential, to be as good as I can on the day. So how do we as a county use the bounce?

“There’s no doubt we have got an interest and an excitement around that county, to put that in place for these players and then hold those structures, so that it just becomes the norm, business as usual, for Antrim GAA.”

He has access and the ear of players all over the country. McManus is the type who makes friends easily and makes time for those friends.

“A lot of players that I talk to, the things we talk about from a sporting view can be applied in your work life.

“So many players don’t actually carry the characteristics, the competencies and abilities that they have had as a sportsperson. The learnings they have had of setting ultra-high standards where excellence is the benchmark, and then they don’t apply it to their daily life,” he says.

“So anything I would be reading about business, how to get the most out of yourself, your family life and applying that across everything. Everything.”

As McManus once said about being an Antrim hurler, nothing was ever going to be perfect, so there was no point in chasing perfection. They just had to go with it.

Try to make the suggestion that some – perhaps with a suspicion of the general role of a Performance Coach – might suggest that he is too young for it yet, and he instantly flips that quality into a positive.

“I’m very lucky to have an intercounty involvement because a lot of people wouldn’t understand just the lengths that you go to which is that it is a real holistic view of a player’s life and how you can help them out in all regards, not just their on-field activity,” he says.

“Because life is so busy for them, they are so focussed on their sport that it doesn’t really always produce a healthy outcome so that has been exacerbated more and more, year on year.

“It’s something I am really conscious of. We probably haven’t had this in Antrim on a full-time basis so that’s why I am so excited about it. And the potential in the group, it is going to take a while to get that potential out of the group. Of course it is. But we can put the structures in place that will leave a long-term benefit within the playing group and the structure and standard for players to come into in the future.”