Declan Bogue

TO MANY, IT doesn’t matter how many times Shane ‘Cake’ Curran does something a little bit extraordinary.

The public image will still be the lad racing through to take a penalty for Roscommon against Galway without anyone’s consent and blasting to the net in the 1989 Connacht minor final.

And if not that, then the fella who, when playing goals then with Roscommon two decades ago would come out the field and take a pass off outfield players and play around a bit – as if he were an outfield player! (The damn cheek of it all).

If that came just a bit too early for you, then you might have him framed as the fella who liked to plant a smacker on his St Brigid’s team mate, Frankie Dolan.

That sort of extrovert behaviour was a mixture of impulse, backed by a very quick internal calculation.

That’s the basis that his decision was reached to go for the job of managing Carlow, where he was appointed in late August.

“I am intrigued by coaching, I am intrigued by management and I am intrigued by people and making people better. Fundamentally, how you make people better and help deliver on ambition,” he tells The 42.

Most players wouldn't have the neck to do this in training, Shane Curran did it in front of a packed crowd at the 1989 Connacht minor final 😅

They don't make 'em like they used to 👑pic.twitter.com/XGd4vwduTZ

— GAA JOE (@GAA__JOE) January 26, 2021

“The old saying – the one thing worse than being asked is not being asked. When you are asked to consider managing any team, be it club or county, I generally go with my animal instinct. My gut.

“And if it feels good, sounds good, looks good, it doesn’t take me long to make my mind up and that is how it happened.”

Curran took some soundings from the former manager, Niall Carew. He has it in his head that Carlow are an underperforming county. And he’s the man to change that.

He is not someone who accepts the natural order of things. After all, this is the man who invented a Gaelic football kicking tee when everyone else was using a cone.

In business, he formed a company in 2009 that deals with flood defences in places as far away as Alberta, Canada.

We know all that. We also read the passionate columns he had for a spell in the Sunday independent about the future of what he called the BMW counties; Border, Midlands and West; a mix of sporting and economic themes that were as thoughtful and off-beat as any guest columnist has ever managed.

And still that line from the actor Chris O’Dowd comes to the fore that depicts Cake as one of those stone-mad lads that everyone gravitated towards; ‘He could save a penalty and he could score a 45, but at the same time he’d be just as happy to ride a bull into a church,’ said O’Dowd about his sporting hero.

Morgan Treacy / INPHO Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO

Does this explain why he doesn’t fit the image in the popular imagination of the stereotypically uptight, pensive figure of a county manager?

“I don’t know. Perception bias is something that permeates through society,” he says.

“I enjoy my football. I enjoy my football and I am very passionate about it and coaching. I am very passionate about people.

“Do you have to be in some way mundane, dour, to manage a county? I don’t know. But that certainly isn’t me. And I don’t think players need to be either. Nobody involved with intercounty teams needs to be mundane or dour either.

“It’s a place and an area where people can really develop and enjoy and have great fun.”

He continues, “The narrative around competing now at intercounty football is that it is all serious, all-encompassing, all-engrossing.

“The reality when you peel off the veneer is that the players who are playing county football are playing for a reason and that is because they enjoy it.

“Maybe it is a drudge to some of them, but it won’t be a drudge to anyone in Carlow. It will be a very good environment, a learning environment and one where players are being encouraged to develop their personalities and their playing and their football.”

It sounds like a set-up could be a lot of fun.

Yet and all, it’s Carlow. When they won promotion in 2018 to Division 3 with six wins from six crowned by a win away to Antrim in Belfast, it was the first time in 33 years they were making an escape from the basement.

There’s more baggage than an airport terminal.

But…

“The one thing I have noticed about sport and life is that everything changes,” says Curran.

“The most important thing is that you work towards that change. And the past is no barometer of the future. That’s life. That’s football. Any example of anything you look at it sport, and there’s thousands of examples.

“You go on about culture and there’s an ambiguity around culture.

“But culture starts with people. It’s how you change that narrative to get any group or team or individual to be the best they can be. And to achieve what their ambitions are.

“And that’s really not rocket science. It’s quite defined.”

The man is in a flow state. He goes on.

“To me, I am not afraid of that. I want players to embrace that. And there’s a certain glory to that.

“I think where we try to depict is that everything is going to flow and roll along onto a plateau and nobody is going to upset the apple cart.

“But somewhere, somehow, someone upsets it. It’s like the Impossible Dream – it’s only impossible until somebody does it and then it is not impossible any more.

“Why be there and be content? Let’s go somewhere else. Let’s go to some place else nobody believes we can go. That’s achievable.”

Winning a club All-Ireland with St Brigid's. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

He never needs to look far for inspiration. Roscommon and Monaghan are two counties that fit a similar profile. Monaghan has roughly 65,000 citizens, Roscommon around 5k more. But both have regularly gate-crashed the Big House parties of the establishment repeatedly over the past decade.

Carlow, a county with a population of over 60,000, have no excuses other than shedding their complexes, Curran feels.

“We are very fond in Ireland of elevating certain elements of Gaelic football. A certain cohort feel that they can neutralise everybody else, to their own advantage,” he says.

“The Roscommons, the Monaghans are in a bracket with the likes of Cork and Armagh, for example I would put in that bracket. And Armagh have gone on to win an All-Ireland.

“So what’s to stop the Monaghans, the Roscommons, the Carlows, whoever it might be, from competing, if you decide you want to compete?

“And that’s a decision. Nothing else. That’s a complete decision and then you get people around who will support that decision and support the players, management and supporters and whatever else goes on.”

Those on the Dr Cullen Park beat are in for an eventful time of it, come what may.