Doyle's presence played a key role in enticing McMahon to Naas

The presence of club legend Eoin Doyle in the Naas camp was one of the factors that attracted serial All Ireland winner Philly McMahon to take over as manager of the Kildare champions. That and a reasonable commute, which always helps.

“I suppose, as strange as it sounds, “ he told the Kildare Nationalist after his new team’s statement comeback win over Sarsfields in the Senior Football League Division 1 Final last Saturday at Cedral St Conleths Park.

“I’ve a captain like Eoin Doyle who I played against and I’ve experienced what he’s about, that gives you more of a push to go ‘oh Jesus I want to work with this group,’ because if he’s leading it that’s a bonus. And there’s loads of leaders as well.” 

McMahon has confirmed before that he was offered the Derry job previously but is now taking his first steps into management with a team that’s “thirty minutes down the road for me.” 

Why management at all, though?

“I had a little itch that I wanted to scratch and I’m passionate about performance coaching, I’ve done strength and conditioning and sports science, I’m doing punditry at the minute. So, I’ve done aspects of what an environment needs as regards to working with a team. So, when I got the opportunity to talk to the guys in Naas and I saw what the drive and passion is behind the scenes, what work is being done it married really well to what I want to try and do.” 

McMahon, who has brought former Ballymun Kickhams teammate James Burke, not to be confused with the Naas player and county hurler of the same name, into the fold as coach, the Mayo man having previously coached his native county and Cavan, the latter under two different managements. But McMahon feels Naas had a strong management base to begin with, despite Joe Murphy’s mid-season move back to his native Carlow.

“The great thing is they’ve a great management team that’s already in situ, that’s what I’m talking about, there’s a lot being done already. Myself and James are just adding, there’s a lot of good work done over the last four years and we’re just adding. It’s important that we look at the stuff that’s being done and it’s working well for the last four years and just tweak things.” 

A key focus over the next week or two, with the championship on the horizon (they face Moorefield in the Preliminary Round on Thursday 7 August), will be to whittle down his current panel of around 40 to nearer the 34-35 mark. Getting his arms around the resources available to him has proven to be one of the early challenges. Naas started with only six of last year’s county final starting team.

“It is a challenge for me and the management team. I haven’t really seen the full squad just yet. There’s a lot of lads on holidays, there’s a lot of lads with injuries. What’s great is that no matter what, once a player has the Naas jersey on his back he’s trying to perform the best he can. That’s probably the most pleasing thing I’ve seen over the last three games, because I’ve only been in five weeks. They’ve stepped up, I suppose.” 

On Saturday, only two of their county players made an appearance. As McMahon said, “The squad that we have there, there’s a few county lads that could have come back in and we wanted to finish the (league) season with the squad we have. We couldn’t keep Sinkey away, we were trying to kick him out of the changing room, but he kept coming back! And Paddy (McDermott), straight away he wanted to get back in and get minutes under his belt.” 

McMahon was reluctant to give too much detail about injuries currently impacting the team, though admitted that James Burke (the player) “is going to be a big loss for us, he has an ACL.” 

Apart from that “the injuries that we’ve had have happened already so now we’re trying to get them back for the right time, we’re trying to get them all back for championship, that’s the key. We just want to make that squad as competitive as possible. Get the county boys back and making sure we go after the injuries that’s got to be key to us. (Apart from Burke) we’ve just got lads with a couple of hamstrings, ankles and stuff like that. I don’t want to mention them individually, but we need to mind that a little bit.” 

As regards Saturday’s come-from-behind win over a Sarsfields team that topped the round robin table in Division 1 and would have been gunning for the Naas scalp leading into the championship, McMahon emphasised that the wind was perhaps stronger than it appeared from the stand as they fell nine points behind early on.

“It was a strong breeze in the first half. We’ve done our homework on everybody we’ve played, and we knew Sarsfields were going to bring a strong challenge around the middle, and they have sharpshooters up front. With that wind it was really difficult to get out, but I think the boys prepared really well for that.”