The Supporter: Online poll gives managerial indicators

It's the guts of six months until Kildare’s men play another inter-county match. Half a year. One hundred and eighty days. Who knows where we’ll all be by the time the O’Byrne Cup throws in. Above ground and vertical, please God.

And yet, one topic dominates the mind of the Kildare supporter. Well two really but gardening isn’t really my forte and I can’t offer an opinion on whether it should have been seed or turf for the new Conleth’s.

The doom mongers reckon we won’t see action on it before the turn of the decade but I’m happy to wait and see. Head over to the ‘Kildare GAA Fans Forum’ for further horticultural guidance.

No, the real topic is of course the Kildare manager position. The father-in-law had a great phrase to describe matters of little import in the great scheme of things. “It’s not an Act of Parliament,” is how he would describe trivialities.

But to the modern day supporter, getting the right man for this particular job is very much an Act of Parliament. Indeed, in the week of the British election the only exit poll that mattered was the one put together by the Unofficial PRO of Kildare GAA, LGFA and Camogie.

The ‘Really Unofficial Kildare Fans’ page (he or she had to remove the “GAA” from the moniker as Croke Park were getting angsty about the use of their ‘brand’ by similar accounts, go figure) ran a poll that saw 1,093 supporters give their preference between the four most popular candidates from earlier polls.

That’s more than the number of Kildare fans attending games during the latter stages of this year’s campaign by the way. For the record, Brian Flanagan topped the poll with 32%, ahead of Davy Burke on 27%, Kieran McGeeney on 22% and, erm, Rory Gallagher on 19%.

Personally, I would be interested to see a vote between Flanagan and, say, Malachy O’Rourke, who would appear to be the most compelling ‘external’ candidate. I’m assuming Burke is staying in Connacht rather than return to Hell.

McGeeney’s return may be an attractive proposition and in a dream scenario he would have Flano by his side. But he’s hardly leaving Armagh any time soon and surely the man would want a break even if he did after something like five hundred successive years involved in inter-county football. I’m not sure Flano sees himself as anyone’s number two, either.

The poll got me thinking back to days gone by and whether, before the dawn of the internet, such debates dominated the barstool conversations. Did aul lads and ladies almost come to blows in places like Johnsons, Dowlings, or the Dew Drop Inn over the merits of Bobby Burns, Eamon O’ Donoghue or John Courtney?

Had anyone in Kildare even heard of Burns when in 1981 he became the first non-native to take on the job of team manager. ‘Who?’ you might ask and perhaps many did back then as well.

I was too young to pay much attention to such matters. I was more concerned back then with my own modest attempts at playing the game and when it came to Kildare I was only concerned with the fellas on the field, not some old lad on the sideline.

A scan through the papers of the day tells me Burns’ appointment was very much a low-key affair in September 1981. Yet Kildare football was in crisis. They had lost every game they played in the season just gone, culminating in one of the worst cases of Garda brutality ever perpetrated on Kildare folk.

In Tullamore, Garda Tom Prendergast rattled home three goals in front of 7,000 witnesses, me included, as Kildare football sunk to one of its lowest ebbs (since surpassed more than once you’d argue).

We might have been in a hole but at least it was recognised by those involved in steering our fortunes as a county. A special football committee was formed, whose names will resonate with readers of a certain vintage: Pat Dunney, the still-playing County Chairperson who won his seventh senior medal as captain of Raheens that autumn, Mary Weld, Seamus Aldridge, John McNally, John Cummins, Andy Byrne, Hugh Campion, Fran Miller and Tony Keogh.

They tabled sixteen proposals at a special Convention in September. Among those were the radical idea that the role of the team ‘trainer’ would be upgraded to ‘manager’ with the selectors being reduced from five to three and the manager having the ultimate decision-making powers during games. Radical. When did trainers become coaches by the way?

There was a clear mood of ‘crisis’ about and Aldridge commented that the “lack of success had led to a dramatic decrease in crowds and gates in the county.” Plus ça change.

Dunney was given authority to select a manager and a matter of weeks later he came back with Burns, a week or two before the start of the league. In fairness, he was a renowned Longford forward from their (only?) glory days of the 1960’s who starred in their 1966 National League triumph over Galway Living in Rathmore, he was a successful businessman in Dublin.

The papers of the day offer little background to the fella’s coaching credentials. His role at the time of his appointment was as trainer of Blessington, a handy trip across the border for him. They were beaten in the county final by Dunlavin.

In the week before the opening league game against Down in early October, the Nationalist reported on a challenge game in Armagh and the fact that the team had ‘survived an anti-H Block demonstration at half-time.’ No mention of Burns.

Kildare were very much in thrall to non-native managers during the eighties. Burns was followed by Kildare man O’Donoghue for his second spell in charge, but Cork’s Courtney and Offaly’s Pat Fitzgerald followed. All singularly unsuccessful but of course the bold Micko was next in line and sprinkled a little stardust.

Whoever Kildare choose this time, whether a local or not, you can be sure us supporters won’t be backward in sharing an opinion.

Cill Dara Abú