O'Rourke the chief facilitator in Simonstown's quest for glory

What makes a championship winning team? When it comes to solving that particular conundrum there are few more qualified than Colm O’Rourke to come up with an answer.

After all the man who is best known to many outside the county as the pundit on The Sunday Game has two Celtic Cross medals won with Meath in 1987 and ‘88.
On the club front he claimed SFC honours with Skyrne in 1992 and ‘93 and last year reached a very significant milestone as a manager when he guided Simonstown Gaels to a Keegan Cup final victory over Donaghmore/Ashbourne.
In coming up with an answer he talks about the need in a team for confidence, character and something else, he feels, every manager should have in his players - trust.  
“We don’t over analyse things or over-burden the players, we try to get our own game right, in general we try to have our team fit and well and ready for action. You have to trust your players to go out and adapt on the day. You have to trust that players are able to think for themselves, work out situations. It’s important to give them the confidence to make the changes they feel necessary to make on the pitch.” 
O’Rourke’s approach worked last year and he might have been forgiven for thinking that having reached the top of the mountain it was a good time to take a step back. Instead, he stayed on and why not? 
He clearly enjoys the challenge that goes with taking a group of players and moulding them into a successful unit. 
He has done it with teams from St Patrick’s CS, Navan where he is principal.  As well as a plethora of Leinster titles he helped to guide St Pat’s to three Hogan Cup triumphs in 2000, 2001 and 2004 while last year’s Keegan Cup success was another addition to his managerial CV.
O’Rourke has endured his share of setbacks too with Simonstown most notably in the 2003 SFC final when the Gaels led by nine points at half-time against Blackhall Gael only to be blown off course. When the good times rolled last year (during his second spell in charge of the team) he had no inclination to walk.
“I was always of the belief that even as a player you shouldn’t retire simply because you won something, I always felt that if you enjoy playing that you should play irrespective of what level you’re playing at.  It’s the same in management if you enjoy working with a team I wouldn’t step away simply because you won something, to walk away and say, well, we’ve won it, that’s good, job done. I don’t look on it like that.
“There will come a time fairly quickly when they will get rid of me anyway. It happens to everyone,” he adds with a sense of fun referring, at the same time,  to the serious reality that a football manager’s career, in the professional or amateur ranks, can be short-circuited by a couple of bad results.
This year O’Rourke has fine-tuned his managerial duties, stepping back a little so that he can take a broader view of the overall project. 
“My role really this year has changed in that I’ve been less involved in the training. Ciaran Kenny and Johnny Mills have been doing all the training of the team. I’ve been standing back from it and myself and Cormac McEvoy have been more involved from the sideline in training. 
“I think it’s the right way for a manager, I think a manager is better off being able to stand back and look at the bigger picture so I’m lucky in that I’ve two great men involved in training the team and hopefully I’m able to see the odd thing to improve on, to make a few changes here and there. That is, I think, the role of the manager.”
The Gaels boss feels that if a manager instills into a team what is generally referred to as ‘spirit’ then he’s well on the way to helping the players fulfill their potential. 
“It’s suppose to be fun, it’s suppose to be enjoyable, there’s no point in doing it otherwise. If the lads are enjoying it they will work better together. Obviously the matches are serious, away from the games, the lads enjoy each other and they have fun, they laugh a lot and I think that’s all very important.” 
An example of that spirit, that willingness to battle for each other was most clearly seen in the way Simonstown Gaels bounced back from an 11-point deficit to defeat Dunboyne in the quarter-final. That was “a test of character,” his side passed with full marks.  
Now another test awaits against Summerhill, a team he respects especially for what he terms their “power up front.” He also talks of the ’Hill as a club with “a culture of winning, of hard work and honesty,” a club that’s easy to admire. 
It looks like Simonstown will have Conor Nash available. The player is still on his sabbatical from Aussie Rules side Hawthorn. O’Rourke says he’s “asking no questions” in relation to Nash and how his employers in Australia feel about him playing Gaelic football while under contract. 
Perhaps that’s another aspect of successful management? Knowing when not to ask the hard questions.