Lar Wall ready for another campaign with Gaeil Colmcille

GAA Seventh year at the helm for Laois man

It is the stuff of nightmares for any manager of any football team. Imagine the scene. The closing stages of a big game, in this case, a county senior football final. Your team is leading by three points as the seconds tick away.

You make a couple of substitutes as part of your strategy to shore up you team's advantage.

You want to bring on some fresh legs and hopefully close out the game. The big prize is now near. Very near. You check your watch, it's deep into injury time. Nearly there. You can almost touch the coveted piece of silverware as it neatly sits on a table beside the pitch in the rain.

Then it all goes a bit crazy. Mad. You concede a point and then, hardly able to believe your own eyes, your team leaks a goal with the last kick of the game. Suddenly instead of leading you are a point behind. Losing. The final whistle sounds around the ground. Instead of victory it's a gut-wrenching defeat. You watch as your players slump to the ground. Disbelieving.

Just like that, all your hopes of ultimate victory, all your ambitions, all your hard graft is washed away like a carefully constructed sand castle submerged by a relentless tide.

It's the kind of nightmare to make any manager wake up in a lather of sweat in the middle of the night, except that it really did happen to Lar Wall and his Gaeil Colmcille players last October when they were hit with the equivalent of a late, hefty blow to the solar plexus and lost the SFC final to a resurgent Ratoath.

In the intervening months Wall has had plenty to time to reflect on that afternoon when Pairc Tailteann was shrouded in heavy, grey, rain-laden skies that eventually reflected how he and his troops felt inside.

“I'm always trying to improve as a coach, as a manager, and part of that is being very critical of myself. That defeat in the county final, I beat myself up over that. I take the blame for it,” he said.

“At the end of the day everyone has an opinion of what we should have done on the line, but the first place I look at it is myself. I ask myself: 'Could I have done more' and the answer will always be yes to that question. Always.

“You can beat yourself up about it and essentially that's what you do. Unfortunately we try and rewind things, look back and say if I had done this, if I had done that. For me personally I do ask: Do I want to put myself through that again, that rollercoaster of emotion?”

SEVEN YEARS

Despite everything. Despite that defeat in last year's final which he, understandably still regards as “heartbreaking” Wall has opted to return for another term as Gaeil Colmcille manager and is currently in the throes of preparing the players for this year's knockout cup and championship campaigns.

This will be his seventh season as manager. Since taking the reins he has clearly achieved a great deal - even if the big prize has proved elusive.

He has guided Gaeil Colmcille to a number of SFC semi-finals as well as as two Feis Cup triumphs. There was also A FL Div 1 and A FL Div 2 league crowns. More importantly he is clearly well-respected and liked by people in the club.

Seven years is a lengthy spell for anyone to stay in charge of a senior club team especially as Wall doesn't live in the Kells area.

He is based in Enfield where he lives with his wife Ann and their four children. Not only that, he has a busy job as a data centre supervisor in Microsoft.

So there are no shortage of demands on his time and energy.

Yet he has opted, once more, to try and get Gaeil Colmcille to the top of the mountain; to win the coveted Keegan Cup for the first time since 1991.

Why you wonder?

Talking to him for even a short time it quickly becomes very clearly he is driven by a huge passion for football management; the science involved in taking a group of players and seeking to make them the best they can be.

All the time, he says, it's about learning, getting better. To victory, always.

When he asked himself if he wanted to embark on another roller-coaster of emotions the answer was an emphatic 'YES.'

“You are thinking do I want another year but it's about challenging yourself again. That's the allure of sport. When you win you want more, when you lose you just want to get back up and going again. I mean if you don't do that what are you then? You can't just walk away and say 'I give up.'

“All of us involved with Gaeil Colmcille are aware that we could have a very difficult year, nothing is guaranteed; that we will get anywhere close to the position we were in last year, getting to a county final and all that. We are fully aware of that. We just have to start it all again, like every other club in Meath.”

ARLES-KILCRUISE

Lar Wall describes himself as “a half-decent club player” who was on the fringes of the Laois senior panel during the heady Mick O'Dwyer days.

He played his club football with Arles-Kilcruise, a small, rural outfit that emerged through the various levels, all the way from Junior B, to win the 2003 Laois SFC crown with Ross Munnelly one of their star players.

They typified the story of the minnows making it into the big time, becoming giantkillers, although they suffered setbacks as well, losing to mighty Portloaise in a couple of county finals.

The Arles-Kilcruise team was managed by someone who had a huge influence on Lar and how he has subsequently managed footballers - his father Larry Wall.

In particular young Lar learned a lesson from his father that has been reinforced for him many times since. It's the kind of lesson that can equally apply in life as in sport.

“I learned that you have to love management, that's the key thing, you have to have a huge appetite for the game and what you are doing or else you won't do yourself justice.

“To be honest we've all got our egos, we like to have people talking about us, but it's not what really gives me the satisfaction.

“I love to look at a player and say I really had an impact on him. That's one of the things I would have seen in my father. He just got things out of players they didn't even know themselves was in them. He got that through real sincerity and application to what he was doing in terms of his time and effort.”

When Lar gave up playing a decade ago at 37 and turned to management full on, taking charge of the Na Fianna ladies football team.

He then moved on to the Meath ladies senior side for two years helping them to Leinster final (where they lost to Dublin) before getting the invitation to take the reins at Gaeil Colmcille. He was intrigued by that challenge of taking on a senior men's team and seeing just where their journey together would take them.

“We have improved every year and we have to continue to improve every year. It's not like last year's county final was the be all and end all.

“There are a lot of teams who have to wait their turn, serve their time. They have to learn the tough lessons and that's part and parcel of sport. For me it's all very much about the players and helping them become the best they can be.”

Part of the process of constant improvement, he adds, is changing things around from year to year. It might be a tweaking in the make-up of the management team such as this year where Michael Foley has joined up with the other selectors - Conn Cleary, Paul Murray and Niall Flanagan.

It could be a change in training routines, the employment of a new tactic. Whatever the change might be the aim is to keep the set-up fresh and renewed; to push ever onwards, keep raising the bar. “You have to challenge everything you do,” he adds.

For good or ill Lar Wall has embarked on another year with Gaeil Colmcille driven by the “never-ending kind of challenge” to improve, to be the best manager he can be and to help the players under his control maximise their talent.

Nightmares such as unfolded towards the end of last year's SFC final are simply a part - if a very unpalatable part - of that process.