Jimmy Geoghegan: Where have all the managers gone?

Anybody want to be a football or hurling manager? Not all that many it seems. Over the past week or so a number of people involved in the local game have made reference to how difficult it is to fill the managerial positions in their respective GAA clubs. Now as a new season looms they are getting a little frantic.

Seemingly there is a dearth of people willing to fill the various club hotseats around the county. That's despite rumours of some managers receiving large sums of money for their time and expertise.

Maybe it's just the rumour mill going into overdrive but I've heard reports of some receiving €20,000 and more for their time in charge of local clubs. It still goes on, even though it's all under the table or hidden under some expense or other.

Perhaps it's got nothing to do whatsoever with the money. Maybe people are deciding that it's not worth all the hassle and stress managing a club. That they prefer relaxing at home in the evenings rather than rushing off to a wind-swept, rain-washed pitch somewhere for a training session or challenge game.

Maybe there is just too much expected of club managers these days. There seems to be, as in English football, pressure on managers to get results - instantly. A defeat or two and the knives start to come out. The mutterings in the clubhouses start. It's not all rosy in soccer either. I know of a highly successful manager who took over a new team in the north east last year but gave it up a few weeks later. Not enough players were turning up for training.

There are other pressures too. I also heard the story of how one GAA manager who had played with distinction in his own club’s colours before he went to another club to take over as manager. He would usually get to training just on time, or shortly before the training was due to start.

He had after all his other 'real' job to go to and he probably did well to rush though the traffic and get to the training venue at all.

Some of the senior players at the club he took over weren't happy with that. They felt, it seems, he should have been at the training session well before it was due to start, to have everything prepared. They felt the new manager was a nice fella and all that but they wanted a different approach, a new direction, so he was forced out.

He is only a young manager, at the foothills of his career, eager, but didn't get a decent chance to show what he could do. Instead he was given a red card. It's perhaps not surprising after all why managers don't want to put themselves forward. Would you?