Michael Duignan interview part 4: Size of managements, Tailteann Cup misery, Declan Kelly and Mickey Harte decision and development squads row

What about the size of management teams? Every year, there seems to be another addition to the senior hurling set-up, they end up big and it is all money?

“It is big and even the U20s had a huge backroom team and management team. The football is probably quite tight. There is Mickey, Declan, Luke Bree. Luke Bree is the head coach and it is a lot to handle on his own. You go to the hurling and there is Colm Callanan, Barry Teehan, Martin Maher, Brendan Maher and Seamus Callanan. Now you have five lads sort of in the coaching side of things and Luke is on his own but the offer is there for the footballers and I think someone else will come in there to balance that out.

“It is just the way it developed really. Brendan Maher came in for the performance side. I know people say what does that mean but it is working for the players. Players are out there and confident but a lot of them have a lot of stuff going on and life is complicated. Brendan is there to help them but he did take a much more central role last year around the team. Martin is the head coach. One of the things that concerned me for the last couple of years was that all of them lads were defenders and Colm Callanan was a goalkeeper, that the focus wasn't on our forward play. After losing the Joe Mc, we had a really strong review with Johnny about that. That was one of the key things I said, that we lost the Joe Mc by a point, we had a lot of wides, do we need someone more focused on the forwards? Johnny would have come back after reviewing everything with a change of direction about how they were going to play the following year. It was very impressive the way they had gone and looked at the year, where they fell down and the attacking style of play that was letting us down. We were losing a lot of short passing balls, balls that was breaking down. We were losing possession so they were going away from that, going more direct. They felt we had the capacity to win the Joe Mc with what they had so we didn't impose someone on them. I had one or two lads in mind.

“This year we are going onto the next level. . . This is one of the great strengths of the modern game. This was in my head for a couple of years and then when we did the review with the players, this was one of the things they felt, that they needed someone more focused on the forward line. I had seen that a little bit ahead of them and then we went back to Johnny with that. Johnny said grand, let's do it now but do you let someone go then who has won the Joe Mc to make room for this other one?

“In fairness to Seamus Callanan he is not coming with big demands, it is very modest with what he is looking for. Just his expenses. It is no big deal. To have men like that around the place, we have two of the greatest hurlers of the last 20/30 years, two All-Ireland winning captains that knows what it takes to win. It is brilliant to have them there for lads to learn. I was talking to Brendan Maher on the team holiday recently, he is so impressed with the quality of our players, their fitness levels and he talked about the likes of Daniel Bourke and Donal Shirley as being among the finest athletes he has ever seen. When you see that coming from him, it is very encouraging. It is all part of why you are there. You want to give the players the best chance. You could probably say there might be one or two too many here and there but if they are contributing positively and doing a job, we try and facilitate it.”

You brought Tomas O'Se (Kerry) in as a senior football coach with John Maughan. It looked like he was being lined up as the heir-apparent. Was it a disappointment when Tomas opted out after John left?

“He would have been in our plans, yes. When we spoke to Declan around that time, Declan wasn't in a position to give the commitment. I would have seen Tomas as . . . . It was a strange one, I rang him on a Thursday and went down on a Saturday, I was doing a commentary in Pairc UiCaoimh and I went to his house and met him for breakfast. I put it to him and he came. I think it was a great lift for us. It was a big commute and a big commitment. He gave up the media stuff he was doing and I felt he had a future with us. It was his own choice and the following year, the vacancy came up. Again, it was a tricky one. I felt that Declan had won an All-Ireland with us and if Declan wanted the job, the feeling on the ground was that he deserved a shot at it. I spoke to Declan as well as Tomas at that stage, to see would Tomas be a coach with Declan, would Declan want the job. Out of it all, Tomas decided to go back to Kerry with the U20s and the rest was history.

“One year was short and I know he made a very positive impact on the players. He was probably only learning the ropes because he had come in from the outside. These things happen.”

This year, Mickey Harte's appointment as joint manager came as a bolt from the blue. A review committee had been meeting and there were rumours that Declan's reappointment wasn't straightforward. Was Mickey's appointment a way of keeping Declan?

“It turned into a very disappointing year, there is no point in saying anything else. The London and Limerick game. . . . I was around the teams very closely, particularly the last two or three years. Even on match days, I was down and around them, standing behind the dugouts. I made that conscious decision to be around, not that I was trying to influence anyone. I think it was important that I was seen to be with the lads.

“It is a big step up, even being a player. The amount of U20 managers over the years who won All-Ireland's and then went up to senior, you are dealing with a completely different set up. The size of it, the scale of it. The amount of people you are dealing with. Then you are dealing with adults rather than young men who are 18/19 year olds. It is completely different and I think there was a huge learning curve there. I will be honest about this, from the very start, I would have sensed that the balance of the whole set up was maybe wrong. We would have talked to Declan and said about this and that.

“At the end of the year, we did a review with the players and they weren't happy with certain things which is fair enough. While you accept the players' views on certain things, they have to take responsibility as well for their performances. You are having frank discussions with the players, you are having frank discussions with Declan and a couple of others of his management team about the year. Then you sit down after it all as adults and say where do we go from here?

“We agreed we needed a change. We agreed we would like Declan to stay and Declan was anxious to stay. The way it worked out, everyone else went. That wasn't always part of the plan. David Connolly (Bracknagh, a selector) was an Offaly man and moved on himself. There was no one moved on per se, it just naturally happened once Mickey Harte came into play. In the initial stages, we were looking for Declan to be manager and a couple of new, experienced coaches to come in and freshen it up. We were probably lacking in experience there last year. It is a process you are going through, it is a tough process and you are trying to get it done timely because you have club championships going on. There is only X amount of people out there and you are trying to get the best people who are available.

“I spoke to Luke Bree before Mickey Harte, I had been aware of him in the background for quite a while. He is 38 and still playing with his Sligo team. He played with Vincent's in Dublin and is very well regarded. Luke had been spoken to and we hadn't agreed anything. I spoke to an S and C guy so we were building little blocks but we weren't finding. . . . . We had spoken to one or two prospective lads to come on board but I didn't think they fitted the bill of what is required and then the Mickey Harte thing sort of presented itself over a couple of days. If you want to simplify it down to its most basic, he is one of the greatest managers of all time. I thought the Derry thing was unreal really, they won a national league, played exciting football and then the wheels came off. Everyone blamed Mickey Harte but there was a lot of other stuff at play there. That man is available and he was so amenable. I said Declan is there, are you happy to work with him. He said, I am not worried about titles and we will get stuck in. The boys have been working away quietly ever since and Mickey has barely missed a match in the county.

“They assembled a training panel. We had no collective training for the month of November but the lads were on programmes and they were getting together in groups for runs and gym sessions. They have worked very very hard. I would be very optimistic about where this Offaly team can still go. There is a couple of players gone but there is new players in, Paddy Dunican is back, Chip (Sean O'Toole) is back. Kieran Dolan is on the way back. What a man, he needs special mention. What he has been through and to stay going. That is one of the worse injuries they ever saw in Santry.

“The younger lads are getting older and stronger. We have a couple of players emerging, Cillian Bourke and lads like that. It is very positive and I think the lads will learn a lot from Mickey. We probably lost a little bit of time because of the upheaval but I was anxious to leave the thing as strong as we could. We were aware that last year was very very poor. It was a horrible year so we go again. It is going to be a tough league, it is a very tough group. I think we have a lot of very good footballers in the county. We have great forwards in particular and I think the new rules with three up is going to suit us down to the ground. I am looking forward to seeing Cormac (Egan) tapping and going! It is exciting and we had a great county final this year. I know people were critical of the format of the championship but something had to be done. I am not saying that was the ideal solution and there will probably be a different structure next year but it turned out well. The crowd wasn't great for it but a great game of football broke out, whether by accident or design. I think Ferbane getting the start first forced Tullamore out of their comfort zone and they went at it. It was a super game.

“All good people to deal with and we had straight chats. Johnny Kelly was onto me earlier, I am gone as chairman but he was onto me about a couple of different things. There will be a handover with Tom (Parlon) and I will probably stay around the teams as much as they want me as a kind of liaison with the County Board and the management for now.”

There was a row in the early stages when players were dropped from county development squads after missing training because they were playing other codes. Declan Kelly was the director of football and you backed him fully at the time?

“It wasn't a case of backing Declan, it was the policy. I think it is unfortunate. The split season has caused this. I played a lot of sports and there is a lot of studies out there that says playing different sports is very good for you. There is no doubt it is but what has happened with the split season is you have that period at the start of the year for county and the second half of the year is for club so we can't have our development squad activity in the second half of the year because we are playing our championships. It has to be in the first half of the year and you can't have lads coming and going every week. It is not something we have forced on young people but it is a reality. I even saw a comment on it during the week that younger kids are better off playing as much as they can. That was our problem and usually the lads that are doing other sports are good at everything. How can you say to one lad you can come once every two or three, four weeks or whenever you want to and someone else has to be there all the time.

“It probably was very strict but it might have to have been just to break the cycle. Obviously in all walks of life you need a bit of flexibility and the GAA operates in that. There is a bit of a grey area in terms of everything, it can't be black and white. You have to be able to move around. I would imagine there has been less talk and I'd imagine there is a few lads here and there missing the odd day where there was no fuss. We were challenged by certain people and players, families more so, they are only kids but it was great to see some of them coming back into the fold. One went on and played minor football and starred, one played minor hurling this year. You get challenged by the best.

“Declan was combining some amount of roles. That was one of the things we said this year to Dec, take a step back, you can't do everything and he is so involved with his own young lads as well. There is such a human side to all of this as well. We are a small county. You can see why it is so hard for managers within the county because we are so small. I saw that as chairman. Sometimes outside the county, they take a completely different view on it. It is hard on you but that is an Offaly thing and it is a good thing in ways. It is healthy.”

The development squads are for elite players and the work here dictates where they go at senior level. You probably can't be mixing sports at that level?

“It is that you are ready, we weren't ready a lot of the time over the years. Then we spend years at senior level trying to catch up, even now. My own lad is 24 now and is only getting there. This is challenging because you need clubs, schools and players to buy in if we are hitting our targets each year. I think it was put to me best by Gary Flannery who is our head of performance, that when a lad gets to 20, he is ready to play for 10-12 years for the county. And by ready, you are ready to go, that you have the power and the strength, that you are resilient in terms of injuries. That is what all of this is about, that you can play hard matches, you can recover and you can train hard without being injured. That has been an issue with us, lads breaking down when the going gets tough. That is the reality of it.”

I know you have spoken about clubs fielding their own Go Games teams and numbers but the GAA does seem to be winning the “battle” for young people in the county. I was talking to a rugby man recently who was saying the GAA is “killing” them?

“It is in a very strong spot. The numbers thing is different, that is a different argument. Our responsibility is GAA and I can't make any apologies for this, my job is to be chairman of Offaly GAA and everyone else has their job to do. I could see things happening. I have seen the decision by the FAI recently to go all year around, I saw that coming. They are after their patch, to grow their game.

“We always played during the summer to get the best time of the year and conversely, we weren't playing during the Winter to give time for lads to play soccer, rugby, whatever. Now we have year round activity with our leagues and underage programme which has grown out of all proportion. There was 1,000 underage matches last year and our schools have really improved. That is our job, to produce an all year round programme of activity and to get the buy in.

“We are five years at it and you are still trying to get it right. There are certain years when our minor teams aren't what we would like. Maybe that is down to numbers, we won't always have top teams but we should always be able to get three or four very good players and bring them through. That is all I say to underage managers. Whether we win or don't win at U17 level or even at 20, they are really about developing players, to get them to the right standard.

“Look I am a sports man and you like to see them all but our priority is GAA. That is why those wins are so important. You can see it with young people, they want to play and they have their idols and luckily enough for us at the moment, we have those players there. We are in a strong place going forward.”