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You are > Home > Kiely takes on a formidable challenge
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Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Kiely takes on a formidable challenge
By John A Murphy
ARGUABLY, it’s the toughest job in football management, a job many have taken on over the years with enthusiasm and commitment but ultimately without any significant measure of success.
The charismatic and hugely popular John Kiely is the latest to try his hand at managing the county senior footballers, his appointment having been confirmed at the recent County Board convention.
It was always on the cards that the genial Kilrossanty clubman (he is also chairman) would be the first choice of the board to succeed Ardmore’s Billy Harty. His track record as manager of the county junior team has been nothing short of remarkable, and now the hope is that he can translate that fairytale success story, in part at least, to the seniors.
John guided Waterford to a first ever All-Ireland championship title in any footballing grade when he managed the juniors to an historic victory over Meath ion 1999.
He was immediately head hunted in several quarters to take the managerial role with the county senior team, but he resisted and remained on instead in charge of the juniors.
This year under his inspirational guidance the Waterford juniors again defied all the odds by winning the All-Ireland title for a second time in half a decade, defeating Leitrim in a thrilling replay.
Inevitably pressure mounted on Kiely to move up another step on the managerial ladder, and this time he has decided to answer the call. He is under no illusions whatever about the magnitude of the task he is taking on. We haven’t won a game in the Munster senior championship for fifteen years since that last victory over Tipperary in 1989. Three successive National League seasons without a win still more graphically highlight the plight football at senior level in our county is now in.
But John Kiely is determined to give the new job a right go, believing that if he can command the support and loyalty of the players he wants to become part of his new county panel that they can, and will, make definite progress.
For starters he will not be assembling a panel of thirty players, believing that number to be too many. “If you have thirty players on a panel’’, he says, “in reality it means that many of them will never even get a game and are there just to make up the numbers. Ideally I will put together a panel of twenty four or twenty five players, all of them committing themselves to the cause’’.
The All-Ireland win by the juniors this year, Stradbally’s heroic assault on the Munster club senior championship, and Gaultier’s advance to the provincial intermediate club final, convince John that there is a fair modicum of footballing talent in the county.
He believes the real trick will be to get the level of commitment players are so readily willing to give to the various hurling panels. But he is confident that he can, and will, garner the necessary commitment from the players.
Early in the New Year he is hoping to get his preparations for the February National League start under way.
There is of course only one way the fortunes of the Waterford senior footballers can go and that is up, and if anyone can make that happen it is the ultra determined man from Kilrossanty.
He will have Tipperaryman Michael McLoughlin in the role of coach/trainer, and selectors Pat Curran (Stradbally) and Tom Condon (Sliabh gCua) complete the management team.
This Christmas time the sincere wish from every GAA fan in the county is that John Kiely can work the oracle and restore at least some reasonable semblance of respectability to our footballing fortunes.
ABBEYSIDE AND ‘COURTY FACE BRIGHT FUTURE
If the success rate of recent years at under age level is a reliable yardstick for future happenings, then Abbeyside and Ballinacourty could be serious title contenders in both senior championships in the very near future.
I know full well that successful juvenile and minor players don’t always progress to being successful adult players, but if the sister clubs only get a moderate percentage of their crop of juvenile stars of recent years to go on and make the grade as seniors then very exciting days must surely lie ahead for both clubs.
Their dominance of the minor and juvenile grades in the divisions has been decisive for half a decade and more, and with the impressive string of divisional titles has come several at county level too.
Mark Fives, Mark Gorman, Joey Mullan, Patrick Hurney, Richard Foley, Peter Phelan, and several others have proven themselves minor hurlers and footballers of the highest calibre and will surely make the quantum leap to senior in due course.
Declan Fives is another rich talent ready to make the breakthrough, and with established players of the class of Laurence and Gary Hurney (the latter is due home from Australia later this year), Shane Briggs, and Gavin Breen it surely is only a matter of time before formidable challenges for honours at the highest championship level are under way.
There’s no absolute guarantee of course that senior success will follow (Ardmore are still striving to reach the Holy Grail), but such is the strength of the the Abbeyside/Ballinacourty production line that I’ll be more than mildly surprised if a senior title, be it in hurling or football, doesn’t come their way before the expiry of this current decade.
COSTLY TIMES FOR CLUBS
It never has been more costly than it is right now to keep GAA clubs afloat. And yet, thankfully, every one of them has managed, thus far at least, to keep head over water.
At the recent annual meeting of the Abbeyside/Ballinacounrty club their meticulous treasurer, Pakie Hurney, disclosed that during 2004 a staggering 100,000 euros had passed through the accounts.
That’s marginally in excess of two grand fort each and every week of the year and even by today’s inflated standards that’s a lot of brass.
In neighbouring Dungarvan virtually the same level of expenditure was involved, and it is to the eternal credit of both clubs than they ended the year with income still outstripping those enormous expenditures.
The story is much the same countywide, and there’s no doubt that that the task of keeping clubs financially solvent is becoming more difficult with every passing year.
Thank God then for the Deise development draw which is a huge source of income for almost every club east and west, while more and more clubs have long since resorted to running their own weekly lotto which is also proving to be a vital money spinner for them.
Despite those massive costs, most clubs are also managing to unearth finance for improvements to their own club grounds, and there’s not more than a handful of clubs that are now without facilities that one would expect to have in the 21st century.
For many of them the installation of modern floodlighting systems will be next on the agenda.
Clashmore already proudly leads the way in this regard in the west, and their superbly appointed venue has already staged a number of games under lights.
Others in the division are set to follow suit in the coming years, and I suspect that by the end of the decade a majority of clubs countywide will in fact have modern floodlighting at their grounds. A new era dawns.
HURLERS HEADING FOR SOUTH AFRICA
As I write the bags are being packed, the passports are being checked, the currency has probably already been changed, and our senior hurlers and team management are gearing themselves up for their holiday to Capetown in South Africa.
It’s a deserved “perk’’ for their heroic exploits in 2004, the undoubted highlight of which was that never to be forgotten victory over Cork in a truly epic Munster final.
The break will enable players to relax, to bond even closer together, and to quietly look forward to the new league and championship challenges that lie ahead. No group has ever been more deserving of this holiday than Ken McGrath and his men and of course management under Justin.
Together they did us all proud even if the ultimate objective of that ever so elusive All-Ireland title still proved to be a bridge too far.
There’s always 2005 however, and next week DV we’ll take out the crystal ball and see if it can shed any light on what is likely to unfold when the real business begins.
Until then all it remains for me is to wish all readers of the column a very happy and successful New Year during which I look forward to conveying all of the up to the minute happenings on the Deise GAA front.
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