Joe Brolly: The song of Martha

I had to paint the picture with my own kids – if Kerry and Galway meet in an All-Ireland semi-final or final and I’m standing in Croke Park with a Galway top on, can we accept that? I had to wrestle with that.” Like all other Kerrymen who have wrestled with their idealism, idealism lost.

The sight of Mickey Moran (who never took a team in his own club) kissing the 14 yard line in Croke park after Kilcoo’s players won the all Ireland still depresses me.

In this new bastard GAA, the essential qualities of loyalty, community and kinship are irrelevant. Professional sport has zero loyalty. The GAA is getting there, even if we are good at pretending it isn’t.

Henry Shefflin went to Galway and made a show of himself among strangers. At least he had the decency to feel embarrassed. Not so the squadrons of Kerry men who proliferate through the country like dock leaves, making their stomach churning speeches at the press conferences where they are unveiled, in a car showroom or fast food chain beside a beaming sponsor.

“It’s always been my dream to manage (fill in the blank). I look forward to bringing success back to this great county (that I don’t give one f**k about), returning them to the glory days of (fill in the blank). What attracted me here was the terrific squad of players and the enthusiasm of the board (especially the team sponsors) and I will fully commit myself for the next three years to this great endeavour (subject to payment methods being agreed via third parties and a new Mercedes, or Renault if it’s a lower division).

Which brings me to Mickey Harte. When Mickey left Louth to take over what’s casually described nowadays as the Derry “job”, David Jeffrey, the legendary Linfield FC manager, said on BBC Radio, “I am surprised with Michael. There has been incredible uproar with him going to Derry. How can Derry people welcome him to there county? If I ever rocked up to the Oval, who from Glentoran would welcome me? And I can assure the Linfield football family I would never, ever go to Glentoran.” The interviewer asked, “Is this divine intervention?” When David laughed and said, “Michael always looks to see where God is leading him,” the interviewer said, “Which saintly intervention carried him to Derry?”

Having the piss taken out of our ideals on BBC Northern Ireland was embarrassing but fair. Meanwhile, RTÉ gloss over it, greeting each flagrant breach of the GAA rules on amateurism as though it were the appointment of the new Hartlepool United manager.

A disgraceful managerial cartel has taken over the game, aided and abetted by the GAA. Clubs have lost faith in their own. Counties, apart from the successful ones, have lost faith in their own. Even though it doesn’t work. In the last 25 years, seven counties have won the Sam Maguire. Armagh (Joe Kernan, Kieran McGeeney) Tyrone (Mickey Harte, Fergal Logan) Kerry (Jack O’Connor, Éamonn Fitzmaurice) Cork (Conor Counihan) Dublin (Pat Gilroy, Jim Gavin, Dessie Farrell), Donegal (Jimmy McGuinness), Mayo (Andy Moran). In that same time, the hurling winners are Kilkenny (Brian Cody), Cork (Donal O’Grady), Tipp (Nicky English, Liam Sheedy, Michael Ryan, Liam Cahill), Clare (David Fitzgerald, Brian Lohan), Galway (Michael O’Donoghue). Spot the pattern?

Yet when these managers have donned the colours of a county that is not their own it has failed. Andy Moran went to Leitrim and they were beaten by New York in the championship. Jack O’Connor wrestled with his conscience and having defeated it, went to Kildare, where he at least had the honesty to say, “If you want an easy life, you go coach somewhere else”, before saying that he could walk the streets of Kildare and people barely noticed him. To be fair, they barely noticed him when he left.

Success rate

Davy Fitzgerald meanwhile has been in more counties than the Burke family, with roughly the same success rate. Mickey Harte was a disaster in Derry, leaving at the end of his first year after a series of championship humiliations that tore the heart out of the two in a row Ulster champions and All-Ireland favourites. Whatever was left of our soul after Mickey, was finished off by another Tyrone man Paddy Tally, who managed us through an entire league and championship season without a single victory, ending with relegation to Division 2. To be fair to Paddy, he did manage two draws.

Meanwhile, Mickey was on to Offaly. At his unveiling there, he said, “I want to revive the glory days of the 70s and 80s.”Presumably he meant that in the same way that the Rose of Tralee wants world peace. In 2026, his second year (or as he put it “the second year of my contract“) they lost to Laois in their Leinster opener, were relegated pointless from Division 2 and were beaten in the Tailteann Cup by Wicklow. Mickey’s definition of the glory days must be different than mine. This week, it was announced that he is to undertake more volunteer work with the Kilcoo club. If he keeps volunteering at this rate, he will have a bigger car collection than Elton John.

The fascinating thing is how quickly we have abandoned our ideals and adopted the new orthodoxy, reminding us that human beings have a strong tendency towards sheepishness. In rugby for example, a phalanx of coaches and analysts now sit in identical high tech studios like air traffic controllers. What are they all doing? You would think they are operating drones, not sitting there more or less helpless as their team either performs or doesn’t. New Zealand or South Africa will still win the Rugby World Cup. In Gaelic football, we have adopted the same mindless copycat approach, spending more and more on structures that do not work. Most depressing is the fact that the younger generation don’t see the problem. For them, the soccer language of the new GAA has replaced the old language of community bonds and loyalty.

I have been arguing for 20 years that the GAA should make a simple rule that only a club man can manage his club, only a county man his county. So, club and county eligibility would be precisely the same as for players. This would return the game to amateur status, save clubs and counties a fortune and most importantly protect our core ideals. Instead, a wonderful, life affirming pastime that was full of the best ideals, has become a false, tawdry cartel, full of barter accounts and third party payments. Something precious has been lost. Something more important than football.

Martha Wainright famously sang, “These are not my people, I should never have come here.” Éamonn Fitzmaurice should have listened to that song.