Joe Brolly column: A product of culture

‘We, the current Mayo team, request that the Mayo County Board takes steps to remove Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly from their roles as team managers with immediate effect…We, the players, have set ourselves extremely high standards in terms of team organisation and management and as a squad we do not believe they have met those standards. If the county board declines to remove them as team managers.. then with great reluctance, the players feel we will have no option other than to withdraw our services…’

– Letter dated 1st of October 2015.

ANDY Moran was one of those players.
It was Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly’s first year as joint managers. They had walloped Kerry in Killarney in the league, drawn with Donegal, beaten Derry in Celtic Park and stuffed Monaghan. They went on to win the Connacht championship, beating Galway easily, then annihilating Sligo in the final by 26 points. In the All-Ireland series, they destroyed Jimmy McGuinness’ Donegal in the quarter final, then met Dublin in the semi-final where they played out an extraordinary, epic draw.

In the replay, Mayo were four points up with 10 minutes to go before blowing it. In that replay, Andy Moran scored 0-1 from a free and Philly McMahon outscored his direct opponent Aidan O’Shea 1-2 to 0-0. Aidan went on to post a remarkable record of seven All-Ireland finals (including replays) with a total of 0-0 scored, reminding me of Billy Connolly’s joke that until he was 13 he thought they were called Partick Thistle Nil. Soon after that semi-final, the players met and the coup was hatched. It wasn’t their fault after all.

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A year later, Pat Holmes remarked that a small group within the squad had agitated against their attempts to change the culture of entitlement and that if that group remained, “the likelihood is that they will win nothing.” He said, “Nothing will change until the culture changes, which is what we were attempting to do.”

The culture did not change. The outcomes have been exactly as Pat predicted.

Andy is a product of that culture – a culture where it is always someone else’s fault. Their excuses in 2015 included: Mass went on too long, there was no hot chocolate available after a players’ meeting, the bus took a wrong turn and we were delayed getting to Celtic Park in the league (Mayo won the game well), it was the managers’ fault, and so on and so depressingly forth.

So, it was no surprise that after the match on RTÉ, Andy blamed… the players. The players “were not on it” he said and “not really focused on what they needed to do.” “We did not take our opportunities, missed a good goal chance, gave them a goal, it was just disappointing,” before explaining that “the players take to the pitch, they have to lead it.” “The simple fact,” he said, “is that Roscommon were hungrier for the ball than us and that’s the most disappointing thing for me,” an excuse that is the last resort of the bewildered.

He did not mention a) lack of defensive organisation b) absence of kick out variation c) lack of forward organisation d) absence of a plan for attack to defence transition e) confusing team selection or f) confusing team positioning. No, his expert opinion was that “Roscommon were hungrier” (by 10 points).

The attack ‘plan’, referred to by Andy in passing, was that “we had two good target men up front” referring to Kobe McDonald, the brilliant 18 year old who took the bad luck off things by scoring 0-6, and Aidan O’Shea 0-0, whose main contribution was to bring the ball to the free taker every time there was a free.

Save us

Kobe has been thrown in there without structure or plan, in the manner of a life buoy, with Andy shouting “Save us Kobe, Save us.”

How can a three year process be based on a youngster who is emigrating in August? Mystifyingly, he kept the kid on long after the game was lost, even though he had an U-20 Connacht final against Roscommon on the Wednesday night.

It was no surprise therefore when their leader visibly tired in the U-20 final coming down the stretch and Roscommon went on to win that one as well.

My view then, and my view now, is that the 2015 players’ coup was the end of this group. Nothing good came of it, just the permanent stench of a bad culture: Excuses, an absence of self criticism, a delusion of being special.

When Andy told the RTÉ interviewer, “We’re in the first year of a process here, like mmm, well mmm, like we came in on, we didn’t sign a one year deal, we came in for, for the three years. We need time to build,” my irony alert exploded.

In this year’s league, Donegal beat Mayo by eight points, Kerry beat them by 16 and now in Connacht, Roscommon have beaten them (at home) by ten.

Andy called his autobiography ‘Lessons learned in the pursuit of glory.’ The lesson? Always blame somebody else.

If things get any worse, Andy may have to stage a coup against the players.