THE 2024 JOE BROLLYS

IT was a very good year for Mickey Harte. Mickey managed to get three cars in one year, with less miles on them than an elderly nun’s.

Being a county manager these days can be awfully confusing, just ask Mickey Graham. Harte started off the season with Louth, unveiling his plans for the new year to the players. A few days later he disappeared. His assistant Gavin Devlin disappeared with him. Louth chairman Peter Fitzpatrick said he was “left in shock” when Mickey “dropped the bombshell.” He said that when he told the Louth players the news the next day, they were “devastated”. Not half as devastated as the Derry players…

Mickey and Gavin’s big idea for Derry was the offside trap. No one seems to have pointed out to them that there is no offside trap in Gaelic football. Even if they had, Mickey would not have listened.

So, a team that had won the last two Ulster titles (beating the 2024 All-Ireland champions) along the way and had lost to Kerry at the very, very end in an epic semi-final 12 months earlier, became a laughing stock.

Game after game, we got hammered. Game after game we watched in horror as our opponents gleefully smashed goals into our empty net, laughing and high-fiving. Mickey had told Fitzpatrick that he was only going to Derry “because I would love to win another All-Ireland before I retire.” The Offaly players must be very excited.

As for Gavin Devlin, the Louth county board rehired him. The Derry Board meanwhile did not pause to reflect on their lack of principle. They did not have an epiphany. They did not read the GAA charter. They did not remember that our minors have won three of the last five All-Irelands or that our clubs are envied around the country. Instead, they appointed another Tyrone man as our senior manager. This is the thing about professional sport. There is no loyalty. Just ask Leitrim.

Which brings me to Mickey Graham. Wee Mickey. Good man Mickey. Fair play to you Mickey. Welcome to Leitrim Wee Mickey.

Wee Mickey was hired by Leitrim in August 2024. In an inspirational interview with the Irish Sun on the 5th of October, Wee Mickey, Good man Mickey, Fair play to you Mickey, Welcome to Leitrim Mickey had said that the most important thing for him was that Leitrim’s footballers needed to believe and that he intended to instill that belief.

“It’s a different type of challenge, I suppose, from when I was with Cavan. It’s all just about a mindset change in Leitrim. They’re probably hard on themselves at times and probably feel that they’re looked down on, but they’re trying to do the right things. My job is to get them to believe.”

Three days later, on October 8, the instilling belief experiment came to a premature end. Wee Mickey was gone. The Leitrim Observer headline was “BREAKING: SHOCK AS MICKEY GRAHAM STEPS DOWN AS LEITRIM MANAGER WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT.”

The Leitrim Board released a statement saying: “Mickey was fully committed and looking forward to his role ahead but circumstances beyond his control have led to him making this decision and regrettably, for all concerned, he will not be continuing in his appointed position.”

A respectful two weeks later, on October 22, Wee Mickey, Fair play to you Mickey, Good man Mickey, Welcome to Galway Mickey, was announced as Galway’s assistant manager. Once again, the Leitrim Observer was shocked, their front page emblazoned with the headline: “BREAKING: Shock as Mickey Graham set to join Galway backroom team as Leitrim search for new manager.”

One hopes he is more “fully committed” to Galway than he was to Leitrim. Luckily for Galway, in the 14-day gap between announcements, he managed to get his “circumstances” back under “his control”.

The world of GAA managers is a rotten one. It has become tawdry. At least the League of Ireland declares their salaries, perks and transfer fees. In ours, it is a foul travesty, affecting almost every county except the successful ones, who understand that loyalty and community must be at the heart of everything we do.

As Jim Gavin said recently in a radio interview, “I could never imagine managing another club or county, standing in front of a group of strangers talking about loyalty and being in this together.” Brian Cody is exactly the same. Volunteerism. Loyalty. Is it a coincidence that they are the two most successful GAA managers in history?

I have been arguing for almost 20 years for a simple rule that managerial eligibility should be the same as players: Only a club man can manage his club. Only a county man his county.

For a long time I could not understand why this was not done. It is now clear to me that managers are the GAA’s Trojan Horse of professionalism.

It was – of course – another atrocious year for Gaelic football. Indeed, the spectacle was so vile, odious, even evil, that when veteran GAA man professor Niall Moyna said in August that “Gaelic football is now probably the most boring spectator sport in the world” no one was arguing. He was proved right a few weeks later when a brilliantly rehearsed but mind-numbingly boring Armagh won the sacred chalice, followed by Kieran McGeeney doing his impression of Fr Ted at the Golden Cleric Awards.

But, and there is a triumphant but. A but that threatens to wipe away the horrible taste of the last decade. It was, in the end, a hopeful year for Gaelic football, courtesy of the endlessly mysterious Jim Gavin.

If it brought hope to the GAA world, it was a personal triumph for Jim, who ran this entire revolution with the same brilliance and efficiency as his six in a row campaign. In different hands, this could have been an awful mess. Indeed we saw that with the last Rules review committee.

Here, Jim understood that it was not enough to create a comprehensive, logical and effective set of rules to save football. He also knew that he needed to win the hearts and minds of both the football public and critically, a congenitally conservative Congress.

He achieved that with a brilliant PR blitz, explaining the rules to the public with excellent graphics and video shorts, using highly respected football people like Éamonn Fitzmaurice, Michael Murphy and, of course, himself. He toured the studios. He was endlessly patient, exuding that reassuring Dalai Lama glow of his that says, “Don’t worry, everything will be okay.”

Every single one of the 49 motions passed, resulting in all 18 new rules being passed in their entirety. This followed on from a televised experiment with the interprovincial series, where although the players continued to play as though the old rules still existed (culturally it will be a slow transformation for them) there was enough for us to realise that the antidote to the McGuinness virus has finally been discovered.

The winners of the cherished Good Year/Bad Year gongs for 2024 are therefore:

Bad Year: Derry

Good Year: Jim Gavin

All that remains is for me to wish Mickey Harte the best of luck as he takes over Cork or possibly Carlow early in the new year. It has after all, always been his dream to manage them…

This week’s Gaelic Lives looks ahead to the All-Ireland semi-finals this weekend and we have Ulster minor winning reaction.