About 10 minutes before the news of Mickey Harte’s arrival in Offaly broke on Monday afternoon, the players themselves were informed.
A leadership group of experienced players was summoned to a 5.15pm meeting and informed that the three-time All-Ireland winning Tyrone manager, fresh off an incident-littered season with Derry, was being recommended as Declan Kelly’s co-manager.
Perhaps it’s a downgrade for Kelly, who has just completed his first year as Offaly senior manager, or a downgrade for Harte. Or maybe it’s simply an exciting new project for both men. Either way, the general mood in Offaly has been positive since the announcement.
“Mickey is a hall of famer,” enthused Nigel Dunne, one of those members of the Offaly leadership group.
As the first voice to comment on the appointment – technically Harte still has to be approved by an Offaly county board meeting – Dunne’s words carried plenty of weight when commenting on Newstalk’s Off The Ball.
“Everyone is going to be dying to be in there, to just be around greatness as such,” predicted the Offaly forward. “Without him doing anything, just by being appointed, I think it’s going to add a lot to the Offaly senior footballers next year.”
Dunne’s excitement was evident but as for his prediction of great gains for Offaly, that remains to be seen.
Joint-management teams are a rarity and have a chequered history in the GAA, particularly at the very top level.
The current All-Ireland ladies’ football champions, Kerry, are jointly managed by Darragh Long and Declan Quill.
Harte could also point to his native Tyrone’s most recent All-Ireland win in 2021 when Brian Dooher and Feargal Logan were both in charge, though six wins from 15 championship games in the meantime has taken some of the gloss off that partnership.
There are as many instances of joint-management teams failing to work out, with Mayo duo Noel Connelly and Pat Holmes resigning after a single season in 2015 following unrest among the players.
The following year, in neighbouring Roscommon, the joint-management team of Fergal O’Donnell and Kevin McStay broke up in acrimony.
Another neighbour, Leitrim, opted for joint managers in 2012 and 2013 when George Dugdale and Barney Breen, part of the county’s landmark 1994 Connacht title success, co-managed the senior footballers.
A little like the current situation in Offaly, where Kelly and Harte did not actually apply for the role initially, but agreed to do it, Dugdale and Breen were also brought together by circumstance.
“Mickey Moran was the manager but then Mickey had health issues and had to resign, so myself and Barney were the selectors and they offered us the job to see if we’d take it as joint managers,” recalled Dugdale. “It was through circumstances that we ended up doing it as opposed to applying for it.”
A marriage of convenience it may have been but Dugdale’s memory is of a great working relationship for two seasons. They presided over the county’s first win in the qualifiers, in 2012, beating Wicklow, and went on to win the 2013 Connacht League.
The summer of 2013 began with a big Connacht championship win over New York but dropping four players for disciplinary reasons ahead of their provincial semi-final loss to London was a bleak period. They were heavily defeated by Armagh in a subsequent qualifier, their last match in charge.
“There was a sequence of events where there were a lot of unfortunate happenings,” said Dugdale. “We lost some of our best players through injury, even after we had disciplined certain players. But in terms of the dynamic of working with Barney, I enjoyed every minute of it. You make your decisions as joint managers and you live by those.”
The key point Dugdale wishes to make, from his experience of managing jointly, both at intercounty and club level, is that it can work, in the right circumstances.
“It ultimately boils down to the two individuals, that they’re both working in the same direction and both have the same level of honesty with each other and that there’s no behind the scenes agendas,” said Dugdale. “Once that transparency and openness and honesty is there, then it can work by all means.
“The important thing is to have clear definitions of what each person is looking after. At that stage with Leitrim, Barney was sort of dealing directly with the players, whereas I was more looking after the coaching side of things. We had clear lines of demarcation there and it worked, absolutely.”
The challenge for Kelly, Offaly’s outright manager this year and the county’s All-Ireland winning under-20 manager of 2021, and Harte, the biggest name in the GAA, according to Dunne at least, is to draw up their own clear lines of demarcation and find a way to make them work.
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