Stephen Rochford: Race to lift Sam will turn on quick and versatile thinking

In the joyful days following Crossmolina’s All-Ireland club final win in 2001, and evidently vulnerable to persuasion in the afterglow of it all, a suggestion was put to me that the club’s ladies footballers needed a dig out with some coaching.

And so it began.

Last week marked the 25-year anniversary of that All-Ireland club success, and to be honest, I’m not quite sure where the years have gone.

But while celebrating that milestone triumph as a player, already my GAA journey was veering off down the coaching road.

This is the first season I have not been involved with a senior intercounty football team since becoming Mayo manager in late 2015.

It has been a different, but nonetheless enjoyable, experience to watch the opening two weekends of the championship from afar – though that might change next Sunday when Mayo run out in Castlebar to play Roscommon.

My most recent involvement was filling in as interim manager for Kevin McStay, which ended following last June’s one-point defeat to Donegal. Standing alongside me that afternoon on the sideline as a Mayo selector was Damien Mulligan, the man who had cornered me back in 2001 and convinced me to help him coach the Crossmolina ladies. It’s funny how these things work out.

Just over a week after the loss to Donegal, the Mayo county board released a statement saying, “a decision was made to relieve Kevin McStay and his management team from their roles”.

The language used in that statement generated plenty of discussion at the time. And it’s fair to say from my perspective, the phraseology was extremely disappointing.

I have no problem with the board saying they wanted a change; that is their prerogative, but the manner in which it was done didn’t feel right.

I think they have acknowledged that in a small way, but not as publicly as maybe they should have, because in relation to Kevin in particular, it felt disrespectful.

Kevin has given so much to Mayo over the years. The esteem in which he is held in the wider GAA community was clear recently when Jarlath Burns appointed him to lead Gaelic football’s new expert advisory group, so the manner in how the Mayo county board handled the managerial change was disappointing.

Looking back on our three years, we did many things right and felt we were bringing through a lot of youth (13 championship debuts in the previous two years) to build a strong panel, but we also accept that there had been too many narrow losses.

Ultimately, results determine everything. But timing is a factor in life, too. I recently saw a clip of Jim Gavin talking about the occasion he went for the Dublin senior job but lost out to Pat Gilroy.

It reminded me of going for the Mayo under-21 job at the end of 2012. I’d been involved with the Mayo minors in 2005-06, and so when the under-21 position came up, I threw my hat in the ring. I had a good backroom team with me, including Donie Buckley, Martin Carney and Martin McIntyre. But we didn’t get the job.

And that’s how the Corofin opportunity came about. As one door closes and all that. Winning the All-Ireland club title as manager of Corofin in 2015 put me in the shop window.

In the winter of 2015 – just three years after it had been deemed I wasn’t good enough for the under-21 job – I was appointed manager of the Mayo senior team.

But the reality is, I got the senior job because nobody else really wanted it at the time. Mayo had gone through a very difficult period in relation to issues between players and the previous management (Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly).

The circumstances were tricky and something I never got a full reading on, if I’m honest. And I probably went into that job with my heart leading my head, not that I regret it for a single minute.

I wasn’t as experienced as I needed to be and I really should have challenged the county board a bit more around what was being done, not in relation to what had happened on the managerial situation, but what was being done in terms of a vision and a strategy and a plan for how we would work in delivering what was best for Mayo football together.

My views of the world from a managerial perspective in November 2015 to what they were by May 2016 were poles apart. It was a steep learning curve.

Taking charge of a county team is all consuming – you have to man-manage players, the backroom team, deal with county boards and generally attempt to keep all of the stakeholders onside.

Your default belief is that everybody is pushing in the same direction, looking for the same thing, but it doesn’t always play out that way.

People might say they are with you, but talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words. I certainly would have experienced that down through the years. You are only as good as the people around you.

And I look back on that phase in charge of Mayo with a lot of pride, there were several punches on the nose along the way but it ultimately helped make the group stronger.

Working with Donegal was also a brilliant experience and I enjoyed my time with Declan Bonner and his management team. They had great coaches including Gary Boyle, Karl Lacey, Paul McGonagle and Paddy Campbell (2022). And in terms of players, Donegal had lots of quality.

For me, there wasn’t the same level of day-to-day scrutiny either. I could mosey about my business in Ballinrobe without anybody wondering how Patrick McBrearty was going in training.

And whenever anybody did bring up Donegal in conversation, to be honest I was never quite convinced they were really interested in the answer! Donegal provided me with a great opportunity to develop and learn and I definitely left a better coach than I had arrived.

Because coaching is constantly evolving. And Gaelic football is probably undergoing its most significant transformation. Through this column, in the weeks ahead, I hope to explore some of those changes – the challenges they pose and the opportunities they present.

For me, the kickout has become the big enabler in terms of momentum. But what does that actually mean and how are teams looking to harness that momentum but also to deny the opposition the same energy?

You can be certain that is a big discussion point in dressingrooms up and down the country – how to quell the opposition’s momentum.

You’ve got to be innovative in relation to the kickout – whether it’s the pace of the restart, the time it takes to get ball to tee, or something more strategic further out the field. It’s a pivotal area of the game.

I feel teams held back tactical stuff during the National League, but in the coming weeks, the covers will come off and we’ll genuinely discover how innovative coaches have been.

Because those who adapted quickest will have a head start in the race for Sam Maguire.

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