The Dublin panel could handle one loss but the second was hard to take.
They knew Anthony Daly would not stay on for ever. Six years had delivered a first Leinster title in 52 years and only a third Allianz League title and in late 2014 he stood down as manager.
A couple of months later Tommy Dunne followed him out the door and the hurlers were without a coach.
Tipperary’s 2001 All-Ireland winning captain only worked with the panel once a week but his departure was described as a “huge blow” by Conal Keaney.
https://soundcloud.com/user-787320910/the-gaa-hour-with-colm-parkinson-corks-plight-and-conal-keaney-on-ger-cunningham
Speaking on The GAA Hour, Keaney pointed to the loss of Dunne as a key factor behind Dublin’s indifferent first season under Ger Cunningham.
“Tommy Dunne is one of the best hurling coaches I have ever worked with. He got on with all the players really well, he just knew us as a group really well. To lose him was a huge blow, whatever reason it was,” said Keaney, who retired from intercounty hurling in the wake of the 2015 season.
“There was no hurling coach put in. Ed Coughlan was involved, as skills coach, doing stuff outside and one-on-one, bit alternative but anything different is good.
“Some of the stuff he had us doing was crazy but by the end we were coming round to it. He was made hurling coach and it was a slot that wasn’t really suited to him. He wasn’t comfortable in the doing the hurling drills. Ultimately he was almost blamed for that bad year we had,” added Keaney.
The Ballyboden St Enda’s clubman is a former dual star, who played football and hurling for Dublin before focussing on the small ball code from 2011 onwards. He believes skills coaching is far more crucial in hurling than football.
“It mightn’t require as much fitness but it definitely requires more training in terms of touch. You need to be at it all the time.”
TJ Ryan has already stepped down as Limerick manager and as the hurling season gets down to the sharp end the futures of other intercounty bosses will come under the spotlight. It is not clear whether Cunningham, for example, will see out the third year of his term in charge of Dublin.
However the ever increasing focus on the managerial merry-go-round can blind us to the importance of the coach – the man who takes the training sessions, designs and leads the drills.
While Kilkenny continue on with the dynamic duo of manager Brian Cody and former Laois footballer Mick Dempsey, most counties have long recognised the importance of a dedicated hurling coach.
If they haven’t, they should start listening to their players.
“Managers nowadays just manage situations but a good hurling coach is probably a priority as far as I am concerned,” says Shane Dowling as Limerick seek a replacement for Ryan.
“Clare 2013, obviously they had Davy Fitzgerald as manager and he did very well, but they had Paul Kinnerk as training coach and if you speak to any of the Clare players they will tell you if they didn’t have Paul Kinnerk there they wouldn’t have won it,” added the Na Piarsaigh forward, speaking on The GAA Hour.
The former Limerick footballer left Fitzgerald’s back room team in 2015 but returned this year alongside Donal Óg Cusack, while retaining his roles as head coach of Limerick’s underage football academy and advisor to Limerick’s underage hurling academy and minor hurlers.
“Sometimes managers are great at managing and the best hurling coach in the world would be terrible at managing. The way things are gone in Limerick I think a good hurling coach is essential and a manager manages, dealing with a load of different things, but on the training field, when you go down training, it is the hurling coach who takes over.”
Kinnerk, Dunne and his ilk are men in demand.
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