What manager in their right minds hasn’t used being disrespected as some sort of tool for motivation?
In Jim McGuinness’ brilliant autobiography, Until Victory Always, the former Donegal manager constantly unveiled a theme of using words in the press to whip up his players. Sometimes it came across as if he was trawling the most minute of column inches in the most remote of sources just to find something – anything – to put a question to his players.
There was even a bit of hypocrisy. He complained at the culture of Donegal being too nice, allowing the like of Rory Gallagher in to practice frees at Ballybofey the night before a championship clash between his county and Fermanagh a few years back but, by the same token, he took grave insult to Cavan not going out of their way much to help Donegal’s warm-up routine in Breffni Park.
To be disrespected is to be armed with the most lethal weapon of all: vengeance.
So GAA managers the country over will tell you every nasty thing that has and hasn’t been said about you to try and garner a reaction.
They’ll tell you about what ‘people have been saying’ and about what that ‘journalist wrote’. These people might be the biggest eejits on the planet and they might not have said anything at all but it doesn’t matter one bit – it’ll work.
It was one thing that Ronan O’Gara and the panel failed to mention on SportsJOE Live when they discussed Jamie Heaslip reportedly punching the air at the sound of Ireland’s Rugby World Cup draw. They largely played it down but make no mistake about it whatsoever, that stuff is used as fuel for fire. That stuff, in many cases, is the inception of the fire.
And Sligo used the same trick ahead of their trip to New York.
“They were a solid team coming in but they talked themselves up quite a bit. That can go two ways,” Yeats boss Niall Carew said after their win.
“A lot of our lads were coming in after playing in Connacht finals and have a medal. New York probably didn’t think of that and showed a little bit of disrespect going into the game. But we prepared thoroughly for this game.”
The New York camp didn’t say much in fairness. They did fancy that they might have a chance, they did say they were confident but it was hardly taking swipes at Sligo in any sort of way.
It is if you’re clever enough though. And Niall Carew is.
So, as Sligo went into a banana skin in America two weeks before the championship even started properly, the players would’ve been training to the tune of, “look what they’re saying about you.”
They think you’re shite.
They’ve never won a game before and they think they’re going to beat you.
Are you going to take that from a crowd of exiles?
And whatever about the mental side of things, those words would’ve forced the players to run an extra yard, lift another weight, get up earlier in the morning to make sure they rammed them back down New York’s throats. Even if New York were guilty of nothing really.
Being a good spin doctor draws physical improvements from your team. Niall Carew and Sligo won’t be the last to do it – they won’t be the last this week.
But the topic was up for hot discussion on the latest GAA Hour with Colm Parkinson, Steven McDonnell, and Cian Ward. Wooly argued that things like this are exactly what stop players coming out and being honest in interviews. Listen to the full debate from 01:30 below.
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