Ballyhaise's novel approach paying dividends

IFC final preview

Ballyhaise have taken something of a novel approach to preparing their senior football team for a tilt at the Intermediate Championship this year – and it has worked so far.

The Annalee Park men are through to the big day for the fourth time since 2014 with six successive wins this campaign, under the guidance of four joint-managers in Pat Duggan, Damien Keaney, Aidan Watters and Noel Walshe.

Pat, Aidan and Noel are clubmen who have been involved as players and mentors for many years while Damien is a former Killygarry player whose role within the set-up is “ball coach”.

“It goes back a while,” explained Watters at the online press launch last week.

“We sort of came together to look after a minor team and we won a Division 2 championship with that minor team - myself, Pat and Noel.

“We were invited then to step in with the senior team after a manager had departed and we said we’d give it a go as a management team rather than as a manager and selectors. At that stage we brought Damien in then as ball coach.

“We were pretty successful, we won Division 2 that year, had a good run in the championship, lost a few players due to emigration, a few guys went away and we were beaten then but we were missing quite a few players, Kevin Tierney, David Brady, Aaron Watson, Padraig Moore, who had moved away.

“We stepped back out again and I think another outside manager came in, had a reasonably good championship last year, got beaten in the semi-final, and we were asked back in again this year and we said we’d go back in as a management team rather than as a manager and selectors and at this stage we brought Damien in as part of the management team as well.

“So we have four managers and a problem shared is a problem halved in our view and it works really well.”

The trio of Ballyhaise men have known each other for decades; in fact, their fathers were heavily involved with the formation of the club itself.

“We all know each other a long time, would have played with each other at underage and senior levels. We share the workload and responsibility with Damien as well, he’s now on the hook in terms of management so any problem we have is shared between the four of us and it works well.

“Pat has been playing with Ballyhaise for 100 years, I was 99 and Noel was 110! We have 300 years’ experience between us,” Aidan joked.

“We know each other well. The strange thing was, our fathers would have been founding members of the Ballyhaise club and it’s something that attracted me in terms of working with the lads, that our Dads had worked together way back when the club was founded in the ’50s and had worked tremendously hard back then and were successful.”

Walshe was impressed with how Ballyhaise coped when asked a big question by Cootehill in the opening round.

“The first game, we really stood up. The team showed their courage and the battling spirit that maybe wouldn’t have been there a few years ago. We have a good team spirit, training hard together and training well.

“To understand our management style, if you’re not putting in an effort at training, you won’t be playing and if you are doing it at training, you will put it in on the playing pitch. And the Cootehill game was an example of that, we were behind until the last quarter and we pulled out a win from looking defeat in the face.

“That showed great team spirit and it has stood to us and again when Killeshandra put the pressure on us in the second half, scored 1-3 in a row, the boys stood up again and were counted and went on then and got a few scores.”

Like Watters, Walshe believes the management system works very well.

“Damien is a great ball coach, Aidan is great at running, you know yourself he was a superstar down the years and is very knowledgeable about conditioning. Damien is ball coach and Pat’s motivation, and I just sit in the background and give my points of views,” he smiled.

“We don’t agree all the time, we do have some head scratching goes on at times because we have such a very committed panel of players. Any one of them can play in any position which is a great position for us to be in as a management team.”

Focus

For Duggan, a key focus before the final will be on dampening down expectations and excitement among the club and wider community.

“We are a fairly experienced management team when it comes to dealing with teams and we are around a long time. I’m actually around that long that I was involved on the pitch in the Senior Championship final in 1978.

“So we know that finals don’t come around too often and you have to make the most of it. As a young lad in ’78, I thought ‘this is great, we’re going to have a lifetime of this’ – I never played in another final.

“It’s great to be involved in a final and we appreciate what it means to the club. It’s a great thing to be in a final, a great thing for a club and a community and for the GAA in that community so we appreciate that.

“Expectations? We have lost finals in the past so we are around long enough not to get too excited and we will try to keep a lid on things with the players and the community as well.

“We acknowledge how good Butlersbridge are and we respect them greatly. We are looking forward to a really, really good game and we are looking forward just to a game of football, we are not looking forward to winning cups or we’re not looking at great celebrations or great excitement – we just want a good game of football that shows the respect for the GAA that both clubs have.

“That’s our aim, just to have a great game of football that will do justice to the efforts of the players and something that both teams can remember for years to come. We can, well, we were there, we played our part and we did our best.

“It’s a 50-50 game, it’s a two-horse race and we just want to be there or thereabouts coming up to the finish line, if we are within a point or two at that stage we’d be hoping we can finish it off.”