Hughes: 'I believe I can do it, unproven or not'

GAA news

Former Down attacker Danny Hughes believes he can lead Cavan to success as a manager.

The Anglo-Celt exclusively revealed today that the 2010 All-Star winner will join nominees Raymond Galligan, Micheál McDermott and Jason O’Reilly in the hunt for the vacant position, interviews for which take place on the third week in August.

Hughes stressed that he sees great potential in Cavan and would otherwise not have put his name forward.

“I’m not just applying for jobs for the sake of it,” he told the Anglo-Celt this morning (Tuesday).

“Cavan obviously had underage success, while that was up to 10 years ago, I still think Cavan are a big and strong team, good players, and if they can get everybody on to the field, they can be extremely good. I think Cavan should have won that Tailteann Cup, they have good footballers and there’s a great focus on football around Cavan, I’ve always felt that.”

Hughes, who writes a popular column for the Irish News, made his starting debut against Cavan in the 2004 Ulster Championship and has always had an affection towards the county, he said.

“In 2003 Paddy O’Rourke came in, I was only 20 and joined the panel. I played against Donegal in a qualifier after the Ulster final but my starting debut was against Cavan in Casement Park the year after.

“We drew the game and went back to Breffni Park and Cavan beat us, we were five or six points up at one time and got beat. I always loved Breffni Park, the crowd, it’s like an amphitheatre.

“I’m managing my own club at the minute, we won an Intermediate Championship and nobody gave us a chance last year. If you’re talking about relative success, what we’re operating with, we’re doing great.

“I do believe that I’m ready for it. But, again, that’s not up to me.”

Hughes decided to apply for the role after conversations with friends, including nationally-renowned coach Paddy Tally. He has assembled a backroom team which he believes is very strong.

“I would be very close with Paddy Tally and another man who is managing a county team at the minute and I asked their advice. I would still be very, very close to Paddy. Their advice was ‘absolutely’.

“I would glean a lot of information from Paddy and do a bit of mentoring with him. Putting structures in place, making sure I have the right people around me, all that sort of stuff. That’s how it came about, in one of those conversations with Paddy I asked him did he think it was something I would be wise to be bullish about and go for and he said ‘absolutely’.

“I have a team and I would hope that that team would be as good as there is with anybody else out there, I have all bases covered. I’m not carrying a huge amount of people, I don’t believe in carrying a huge amount of people but it will be about getting the best players that Cavan have on the field, getting opportunities for the young lads, getting them into a good culture.”

While Cavan are an experienced squad, with several starting players approaching the veteran stage of their career, Hughes feels there is lots more in them.

“When you look at the age of the Dublin squad, I’ve said this in a couple of columns, there is a wee bit of ageism in football, we write somebody off when they’re 33 or 34 but that’s absolutely not something I agree with. I’m manager of my club but I’m still playing a bit at 41. I don’t believe you should just write somebody off because of their age.

“Getting everybody I can to give a two, three-year commitment and see where that takes them. If there are guys away travelling or whatever, if we can get them home, get them happy and settled… You have to be flexible with boys, with some of the older fellas as well, is there any need to be tramping through January and McKenna Cup stuff? I’m not so sure.

“But certainly when it comes to the National League, Division 2, you want to be hitting the ground hard. I always believed, and I took it into my own game, if you’re playing well in the National League, you’ll play well in the championship. It’s not a button that you can turn on and off in my opinion, maybe Dublin are an exception but you’d want to make sure that Division 2 campaign is something you want to do well in it.”

The Downman made no bones about the fact that he is putting his best foot forward to get the job.

“I think if a manager is going in and he’s not confident with the players or the county he’s going with, players will feed off that. Players aren’t stupid, players are adults. If I had a manager and he was himming and hawing about it, my view is it would be counter-productive.

“I would love and it would be a real honour to go for it, to get an interview and get talking to Cavan and see if my thoughts align with their thoughts. And if it doesn’t work out, then that’s fine too.

“There are three Cavanmen in for it and their blood is blue if that makes sense, I’m conscious that there wouldn’t be bad feeling if they give it to an outside man. Maybe it’s a leftfield call that I’m unproven but I can tell you, unproven or not, I know what it takes to win and I know what it takes to get boys on full board. In my opinion football has been complicated by backroom teams, psychologists, all that kind of stuff.

“It's very simple, you want to get the players behind you so they’re willing to walk through walls for you and they’re fit and injury-free and you treat them with respect and they have that flexibility in their lives… I don’t want lads going to training dreading training. I want it to be very much a holistic part of them living their best lives.

“When I was playing, I always went away for a week after the National League somewhere warm and had a break and stuff like that. It’s important that fellas have a life. That doesn’t mean that they’re not going to be 100pc committed, be the fittest they can be and be the best coached team in the country.

“I think it’s about boys enjoying the atmosphere and the environment, spending plenty of time with one another without taking away from anything they have outside football.”

The 41-year-old would seek to get all of the best footballers committed to the cause and to forge a strong link between the team and the support base, he said.

“The likes of Thomas Galligan, James Smith, the older fellas as well, they’d be the first conversations you’d be having, asking them what their ambition is. If they don’t have the ambition to play county football and go to the well again, it’s very difficult for supporters to understand.

“I’m not saying this is the case in Cavan but there is sometimes a disconnect between the supporters, management and players and I would hope you’d be taking the training to different venues around the county, you’d be having open training sessions where players could come down and watch them.

"Because it should be a privilege for the boys to play for the supporters as well and some of the supporters I met when we were in the doldrums of Division 3, I would still meet and speak with.

“It's important to bring the game to the supporters as well and hopefully play an attractive brand without leaving yourself wide open at the back where you get annihilated. It’s about adapting.

“I believe I can do it, unproven or not. I’m not in it for money, I’m in it for the right reasons. I want to win, it doesn’t matter if it’s a game of table tennis, I want to win.

“I managed my own club, I never took a penny for it, I’m not in it for the money, I want to win. In my opinion, I’ve written about this, the GAA is much more important than any one team or player, it’s bigger than that. People live their lives, book their holidays around football.”

Hughes has observed Cavan closely in recent years and has written about them in his column.

“Mickey Graham taking an Ulster title to Cavan was brilliant and a phenomenal achievement. The flip side of that is that Cavan should never have been relegated to Division 4 either. You would wonder how there were so many extremes in that time.

“But certainly there are players in Cavan and the boys who are away, you’d want to be getting them on board early doors. But they need to be starting in October, November. They need to have a programme and some idea what the goal is which is why Cavan are moving quickly.

“If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out but I’ll not be going for every job that comes up or anything like that. Cavan are a big strong team and I always felt they have potential."