Another own goal as correct decision is delivered in worst possible manner

And so it ended last week. The reign of a man so giving to his organisation since almost before technicolour. Here one day, gone the next. Someone who always kept his cool in the hotseat. Someone always good for a soundbite. Someone never afraid to stand his ground or speak his mind. But that’s enough about Joe Duffy.

The departure of one of RTÉ’s highest paid broadcasters last Friday was almost (or perhaps even was) overshadowed by that of Kevin McStay two days earlier. That’s how high profile has become the job of managing a team without an All-Ireland SFC title to its name in 74 years.

McStay, no stranger to RTÉ himself from his days as a co-commentator and analyst, could do worse than throw himself into the mix as Duffy’s replacement as Liveline host, now that he’s at a loose end. The money is better (just about, apparently) plus the weekends are your own. Talk to Kev just hasn’t the same ring about it though.

To talk to Kevin might, however, have been an idea for Mayo GAA’s executive officers before they unleashed the hounds last Wednesday. Or at least talk for longer than perhaps they did. Several calls are understood to have been made since the championship exit to Donegal but not hearing what they wanted to hear, or hearing anything at all, was no excuse for acting as callously as they did.

Their error is not in believing that a different manager – and management – of the Mayo senior football team is required at this point. A lot of people seem to agree with them on that score. It’s that the correct decision was delivered in the worst possible manner.

You wouldn’t have thought Mayo’s top brass capable of disproving the wisdom of one of the world’s great playwrights, but Oscar Wilde’s assertion that the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about was severely contradicted by the backlash to the executive’s statement that Kevin McStay was being ‘relieved’ of his duties.

Phineas T. Barnum is accredited with modifying Wilde’s quote to a more succinct ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity’. There is such thing as bad publicity. And last Wednesday was it. Barnham was a famed 19th century American showman known for his travelling circus, menagerie and museum of “freaks”. He loved a good hoax too, but even he might have struggled to sell the actions of Mayo GAA as believable.

I think what astounded people most was the sensationalist, bold font, capital lettered headline that accompanied the statement: ‘Mayo Senior Football Management are Relieved from their Roles’. It was clickbait the sort you might expect from a nefarious website whose only interest is page views. Adding to the needless melodrama was the statement explaining that the decision had been made with “immediate effect”, as if another day of inaction would be another day’s damage. It was the sort of language you’d associate with an irreparable breakdown between a Premier League multi-millionaire manager and his billionaire chairman.

It's not that the decision taken at the Coiste Bainistíocht meeting to “relieve Kevin McStay and his management team from their roles,” was wrong. It’s how they chose to communicate it.

Whatever their frustration at the existing management not accepting an invitation to tender their resignation (if it transpires that is what happened - a question that may be posed at this Wednesday's monthly delegates meeting of Mayo County Board), which obviously would have made the executive committee’s life much easier, the opportunity remained for the executive to show something far greater than the strength of their conviction: compassion for one of their own, someone who bleeds the green and red of club and county and who is obviously enduring a tremendously difficult period in his life both on and off the football pitch.

‘It’s with a heavy heart that we have decided not to proceed with the fourth year of Kevin’s project, a project he has poured his life and soul into and for which Mayo GAA will be forever indebted. We, the executive officers, have watched in awe over these past three years as Kevin devoted his every fibre to trying to place Mayo Football at the very top of the pile. We are firm in the belief that the senior football team can look forward to the future with tremendous optimism and so much of that is due to the very solid foundation that has been laid by Kevin and his equally dedicated backroom team.’ 

That’s just one version of what the Mayo GAA statement could have said. There’s a hundred others. It could also have referenced how narrow the margins of Kevin’s tenure, like Mayo’s single kick-of-the-ball exits from the last two championships, and single kick-of-the-ball defeats in each of the past two Connacht finals. It could also have highlighted the joy brought about by beating Galway in a National League Final in Croke Park, of reaching the final again this year, and at ending one of the GAA’s great unbeaten runs when giving a championship hiding to Kerry in Killarney. It didn’t even wish the manager a swift and full recovery from the health issues that had sidelined him for the final two games of the season.

The lack of context in their statement – and to their decision – reflects very poorly on the executive officers. To think that the committee, as a collective, signed off on those 126 words, and that no one foresaw the reaction to follow, was an egregious misjudgement.

That Kevin McStay and his backroom mightn’t have wanted to do like Joe Duffy and depart on their own terms, or depart at all, is not the fault of the Mayo GAA executive. Nor is taking that decision out of the manager’s hands. But Mayo GAA being perceived as something of a circus clown and an easy laugh for everybody else certainly is.

As for who the next manager will be? The Liveline is now open. Talk to…