Mayo still hasn’t found what it’s looking for, so who best to help us?

Sunday marked the first anniversary of the death of John O’Mahony. Gone but not forgotten.

Next weekend’s All-Ireland SFC semi-final line up ensures that O’Mahony’s record as the last ‘outside’ manager to lift the Sam Maguire Cup will stand for another year at least. Not since the Mayo man guided Galway to glory in 2001 has any team won an All-Ireland senior football title without one of their own in charge.

Outside coaches have occasionally played significant roles in various victories, like Kerry’s Kieran Donaghy with Armagh in 2024 and Kildare’s Cian O’Neill with Kerry in 2014, but it remains that in 50 years since the cult of the football manager, only two ‘non-native’ managers have achieved the ultimate goal at inter-county senior level. And like John O’Mahony hopping across the border, Longford’s Eugene McGee didn’t exactly venture too far when leading Offaly to the 1982 All-Ireland SFC crown.

It’s something that those in whose gift it is to select a new manager of the Mayo senior footballers in the coming weeks might do well to at least bear in mind, as they consider all the options available to them. That is not for one moment to say that looking beyond the county boundary should be ruled out – there are some very strong reasons for doing so, some of which we’ll explore here – but the fact that of the top dozen teams in this year’s All-Ireland championship (semi-finalists and beaten quarter- and preliminary quarter-finalists), eleven have been managed from within, surely says something about the worth of local knowledge. Dubliner Ger Brennan was the outlier as Louth boss, a position he has now vacated, and while Malachy O’Rourke is not native to Tyrone, the Fermanagh man has lived in the county since the early 1990s and won three county senior championships with Errigal Ciaran – two as a player, one as manager.

The process, publicly at least, of finding Kevin McStay’s successor began in earnest last (Monday) night when Mayo County Board held its first delegates meeting since the executive committee’s decision to terminate the Ballina man’s reign. The ‘Management Appointment Policy’ was listed as item No.11 on the agenda. But what exactly is it that the executive committee should be looking for in their successor to the throne?

If we take that era of Eugene McGee, Mick O’Dwyer and Kevin Heffernan as the beginning of modern day inter-county management, then 22 different managements – theirs included – have overseen All-Ireland SFC title wins. I say managements because there was the double-act of Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher in 2021 when Tyrone won Sam Maguire for a fourth time but in all other instances there was one man identifiable as the architect of his team’s triumph.

Dooher is one of thirteen out of those 22 winning managers who had previously won an All-Ireland SFC as a player, albeit among those are Jim McGuinness and Pat Gilroy who were more squad players when Donegal and Dublin went all the way in 1992 and 1995. Others among the thirteen, like Kieran McGeeney of Armagh, Kerry’s Páidí Ó Sé and Billy Morgan of Cork, didn’t just win All-Irelands as players, they lifted Sam Maguire as team captains.

Of course, if wishing to appoint from within, Mayo has no such luxury in naming an All-Ireland SFC winning player as it’s next manager. Indeed it’s interesting to note that even if the board were to consider an All-Ireland U21 winning player as someone of managerial potential, the only member of the county’s victorious 2006 squad (all of whom are now in and around the 40-year-old mark) to have cut their teeth as a manager is Barry Moran whose stint in charge of Castlebar Mitchels ended last season. Keith Higgins, Colm Boyle and Michael Conroy have held coaching roles with underage Mayo teams but it’s all in stark contrast to Éamonn Fitzmaurice becoming Kerry senior football manager as a 35-year-old in 2012.

Of course, Jack O’Connor and Mickey Harte are among the most high profile All-Ireland winning managers who became so not on the back of stellar playing careers but after outstanding managerial successes at underage level, O’Connor at schools level in particular and Harte steering Tyrone to minor and U21 wins having already guided Errigal Ciaran to a breakthrough Ulster SFC title. But nor has Mayo many candidates of that stature given the county has won just All-Ireland minor titles in 40 years and two All-Ireland U21/20 titles in 42 years.

Nor has Mayo someone so experienced as when Joe Kernan, himself an two-time All-Star footballer, became Armagh manager on the back of creating possibly the greatest team the All-Ireland senior club championship has ever seen in Crossmaglen Rangers, or Pete McGrath who masterminded multiple Hogan Cup wins for St Colman’s College in Newry and an All-Ireland minor title for Down prior to guiding the Mourne men to senior glory on two occasions, or Eamonn Coleman who was a member of that rare club to have won All-Ireland minor titles as both player and manager (Mayo’s Enda Gilvarry is another) prior to leading Derry to their only All-Ireland SFC title in 1993. It’s all fuel for the argument that seeking an interested candidate from outside Mayo borders who can boast some or all those credentials is something that could be worth exploring. What might Mickey Moran and John Morrison have accomplished had they stayed another year after 2006?

Out of the 22 managers, which also includes the likes of Dublin’s Dessie Farrell, Jim Gavin and Pat O’Neill, all of whom were All-Ireland SFC winning players, Conor Counihan of Cork, another man to win Sam as both player and manager, and Donegal’s Brian McEniff and Sean Boylan of Meath, the latter is the one who had least inter-county pedigree. But what Boylan did have, or was given, was time, the reward for which was four All-Irelands.

Mention of McEniff, and Billy Morgan for that matter, they actually began their careers in charge of Donegal and Cork as player-managers, McEniff in that capacity helping Donegal to win their first ever Ulster SFC while Morgan even landed the All-Ireland SFC in that dual role with the Rebels in 1981.

For a county that has had its dalliances with ‘player power’ over the years, might that actually be the way for Mayo to go? We’ve tried everything else.