This report in the Mayo News provides confirmation on the departure from James Horan’s management team of both Martin Connolly and Paul Jordan who apparently announced that they were leaving last Friday when the senior management team met to carry out an end-of-season review. In Mike Finnerty’s report Martin cited the onerous time commitment involved and he said that he couldn’t put this kind of time in again next year. But then he went to make this rather cryptic remark:
Having been involved with teams as a player, a coach, and a manager, and through my work as a coaching tutor, and tutor trainer, I would have been used to being centrally involved in all aspects of how a team is prepared and how everything works. It’s difficult then when you go into a role where you put in a huge amount of time but you don’t have the same input in terms of decision-making.
From the sounds of that, it would appear that the amount of time the role was taking up may not have been the sole reason why Martin decided to step down.
It’s a pity the lads are leaving after what was a good first year in the saddle for the management team as a whole. Their departure does, however, mean that James will now be able to freshen things up a bit on the sideline, even if the opportunity for him to do so is an enforced one. Nonetheless it’ll still be interesting to see what additions he makes to his backroom team in light of this development.
thought that was strange too WJ. A bit disappointing it must be said. But we are where we are i suppose and Horan now needs to pick the replacements very carefully.
Not too sure that these men left entirely of their own volition – – I think it’s fair to say that they were “encouraged” to step aside and the situation was carefully choreographed so as that they would resign rather than being squeezed out. The word out there is that James has a top-class coach in mind – whether he can persuade him to come on board or not remains to be seen.
I heard the same rumour SamM and I think he has been persuaded! I don’t want to say the name if it’s not out there officially but he worked as Physical Conditioning trainer and coach with the fittest strongest team in the country. If we get him it will be a huge bonus for Mayo football.