Cahill's role shows managers can make the difference

By Kevin Egan

2025 has been an incredible year for the sport of Gaelic football, and the inter-county hurling championship wasn’t bad either. The first round of games saw Offaly push Dublin to the wire in Parnell Park and two level ties in Munster, but from then on there weren’t that many ties that will live forever in the memory for keeping viewers on edge right up until the end.

But there were storylines. The Munster final (the exception to the generalisation above) going to penalties, Dublin turning over Limerick and Cork’s incredible collapse last Sunday will top the bill but beneath that we had Kildare’s win in the Joe McDonagh Cup, crazy scenes in the Dublin versus Wexford game and at the end of the Kilkenny versus Tipperary semi-final, not to mention Waterford coming back to relevance.

When it comes to leaving a lasting legacy on Gaelic games, however, 2025 will be remembered as a season where the ‘cult of the manager’ was further cemented into the fabric of the games.

It’s well-known that after a team or an athlete is successful, everything they did is perceived to have been crucial to their success. Last Sunday, Tipperary pulled up their team bus outside Croke Park instead of driving in, allowing the players to be applauded and cheered into the stadium by their supporters, and some pundits made the point that this was a masterstroke. In fact, this was a new bus with a large air conditioning unit on the roof, and it didn’t fit into the Croke Park tunnel, so it pulled up short because it had to.

When it came to preparing for the game, however, and having plans B, C and D ready to go to cover all eventualities, Liam Cahill and his management team utterly obliterated their Cork counterparts. Several bookmakers have already priced up the 2026 All-Ireland, and Cork are the clear favourites, not Tipperary – which is a clear admission that even now, Cork are perceived as the more talented group of the two.

But on Sunday, Cahill got everything right. That included his matchups, his understanding of how Cork would approach the game, and the really big calls, such as whether or not to start Darragh McCarthy.

It’s easy to forget now, but McCarthy wasn’t just a red card risk, he also had a bad day on his frees against Kilkenny in front of over 60,000 supporters. Given Seán O’Donoghue’s known propensity for testing the mental strength and patience of his direct opponents, there was a real risk that McCarthy – who is immensely talented, but is also just 19 years of age – might be completely put off his game by the Inniscarra hurler. Instead Cahill took the risk, and all his Christmases came at once when Cork sent Niall O’Leary over to pick up McCarthy.

Cork’s vaunted inside forward line of Pat Horgan, Alan Connolly and Brian Hayes misfired, yet wing-forwards Declan Dalton and Diarmuid Healy - who, along with Shane Barrett, was the only Cork attacker making an impression – were the first called ashore. Pat Ryan is a universally popular and respected individual who will still finish the season having guided Cork to National League and Munster titles, but more than any other All-Ireland in living memory, this is one that will be deemed to have been won on the sideline.

Football final looming

We go from there to Sunday’s football final, between a Kerry side under the guidance of a proven winner in Jack O’Connor, to a Donegal side that is under the tutelage of a man who has completely transformed football in his native county.

Prior to the installation of Jim McGuinness as manager, Donegal won one All-Ireland and five Ulster titles in over 120 years. Since he transformed the footballing landscape up there after taking the job in advance of the 2011 season, they added seven more Anglo Celt Cups and a second All-Ireland – and this is without any significant success at underage level.

Sunday’s final is too tight to call either way, with this column leaning ever so slightly towards a Kerry win. But regardless of what happens, 2025 will be remembered as a year that players, county board officers and supporters alike will look back on as firm evidence that while a county can do nothing about whether they’re fortunate enough to have a David Clifford or a Michael Murphy born within their boundary, they can choose their management structure and the people therein, and that choice will have a massive bearing on how they fare.

In March 2024, GAA President Jarlath Burns established the Amateur Status Review Committee (ASRC) and recently they sent out a survey, asking members about the possibility of formalising salary structures for managers. It remains to be seen what the results are of this survey and what direction the GAA seeks to travel on this issue, but whatever conclusions are drawn, it needs to be factored in that more than ever before, counties – and clubs – will stop at nothing to get the person they perceive to be their potential messiah into place.