He’d made up his mind fairly quickly.
“If yer not prepared to give that level of commitment, there’s the door.” Chances are that if you’ve played Gaelic football or hurling, you’ve heard that exact line at some point. It often comes up after a managerial change or a new training plan is unveiled. Sometimes a new manager will come into a club or county and immediately change the training routine or the team’s fitness plan.
It often goes a little something like this.
You maybe do two or three days in the gym under an old manager but his replacement will look to increase that to five or six.
It’s a gruelling schedule. It’s intense and it’s undoubtedly going to eat into your life. You don’t have to do it, of course. The GAA, as much as it may be scrutinised and criticised as a governing body, is not an autocratic regime. If you want to call it quits, there’s nothing physically stopping you.
And managers often trot out that tried and tested line as a measure of the level of dedication inside the dressing room. Most of the time, nothing happens. When the ‘there’s the door’ line comes out, it’s usually met with a few heads sheepishly looking around the room, but it’s almost always silent. Almost.
On The GAA Hour this week, host Colm Parkinson recalled a great story when a lad from Laois called Liam Kearns’ managerial bluff. Although the player’s identity wasn’t revealed, you can surmise from the following quotes that he definitely didn’t need to grow a pair.
“I remember when Liam Kearns took over Laois and we wouldn’t have been used to the weights. With Micko it was Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday but with Kearns, it was going to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. So we were in the first meeting with the new panel and they outlined the plan for this new regime. ‘Now lads, if anyone doesn’t fancy this level of commitment, now’s the time to leave.'”
“Then ya hear this chair moving and one of the lads was outta there.”
Usually, if the player’s going to leave, he’ll just not come back after the meeting. But to get up and head for the door straight after being encouraged to do so in the meeting takes some cojones, you have to admit.
Listen to the latest episode of The GAA Hour below. Wooly’s story of the Laois lad begins at 45:50.
