Colm O’Rourke’s Meath exit a stark reminder of pitfalls in moving from punditry to management

Gary Neville’s time with Valencia should have marked the end of any and all television pundits leaving the comfy seats to go and try out management. Neville can divide opinion, but it is to his credit that to this day he bravely styles out the Valencia mentions whenever a colleague decides to lob that grenade in his direction.
His record in Spain is not one that can be explained away by injuries or a lack of time. He was in charge for 28 games and had 10 wins (only three of those in the league), seven draws and 11 losses, and a 7-0 thrashing by Barcelona in the Copa del Rey. He was a terrible, terrible manager of Valencia. And it’s surely been a cautionary tale among the pundit class ever since, regardless of the sport. It also, of course, made him a much, much better analyst.
Colm O’Rourke took the Meath job two years ago and finds himself out of the job this week. The county board wanted a change in the backroom team, O’Rourke wasn’t in a position to announce those changes before the county board deadline as some of the names he wanted were still involved in club football, and there was a parting of the ways.
If the players, or the county board, or both, really wanted O’Rourke to remain, then the deadline could have easily been pushed out. Regardless of the official reason, it appears as if the end result is probably in the best interests of everyone.
There would have been a nationwide groundswell of opinion wishing O’Rourke the very best of luck in that job. The first reason is fairly basic – the Leinster football championship is a desert of a competition, Dublin having long sucked every last bit of joy out of it. A strong Meath might have done something to revive it.
But he had also spent a long time on television talking in a fashion that was immediately familiar to those of us who talk about Gaelic football in the pub or on the street. The game is boring and it doesn’t have to be. It has been taken hostage by coaches and their risk-averse methods are killing the spectacle.
As O’Rourke set sail as Meath manager, he had the tailwind of a nation’s worth of blowhards at his back. His tenure started with three goals and a thumping away win against Cork in Division Two, but they only picked up one other win in that division, finished third from bottom, and ended up in the 2023 Tailteann Cup, which they ended up winning, to his credit.
Nevertheless his (and our) desire for open, free-flowing football didn’t survive contact with reality. That’s a tragedy for Meath, and it’s not exactly great news for us either. But there’s a reason all the best teams play the same way. If we’re sat at home, or in press boxes, or on terraces, thinking of new ways to play the game that aren’t deathly dull to play or watch, there’s a fair bet intercounty managers have thought of them as well.
Kieran McGeeney good-naturedly told Colm Parkinson of the Smaller Fish podcast before the All-Ireland final that he’d already come up with all the good ideas O’Rourke thought he should be utilising with his Armagh team. Each one had been carefully trialled, stress-tested, and eventually discarded in favour of the style of play that ended up delivering them an All-Ireland title.
As I’ve written here before, the boring thing is now almost always the right thing to do in Gaelic football. It appears clear there’s no coaching our way out of our current situation. O’Rourke deserves credit for stepping up to the plate in light of the criticisms he’d have often made about the state of the game currently, but the challenge was too great for him.
It’s a reminder of the trust we’re all showing in Jim Gavin and his band of merry (mostly) managers. I felt myself wavering in the last couple of weeks every time I thought about a two-point scoring arc, and a restriction on the free movement of corner backs – a constituency I have never cared about in the past (and neither have you if you’re being honest with yourself). I found myself muttering “evolution, not revolution” like a delegate at the Democratic National Convention trying to convince himself Kamala Harris was the answer to all their problems.
This is a reminder to us all to hold fast to the revolutionary fervour that energised us when these changes were first mooted. The game isn’t very good right now. Coaches who are too proud to start off playing safety-first football get beaten down in short order.
I don’t know if a return to our TV screens is something that would necessarily excite Colm O’Rourke at this stage. But he would certainly be a better-informed, more empathetic pundit for his experience as Meath manager. Simple answers like “put your best forwards close to goal, and kick the bloody ball into them” usually chime with the public mood a little more readily than “well … it’s complicated”, but that second answer would at least have the benefit of being true.
This winter has the potential to be a seismic one for the sport. We still don’t know what kind of game O’Rourke could be analysing on next year’s Sunday Game. That’s the exciting part.