*Paul Madden. Photograph: Ruth Griffin.
LIFE as an inter-county manager has been “a whirlwind” for Paul Madden since his appointment as Clare manager last August and it goes up a notch this weekend when they welcome the All-Ireland champions to Ennis.
Hopes of promotion back to Division 2 of the Allianz National Football League didn’t materialise for Madden in his maiden run. By Saturday evening, Clare will be either be in a Munster final having achieved one of the greatest sporting feats for the county or else they will be preparing for a first-ever Tailteann Cup campaign.
A three-time Clare SFC winning manager with Éire Óg, the task in taking down reigning All-Ireland and Munster champions Kerry in Cusack Park this Saturday is by far the biggest ask of his managerial career. There is an element of seizing the opportunity within the Clare camp, he admitted. “If the reigning Munster and All-Ireland champions are coming to your patch in championship especially having lost the league final to Donegal which they wouldn’t have liked losing, they don’t have anything to prove because they have proved it but they will be coming with a bit between their teeth so obviously they are the games you want to be involved in and I’ve said that to the group. In my opinion, if you are not excited about playing the All-Ireland champions at home in the Munster championship then you shouldn’t be in the dressing room”.
Saturday’s tie decides which competition Clare are in next but Madden said there’s been no mention of the Tailteann Cup within their dressing room. “I said at the start of the year, wherever we end up being, we will aim to be as competitive as we can. We’re in Division 3, for the most part we were very competitive, there were parts of games that we discussed that we weren’t happy with. Now we’re in the Munster championship and I’ve said to the lads, our aim is to go out and win it, the draw pitted us against Kerry in the Munster semi-final so we’re happy that it is the draw and that we’re playing Kerry, it is a great test for us, we’re only focused on that, we’re either going to be in a Munster final and the All-Ireland series or we’re going to be in the Tailteann Cup, we won’t know that till after the weekend but our focus is purely on the Kerry game”.
Appointed for a three-year term in August, Paul has offered stability following the rocky departures of Kerry natives Mark Fitzgerald and Peter Keane after single seasons. Reflecting on the initial eight months of his first inter-county gig, he stated, “It has been good for the most part, it has definitely been a whirlwind in the sense that it feels like only yesterday that I agreed to take on the role and now we’re a week out from championship having played a league and McGrath Cup campaign, the condensed season means there’s an awful lot of activity in a short period of time so we played seven league games in nine weeks and nine games in twelve weeks if you include the McGrath Cup, we’ve had a number of challenge games too so it’s a lot of games in a short space of time but once the competitions started in early January the year has flown to date”.
Owner and General Manager of The Temple Gate Hotel from 2003 to 2024, Paul has not gone into new ventures since his exit from the hotel and hospitality game, though there have been plenty of offers. “My wife has a very good job and travels a bit with work, we made a conscious decision irrespective of Clare football that I’d take some time out when I finished with Éire Óg and with the hotel, to take a year out to spend a bit more time at home and allow my wife to pursue her career as best she could. Going into the Clare football job, I treat every job the same, I like to think I gave 110 percent to Éire Óg, to the Temple Gate and all the other committees I was on. The inter-county stuff is intense, there is a window where you’re not at it so come July the inter-county season ends whether you are winning an All-Ireland or whatever your exit point.
“There was a lot of time spent this year planning, getting a team in place and you’d hope if you are in the position next year that you have some of that work done and you’ve learned a lot so you do get a bit of rest time and it is really important because mentally you are switched on all the time. Is there a difference between high level club management and inter-county? The principles are the same, I’ve always said that, managing people is the same, however you are dealing with the best of the best, between thirty six and forty athletes who are number one on the teamsheet in their club every week, they have very high standards and they want to operate at the highest level because they are giving their time for this and it is serious time. You are dealing with more people of a higher level, that is not taking from the club because within the club I was in, we took a few years to get ourselves going and then we created a machine really in terms of performance and athletes. For the county side of things, when you finish round one of the league on a Sunday, you drive home whether it is by bus from the north of Ireland or wherever it is, you wake up Monday morning and you don’t have a down period, straight away you are focusing on round two, there’s video analysis, there’s planning, tactics, in the new game there is a lot more tactics than there would have been in the past around kickout strategies, presses, the middle third, it is full on and it is as full on as you make it, if you want to try do it right and I’m not saying we have because we certainly haven’t at times but if you are aspiring to do it right then you are at it 24/7 in your head”.]
Given that he is now dealing with players of a higher level, Madden has found that he is held more to account by the footballers he is working alongside. “What happens a lot is you find yourself in discussions with players which I encourage a lot, around the topic of how their performance is, I mean they are dedicating their whole lives to this, they want to know why they are not in the twenty six or if they are in the twenty six why they are not getting a game, they will feel they are better than the players that are and they are not saying it in a negative way but they just want to understand, you’ve got to have an open and honest rapport, you all have to be on the same hymn sheet. When you go to a training session that is on at 19:30, you’re probably there from 17:30 and you’re last to leave at 22:15, that is for a training session and it’s a five hour block so you get very little to sit down and talk one on one with the players or with your management because it comes so quickly, there’s so many facets, you definitely are explaining to players, maybe it’s an easy explain if you just have players that are better than the players that aren’t in the team and it is a simple one these guys are in the team because they are doing X, Y or Z better than the rest”.
Joining him on the management team is former Clare midfielder Ger Quinlan, five-time Clare SFC winner Shane Daniels and Kieran Murphy who coached Moycullen to win a third Galway SFC title before reaching the Connacht decider last year. On why he selected this crew, Paul explained, “My own personal philosophy on management and being involved in teams is to get really good, hard-working, loyal, honest people involved, you create the environment where you are rewarded with hard work, I appreciate that for inter-county management you need to have talent on top of that. This is my first inter-county job but my role as manager is to make sure that the environment is correct, that we have all the correct tools, I believe we’ve a very good coach in Kieran Murphy, I’ve spoken to him for years about other things, he’s had good success, Shane (Daniels) had success last year with Éire Óg and really wants to focus on becoming a top-level coach, Ger Quinlan is one of the most solid individuals you will meet off the pitch, he has a wealth of experience having coached at a very high standard at club level. Ultimately if you look at it in the context of where we are as individuals, you’d like to think we’re people on the way up as opposed to people on the way down, Kieran is a Galway man but the rest of us are homegrown, we’ve a good knowledge of the club scene. Our S&C coach is also Galway based, we’ve an assistant S&C coach who is a Clare ladies footballer Megan Downes who is excellent. We’ve surrounded ourselves with good honest hard-working people, if you create that atmosphere and environment the players will fall into line with it”.
Three wins and four defeats saw Clare finish third from bottom in Division 3 of the National League and gave plenty of lessons during the space of nine weeks. “If you take Wexford’s campaign, they got off to a great start with two wins and momentum is key, we got two losses. Leaving Newry the first day, considering we had been beaten by an average of seventeen or eighteen points in the previous two times we played them, we were comprehensively beaten, that was coming from the players and they identified Down as a team that physically and football wise blew them out of the water, I was delighted to get them in round one because it was a real focus and a challenge, I felt leaving Newry that day as much as we were a bit naïve in our awareness to the game and tactics around it, we were not found wanting condition wise, fitness wise or strength wise, we could have got something out of that game, we should have really but we didn’t”.
Following this performance with a five point loss to Westmeath was the most disappointing showing for Clare under Madden. “The Westmeath game is the one that really hankers with me in the league because we did not perform at the level we should have, I don’t mind losing, actually I hate losing, I’m not a bad loser but I hate losing. A few things went against us that day and it was like the air went out of it and we just downed tools, we didn’t but for some reason we were really flat, that is the one performance that sticks out, I know we lost two other games after that, I discount the Sligo game for a few reasons and we lost to Wexford. There was fifteen or twenty minutes in the first half against Wexford where we didn’t perform and just let them get two point shots away which they are very good at, they were the best in the league, they were a good team, physically very strong, a brilliant goal keeper, good shooters, for the modern game they are a good team which they have shown. I wasn’t as despondent leaving the Wexford game to be honest, the Westmeath game was the one”.
Turnovers, kickout retention, conditioning and an ability to get shots off jump out to the Ennis man as the big lessons from the league. “The main learnings are that you really notice in games whether it is Division 4, 3, 2 or 1, the teams that turn over the ball the fewest times are the teams that win matches, you are under pressure so there happens to be turnovers, if you can’t win your kickouts or if you kick the ball long into a position and lose the breaks or give a ball away needlessly by taking on the ball, you’re not restricting lads and their ability to kick the ball forward but even the basics of handpassing, if you turn over the ball because you’ve committed to an eleven v eleven which is how the new game is, it is less than ten seconds before there is a score at the other end a lot of times. The teams that have the best shot to possession ratios are the teams that win games, for every ten possessions if you can get away eight shots are up at eighty percent then that is a very good sign.
“Conditioning and your panel size is hugely important, that middle ground is so attritional, I know two counties who couldn’t play challenge matches recently because they only had seventeen or eighteen fit players, they had ten to fifteen lads on the treatment table with muscle injuries, invariably it is the lads in the middle area, you learn all of those things. You can’t afford to be too nice, the league is so cut-throat in football, it is slightly different at times in the hurling where there’s seven or eight very competitive teams and after that the teams are different but in football if you look at the teams in Division 3 Down will fancy their chances of taking a scalp in the North, Wexford will certainly give themselves a shout in Leinster, Laois have already won comprehensively, Limerick had a very good second half against Cork, Sligo had a blip last weekend and we don’t know about ourselves yet. The reality is teams in lower divisions can put in a performance, we’ve played six games against Division 1 teams this year, one in the McGrath Cup and five challenge matches, for a lot of those games we were competitive, I know they are early season and not championship or really important league games but you can put in a performance, a strong panel with loads of options and keeping people off the injury table is key,” he added.
When he took on the job, Paul publicly stated that he believed Clare were ranked between thirteenth and sixteenth of the gaelic football teams in the country, his assessment hasn’t changed. “I still think that is the case, we’re in Division 3 and the league table has us joint third from bottom and we’re also joint fifth, we’re still a Division 3 team but if you look at Division 2 for next year on paper that is a phenomenal tough Division, you want to get into that Division and know you are comfortable to stay in there, Offaly struggled there this year and Kildare did. When you are consistently putting in performances and being hard to beat which at times we weren’t, we were outscoring teams which is why we were winning games but we weren’t hard to beat we played, when you work on that you can become that sort of team and then you have a chance of climbing up the ladder, we are where we are”.
Ahead of the championship, Clare’s senior footballers headed to Fota Island for a weekend training camp a fornight ago. “We had a good training camp. A training camp consists of two to three days together as a group, you get the opportunity to spend time with guys training and chatting about football in a professional environment, I’d like to think it was a very well organised and run weekend and that the players got some benefit out of it as we did as a management team. Isn’t it amazing, if you were a professional athlete you’d be having them every week, maybe the players wouldn’t want to be looking at me or listening to me that much every week. We’ve a fantastic group of lads who are fully committed to Clare football, there’s nobody in that group and I go back to last January when we had to remove ten lads or so from the group to get our panel down, it would have been a much easier job for me if they were all not nice guys or not focused or committed, what made it harder was they were fully committed and focused, they wanted to be there. I said it from day one, no matter what team you are in, if you have players in there that you feel are doing you a favour it is a waste of time but if they want to be there and they are working hard to be there, stay there and impact it then you can’t ask for more”.
Since getting to know the panel of players, he said they all have the common goal of wanting to do their best for Clare football. “When you are a local homegrown person it is very hard not to look at players from other clubs in the county jersey from the stand as a fan which I was or on the sideline as Éire Óg manager playing against them and not formulate an opinion, I think anyone that says otherwise is lying, you do formulate an opinion, you may think that person is top class or they could work hard, you will always have opinions but I’ve been pleasantly surprised in a lot of examples. All the guys that are there want to be there, they work extremely hard, there’s no attitude and if there is negativity it is lads being frustrated which is common, I’d be annoyed if a fella was happy to not be playing or if he was happy to have a poor performance, there is no negative vibe in the camp at all and I wouldn’t tolerate it at all, I would like to think the biggest thing I could bring is people management skills, seeing guys spending some time with them, talking to them and starting to understand them, they are all different but they have one common goal in that they want to play football for Clare and to win, they are willing to work hard for it, that is the common theme but there’s different personalities and that is interesting, some lads you need to know when to put the arm around the shoulder and other lads need a kick in the backside, some lads are poor communicators, some lads are excellent communicators and communicate too much, whether in sport or life that is human nature. I’ve learned a lot about the players, the willingness and mindset of the players to aspire to training and playing at the highest level is the one thing you want to make sure exists in the dressing room, you need talent after that and we have talented players in Clare. It has been interesting to meet some of the guys that I didn’t know and I still don’t know them all but I’m getting to know them”.
Inter-county players make an unbelievable amount of sacrifices, with all the hours given by the footballers it is frustrating that it is not replicated in terms of support, they had less than 900 attend what was a potential promotion deciding game against Wexford in the second round of the league whereas five times that figure attended games for the county hurlers against lesser lights in Division 1B.
Madden says the volume or numbers of the support base isn’t discussed within the group. “It’s funny that comes up a lot and I hear it a lot on the radio that the hurlers get 5,000 at a league game against Down who to be fair most people recognise they are not a Kilkenny, Tipperary or Limerick, that doesn’t come into my thinking at all, I’ve never mentioned it once in a huddle, the only thing I’ve ever said about the supporters and we’ve some brilliant ones, I’ve been to the four corners of Ireland this year in the league and even before, it is the same faces, brilliant people. You can stand there and moan about this that and the other, I’ve often said to the players we need to give the people following us something to cheer about and we can only do that by our performances, after that if people decide to come or not come then that is irrelevant to us, we’re playing fifteen on fifteen and it is all we can focus on. I’d imagine for the Kerry game, it’s the All-Ireland champions a Munster semi-final, the forecast weather wise looks okay, 2pm on Saturday afternoon won’t suit everyone but I’d imagine there will be a buzz around. What I will say, there is nobody on the Clare football panel that isn’t training as hard as someone on the Clare hurling panel but let’s call a spade a spade, we turn up for the training sessions and the matches and whoever comes to watch us we’re very appreciative of that, we want as many fans as we can get, we want them and then we have to give them something to cheer about”.
That first chance in championship to give something to cheer about arrives this weekend. “I found the preparation for the league was intense, you’re fully focused on the team you are playing and it’s seven games in nine weeks so practically week in week out, that was intense, we’ve had a four week break from the Sligo to the Kerry game and we’ve played challenge games and done a training camp, we’re seeded and have been in the semi-final so we didn’t have to play in the quarter-finals, the four week break meant it was more of a gradual preparation. We always said the year would be broken down into pre-season which brought us to McGrath Cup and we put that with the league as the middle block, the championship and thereafter is the third block, we’ve always identified the year as three blocks rightly or wrongly. I’m sure when we get to Cusack Park for training that the sense of the occasion will be with us but for me it is another game, it is a big game but another game and as all the managers say you’re just looking for the team to perform”.
