Price of Ros Loss. Published in The Sligo Weekender, July 2013

JJ Devaney says that Kevin Walsh's tenure began to fade following the Connacht Final loss to Roscommon in 2010

Kevin Walsh’s 5 year reign as Sligo manager ended on Saturday evening just outside Dungiven, Co. Derry. There were no tactical moves left for Kevin Walsh except to deny the media assembled in the corridors of Derry’s magnificent centre of excellence first word of his departure. When the ‘Sunday Game’ Twitter account released that Walsh had stepped down few were very surprised. Kevin Walsh told the media he would ‘see what happens’ regarding his future and then resigned minutes later. It was a final dummy, one last drop of the shoulder to sidestep a question he has somehow avoided for the last three years.

 Losing to London in Ruislip should not be the defining memory of the Walsh era. That late, late goal chance for Pat Hughes that hit the crossbar was not the turning point. The London defeat was the logical end of the downward spiral that had begun at the Connacht Championship on the 18^th of July, 2010. From the moment Neil Ewing fouled Roscommon’s Johnathan Duggan under the stand in McHale Park to set up Donie Shine for the Connacht title winning free this Sligo team under Kevin Walsh has been in free-fall. Rising to Division 2 with back to back league promotions in 09 and 10 and a heartening fight against Kerry in the 2009 All-Ireland qualifiers were the stimulus for historic defeats of Galway and Mayo in the Connacht championship in 2010. Since then it has been a litany of poor results and heavy defeats for Sligo under Kevin Walsh. Losing that Connacht championship final was traumatic and represents the single biggest missed opportunity for silverware in Sligo football history. To beat Mayo and Galway in one Connacht championship campaign and then lose to Roscommon in the final was a blow from which Walsh and his dressing room never recovered.

 It took a defeat to London to bring into sharp focus the decline of the Sligo team but really the results of the last three years speak for themselves and make one wonder how the Sligo County board allowed Kevin Walsh to make it to Ruislip as manager. The axe could have fallen after the decimation of his team against Down in the qualifiers in 2010 or after only scoring 4 points against Kildare in last years qualifiers or defeat to Wicklow in Aughrim in 2011 after being eliminated from the Connacht championship by a Leitrim team that hadn’t won a championship game in 3 years. Sligo also nearly returned to division 4 football after a wretched league campaign this year. 2012’s defeat of Galway in the Connacht semi-final was but a brief respite.

London may have been the lowest point but that was a defeat three years in the making. Kevin Walsh’s last 3 years as manager have been an exercise in postponing what should have been inevitable as his team sleep-walked through a mire of terrible performances. Defeat to London and surrender to Derry were only the final chapter in what has been Kevin Walsh’s long goodbye.

Cool Head on a Hot Night. Published in The Sligo Weekender. April, 2013

After a fractious but thoroughly absorbing night in the Showgrounds the first question that springs to mind is ‘where to begin?’ Firstly it may be no harm to debunk a myth that floated around for a time in the press box immediately after the game. The idea that Drogheda United deserved anything from the game. They really didn’t. Drogheda took the lead and created little after that and created even less after Ross Gaynor’s ridiculous sending off.  Rovers considering their numerical disadvantage dominated the game and thoroughly deserved their lead when Aaron Greene slotted home on 90 minutes.

This was a Rovers we haven’t seen terribly often this year in the Airtricity league. Apart from the listless defeat to St Patrick’s Athletic we haven’t witnessed Rovers v Adversity. 1-0 down at the break with their top scorer misfiring and a decent away team not allowing them to get into a rhythm Rovers really rose to each and every challenge in the second half. Joey Ndo may have been a little bit rusty at times but he certainly seemed to liberate Cawley and Lynch in the midfield, an area which Rovers totally dominated. His ability to keep the ball and release wide players was crucial in particular when Rovers went down to 10 men.

Ross Gaynor’s sending off clearly incensed both manager and player but neither were forthcoming in the post match interviews about what exactly happened. All we can deduce is that Gaynor may have made some gesture toward the away fans in the Jinks avenue stand and was sent off by referee Anthony Buttimer for said interaction. While no player should get involved with the fans in such a manner the Drogheda fans were clearly looking for a more ‘active’ part in proceedings all night long. It may be logistically awkward but if there was a way to house the away fans somewhere else it should be investigated as in their current home they are too close to the pitch and players, leaving the way open for the more troublesome elements of the away support to wreak havoc.

Rovers work very hard after the sending off and at long last we saw some indication as to why Kieran Djilali was brought to the club. His slaloming late burst set up what we all thought would be Rovers equalizer from Aaron Greene and he certainly gave Drogs more to think about than the ineffective Millien. Drogs equalizer was disappointing considering the graft and endeavor Rovers had shown. The manager noted this fight as a positive in his post match comments: ‘At 10 men we could have downed tools, given ourselves excuses and said ‘it’s not our night’ but we didn’t and that’s a great quality to have’.

Rovers showed much quality on Saturday night, much more than their opponents but in the final third you get the feeling that they long for the return of Raf Cretaro and Danny North. Anthony Elding’s goalscoring has been superb but he needs a partner that can offer something different to the Rovers creative forces of Ndo, Lynch, Cawley and Cretaro. North fits that bill perfectly.

Tempers were frayed all around the Showgrounds on Saturday night but it was refreshing to see that Ian Barraclough kept the coolest of heads in the heat of battle. Experience has thought him no doubt that Saturday night was only one of many battles to be faced in what is fast becoming a very engaging season. 

Rovers v Cork City. TV View (Published in The Sligo Weekender, April 2013

Rovers v Cork City. TV View.

JJ Devaney

There were few surprises from Saturday’s Airtricity League showdown between Sligo Rovers and Cork City. Rovers won, again. Anthony Elding scored again. And in TV land Eoin Hand was miserable. The only real surprise was the line up for RTE’s coverage of the game. Aidan Power was in the hot seat usually frequented by Peter Collins or on occasion Dara Maloney. Power, more usually associated in the past with children’s TV and light entertainment has been struggling to get work and to be fair he didn’t do a terrible job ably abetted by former UCD player and MNS regular, Tony McDonnell.

You just got the feeling that Power, despite his smooth delivery, was reading from a template: ‘Sligo Rovers are doing really well and Elding is amazing’. It was hard to shake the idea that that was the sum total of his League of Ireland knowledge and at any moment he was going to invite the viewers to text in the Sligo Rovers player they thought looked most like a member of Westlife. Apart from that it was pretty plain sailing for the studio duo with McDonnell only once losing the run of himself by describing Elding and Cretaro’s partnership as ‘subliminal’.

There is nothing ‘subliminal’ about Anthony Elding for Sligo Rovers fans. His impact on the club’s early season good fortune has been clear. It’s fair to say that he may not have had his best game on Saturday in front of the TV cameras but he scored again in another Rovers win. RTE may have given Elding the big build-up in the pre-match analysis but resident soccer grump Eoin Hand wasn’t in the generous mood and had some choice words for the former Leeds striker particularly in the second half. Hand’s first salvo against Elding came mid-way thru the second half: ‘He is quite a lazy player really’ Hand opined. It was interesting that Eoin Hand finished that sentence with the word ‘really’ because ‘really?’ is how most Rovers fans would have greeted that opinion of our new striker.

Eoin Hand wasn’t finished there in his diatribe against Elding. ‘He really is the quintessential journey-man’. At a rough count Eoin Hand had 13 clubs in his playing career so I suppose he is well qualified to make such an assertion. Finally, after Elding rolled home the penalty, his 9^th of the season, Hand delivered the coup de grace describing Elding as ‘ineffectual’. If doubling his sides lead against a good side in the league is ‘ineffectual’ then Rovers manager Ian Barraclough will take ‘ineffectual’ all season long.

Hand has always struck me as particularly miserable pundit. Adrian Eames explained the drop in Rovers attendance was down to the miserable blustery weather. Those Rovers fans who watched from their couches might as well have been outside in the Showgrounds because on Saturday, via television, Eoin Hand brought the misery indoors. 

TIME FOR CHANGE. TIME TO GO, KEVIN.

TIME FOR CHANGE. TIME TO GO, KEVIN.

London have beaten Sligo in the Connacht Championship and it really isn’t a shock. RTE might call it the ‘first shock of the summer’ but if you’ve seen the 2013 version of Sligo you will know different. Kevin Walsh knew it last week as he got the excuses in early declaring how Sligo struggled against ‘lower ranked teams’. Ross Donovan gave an angst ridden, confidence sapping interview to Newstalk about the perils of playing London in Ruislip. Some pitfalls included airport security, the plane landing and staying in a hotel. This wasn’t a pair of rookies talking; this was the manager and the team captain. It appeared the only white flags that Sligo would be raising against the exiles would be flags of surrender.

Sligo’s one point Connacht Championship defeat to London may be the most significant loss of Kevin Walsh’s tenure but in truth somewhere between the FBD league final and the Divison 3 hammering by Monaghan in Clones Kevin Walsh lost the dressing room. His players lost faith in the training, in the team selections but most of all in the manager himself. Kevin Walsh asked for more of a commitment from the players in the Autumn. No player who did not give a full winter time and spring time commitment would be considered for selection for Sligo. In discarding Eamonn O’Hara based on this diktat, Kevin Walsh alienated many in the squad with a massive u-turn when drafting in Mayo-man James Kilcullen in the midst of a relegation campaign. Sligo’s need for a midfielder was acute but at what risk including Kilcullen?

On Saturday night, while Sligo were settling into their hotel in London, James Killcullen was playing for Ballaghaderreen against Aghamore in the Mayo Senior championship. He would be a second half substitute against London as things got desperate. He made an impact at midfield were Gilmartin and Taylor had singularly failed to control a rampant London engine room. Had Killcullen started maybe Sligo would have fared better at midfield and therefore controlled the flow of play. He didn’t start because ultimately his commitment lay with his club side in his own county championship. In spurning 20 years of commitment from Eamonn O’Hara for 20 minutes of commitment from James Killcullen Kevin Walsh made a huge mistake. On Sunday he compounded that mistake further by sitting James Killcullen on the bench until it was too late. The manager had lost faith in his convictions. 

The players can’t be held blameless for the embarrassment of the London defeat. They represent the paucity of talent in the county in general but you must wonder about all those called into the squad for the FBD Connacht league. When the pre-league cull was over not too many new faces remained and the National League squad had a grimly predictable quality about it. With only two recognized scorers taking the field on Sunday the worst case scenario emerged: a game where both Adrian Marren and Mark Brehony struggled to score. Could Walsh really have countenanced the exclusion of Stephen Coen in the face of so few alternatives up front?

The biggest error in this sorry mess was the Sligo county board waiting for Kevin Walsh to make a decision last autumn about his return. Walsh allegedly interviewed for the vacant Roscommon managers job. Kevin Wash wasn’t waiting around for Sligo at that time. Now in the wake of the worst result in our football history Sligo should not wait for him. 

Hurricane Sandy. Sligo Weekender, November 8th, 2012.

Letter from America

‘It looks like a bomb has hit the place’. That was the opening text last Tuesday week from my friend Ross Fales on the New Jersey Shore. Superstorm Sandy had spent its terrible wrath on New York and New Jersey’s coast line from mid-afternoon on Monday right through the night. Ross lives in Avon on Sea a town over from Belmar, the town I called home for 3 years. I asked Ross what he knew about the damage in Belmar. What Ross knew was not good news. 

Text messaging was the easiest and most effective way of keeping touch with my friends in New Jersey as the scale of hurricane Sandy became clear in the hours before and after the storm made landfall. With phone lines and WIFI services soon to be knocked out the written word of the text message was my connection with what was unfolding in my home away from home. The words of destruction, damage and panic were so alien to me it was easy to slip away in my minds eye and think of ravaged countries like Haiti or sub-Saharan Africa. There was a disconnect between what I was being told via text and the images of the places I had left just weeks before. Even the picture Ross sent of the sea literally taking to the streets and cascading down the road had a surreal, unbelievable quality. Tuesday brought pictures of a town called Belmar in ruins. Piles of sand encroaching on the streets. Flood waters engulfing the buildings and timber strewn around like in the aftermath of an explosion. It was hard to see where the land began and the sea ended. I have always said that there is much more to New Jersey than meets the eye but what has met the eye in the days after Hurricane Sandy is a New Jersey Shore that is now hardly recognizable from the place I left in mid August.

The Jersey Shore is iconic. I have been lucky enough to spend much of the last few years in its environs and ‘summers spent on the Shore’ are the treasured memories of New Jerseyeans and New Yorkers who vacation there and, in some cases eventually retire there. It is 217 miles of small beach towns and boardwalks and beautiful seafront. This summer I spent time in Belmar, Avon on Sea and further south in Cape May. Idyllic is a word that gets used all too often but there isn’t a better one to describe this place. Now, large parts of the Jersey Shore’s trademark boardwalks, towns, homes, businesses and beaches have been completely destroyed. The tranquility of Shore life has been attacked in a brutal fashion. Locals have spent the last few days rallying together to help the worst afflicted but the magnitude of the rebuilding ahead is often overwhelming. In the space of  a few short days the landscape of the Shore region has been utterly transformed. In large areas an affluent, picturesque symbol of the American dream has been destroyed. My friend Ross Fales, assistant vice principal at the Christian Brothers Academy high school in Lincroft, New Jersey has spent the last few days volunteering to help those in plight in Belmar. ‘I’m clearing out people’s entire lives because the water was higher than the first floor of most people’s homes’. Even in the midst of this devastation Ross recognizes how personally it could have been much worse. ‘Im just trying to help out but believe me its only a little in the grand scheme of things. I feel almost guilty that I made it out okay, I just lost power. Some people have lost their homes’.

This part of NJ has known tragedy before. Monmouth and Ocean counties encompass many of the Shore towns I’ve mentioned and lost many residents in the terror attacks of 9-11 with Monmouth alone losing 147 citizens on that day. The loss of life in NJ has been much less in this current disaster and the strength to rebuild the Shore is strong. Having heard the stories of resolve these people have shown in this trying week I am sure they will rebuild the region again. 

Almost as soon as I left the Shore for home a few months back I began to think about the next time I would see the place again and, for a few horrible days last week, I almost thought I never would.

12

Intriguing mix of Aussie Soap and LOI Fare! JJ Devaney (Published in the Sligo Weekender, April 17th, 2012)

Intriguing mix of Aussie Soap and LOI Fare!


JJ Devaney 

Wow. What a start to the game! Liam is worried because he has gotten someone pregnant and during a robbery some guy has been knocked unconscious. Then before you know it BOOM! we go live to Pat Dolan! Its amazing how ‘Home and Away’ and RTE’s coverage of the Airtricty league seamlessly came together. No time for pre-match analysis when some Australian lad has just been bashed over the head. I wasn’t sure where ‘Home and Away’ ended and Sligo Rovers v Derry started. RTE didn’t give me any time.

Neither it seems did Pat Dolan. Clearly imbued by some conspiracy brewing in the antipodean town of Summer Bay Dolan decided to write his own narrative for the Sligo v Derry game. According to Pat a mysterious ‘everyone’ had written Derry off. With the smile of a man who had just composed a plot that would do Martin Scorcese proud Dolan told us ‘I think Derry could cause an upset tonight’. Dolan clearly didn’t realize that when it comes to the league Rovers fans are more used to Shakespearean tragedy rather than Scorsese-esque intrigue. What Rovers fan has ever ‘’expected’’ to beat Derry City?

Inappropriate sun also sneaked in from the ‘Home and Away’ set as the Showground’s was bathed in a light that left RTE’s cameras flailing around like an over eager Aunty with a camcorder at a First Communion. The setting sun impaired ones vision for Romuald Boco’s inexplicable miss after Danny North’s sublime flick. The replay showed the full horror. ‘Crikey’ as Alf Stewart might say.

Co-commentator Liam Coyle regaled us with analysis that was almost as formulaic as an Aussie soap. ‘If you don’t take your chances……blah blah blah’. Boco’s miss was punished by McDaid’s penalty but that didn’t stop the bias fest from Mister Coyle. The former Derry City striker couldn’t be kept in check by the mild mannered and salient Adrian Eames. ‘North hasn’t had a look in’ opined the Coyle. Your right Liam, Danny North hasn’t had a look in. Apart from his goal. Which in the pantheon of ‘’look ins’ is pretty big. Not to mention the gilt edged goal chance he orchestrated for Boco.

Pat Dolan looked suitably smug at full time with the 1-1 draw. While down under the Showground’s main stand Joey Ndo brought down the end credits and music as he told Tony O’Donoghue how close Rovers feel they are getting to the League title. ‘We finished third one year, second last year and this year we want 1st’.  Closer each day, Home and Away.