Bastions of the bandwagon are one of the few sporting phenomena yours truly cannot stomach. Fair weather followers is another acronym attributed to the same lot. It usually is followers, you see. There’s usually obvious telltale signs, they’ll be over the top if the need arises to decorate, will become expert ‘analysts’ overnight and everything the team mentors do or don’t do will be wrong. Here’s a bandwagon story with a difference…
With partaking in sport obviously off the agenda, becoming involved in team management was as near as could be hoped for by way of getting involved in the action. Luckily, from the time I was in Primary School right up until personal circumstances put the breaks on my GAA ‘career’. Without doubt, 2002 was the most enjoyable of the 11 for which I was heavily involved with the club.
That will probably come as a shock to some given that the Keegan Cup came home with us in 1998 and 2005. However, in ’02, I had the honour and pleasure of being a selector with the club’s third adult football and our Minor footballers at the same time. The former was a particularly memorable campaign. Firstly as a number of highly influential folk were convinced there was no way a third league team would success. Not only did it succeed, myself Ray Mitchell and Vinny Maguire guided the lads to 15 wins from our 16 fixtures.
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It is at this point this corner must recall the occasion when the opportunity to board the bandwagon was jumped at like a high ball in midfield. I had been a selector with our Minor footballers for the previous two seasons but was honestly expecting to be surplus to requirements as the incoming U-18s had a long standing bunch of players and mentors who’d already been highly successful all the way up.
To their eternal credit, though, PJ Conway, Sean Whyte, Kieran Clince and John McGarrell took me undet their collective wing and three days before Christmas we won the county Minor Championship for the first time in the club’s history.
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What has all of the above got to do with an article that will end up being about Steven Gerrard? Here we go. Reasoning is twofold. Number one, Barry Comer was an integral part of that team and shortly thereafter his dad Luke was a long way into a deal to buy Aston Villa. Thankfully for the astute Galway business man, it never came to pass.
The Birmingham club spiralled into a period of decline thereafter which saw them relegated from the Premiership. Granted, they did make a fairly quick return to the top flight but even going back to the days of Deadly Doug Ellis there was a ruthless and/or crazy side to those in charge upstairs in Villa Park.
In this instance, mind you, there was nothing mad about their recruitment of the former Liverpool general after they – ridiculously in my view – defenestrated with the services of Dean Smith who, to my mind at least, had done a satisfactory job. This is where we arrive at Stevie G boarding the bandwagon. Not at Villa Park, but that he ‘served his time’ at Ibrox. Why this corner would have considered that the former midfielder boarded the bandwagon was solely down to the inclination that he could scarcely have picked an easier place to begin his managerial journey than at Rangers.
Surely more observers than this one would have thought the former No. 8 would have stayed at Anfield for life. Though from a business and coaching developmental perspective it makes perfect sense. At the best of times it’s the worst and most uncompetitive league in world football and with Celtic in either chaos, decline or both, he was all but guaranteed to garner several pieces of silverware no matter how long he stayed up there.
Instinct, however, is to conclude Gerrard is playing the long game here and with that in mind has made the percentage call. Getting himself back into the English game but at the likes of Aston Villa it’s unlikely expectations will be set overly extravagantly at the Birmingham club. Though their needless dumping of Dean Smith suggests they are yet another entity with delusions of grandeur pertaining to their standing in the game.
Looking through a different lens, it’s actually a win-win situation for the incoming boss. There will be little or no inclinations of success other than the retention of their top flight status. Anything more than that would be bonus territory for both manager and club.
Methinks Paddy Power would offer you fairly short odds as to where Gerrard’s managerial ambitions really lie.
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