It was, they said, a change of direction. A full-time manager, based in the town and working to develop all aspect of the club for at least the next year and a half. It is to be hoped that Drogheda United's decision to invest the necessary resources is rewarded for they will be one of only half a dozen to employ a full-time manager. At a time when the bigger clubs seem determined to get by with a part-timer, in such a key position, their commitment deserves to be applauded.
Whether Eddie May, formerly a trouble-shooter at Oriel Park where the club did stay up but by the skin of their teeth, is the correct choice for the position remains to be seen. The former Brentford and Cardiff City boss has certainly been around and his desire to work back here is hard to question given that he has apparently passed up the opportunity to coach Pakistan's national team.
He now has a month before the transfer deadline in which to assess the squad and to persuade the United board to give him the money required to keep the club in the premier division. Announcing May's appointment yesterday, club secretary Gerry Kelly insisted that the current board had never refused Martin Lawlor money for a player and would not, within reason, refuse his successor. Certainly the fact that they were prepared to match Cork City's substantial offer to Liam O'Brien gives an indication of how serious they are.
May's contract is for 18 months - a magical figure in the management game here. If you take out UCD and St Francis (two clubs who have had rather special relationships with their managers for most of the past 14 years) and Bray Wanderers whose relationship with Pat Devlin is remarkable, the average amount of time a manager has survived at the other 19 league clubs is just about . . . 18 months.
Of the 19 clubs, some are less prone to making changes than others. Bohemians and Dundalk, for instance, are only on manager number six (I'm not counting care-takers here) in just under a decade and a half while Jimmy Green became the 13th man to hold the position at Athlone in the same period. The midlands club edge Waterford (12) into second place in what is a fairly sad looking table (Drogheda, Sligo and Limerick are all on 11).
It's not a trend that's improving either. When the National League annual arrived on the shelves last week, no fewer than five of the men listed as current managers had already been sacked. This, of course, is not the fault of the publishers (with the possible exception of the Finn Harps entry) but rather an indication of the level of turnover. Of the remaining 17 clubs, four had changed horses over the summer months (five if you count Sligo again) and only two have had the same man in place since before the start of 1998. It's a crazy situation.
One man to join the list of casualties recently was Billy Bagster who admits that he may have put himself under pressure by telling club officials, when he took the job early last year, that he would hope to be challenging for promotion in year two.
"As it happens we lost a couple of players at the start of this season and we dropped away badly," he says. "I don't think the situation was anywhere near irreparable but the expectations are high and it's the manager who takes responsibility when they aren't met."
Bagster also feels that the most recent casualty, Martin Lawlor, was unfortunate. "Things hadn't been going so well over the last few weeks and I'd say Martin would probably admit himself that he made a mistake in the League Cup a few weeks back but I wouldn't have thought that any of it was a hanging offence."
The definition of a capital crime, though, appears to have something of a Victorian ring to it in a league where just about no one seems able to accept that there are going to be losers as well as winners.
Shamrock Rovers boss (for the moment anyway), Damien Richardson, feels that the high level of turnover points towards the league's lack of professionalism in the key area of planning. "You have to be working to five or even 10 year plans and if the club is running properly then the manager is going to be a central figure in that. A lot of his work is done in tandem with what is going on on the pitch with the senior team.
"The problem is," he adds "that when things aren't going so well it's the people up-front who pay, the players and managers and when the manager goes then everything suffers and the progress of the club as a whole ends up taking a severe knock." Given that May's role at United Park is quite specifically to develop just the sort of club structures which Richardson is talking about, you have to wonder whether an 18 month contract is really commitment enough on either side. But then given the averages it might well end up suiting someone rather nicely.
(Emmet Malone is contactable at emalone@irish-times.ie)
