It took Mick Bohan all of 24 hours to agree to stay on as manager of the Dublin women’s football team. Between their quest for a third successive All-Ireland in 2019 and back-to-back league titles, why wouldn’t he?
Only, before publicly announcing his decision last month, Bohan was linked with a switch to the men’s game, namely Roscommon, as well as being suggested as a potential successor to Jim Gavin.
Gavin’s latest extension aside, to 2021, Bohan politely laughs at the suggestion he would ever fill those shoes; he worked as football coach with Gavin during his opening season and Dublin’s All-Ireland win in 2013, and that told him all he needs to know.
“Not a chance,” says Bohan. “At that level, I could not do it. I don’t know how he does it. I still look back to the times when [I was involved with him]. I’d look at the email in the morning and see 2.38 [when it was sent] and then you’d respond and then the email would be back within half an hour. And you’d be thinking, ‘When does he sleep? Where does the sleep process fit in?’
“I would say, I happen to be managing the women’s team, but my forte is coaching, and I don’t pretend to be anything else. But obviously I don’t have the same demands, I don’t have to deal with the same number of things that he has to deal with, purely because people aren’t looking for that insight, it’s not the same. For Jim it’s almost like running a mini-company. I don’t know how he does it.”
Record crowd
Dublin’s win over Cork last September, before a record crowd of 50,151, back-to-back All-Irelands to sit on top of a first league title the previous May, was all the impetus Bohan needed to stay in his current role. (“No interest,” he says of the link to Roscommon.
“Two years ago when I got involved in this, Sinéad Aherne was the one that I approached, to see if she was going to come back, because I think after the three years it had fairly wounded a lot of them. She was unsure herself whether mentally she could go through it all over again. After this year myself and herself spoke the day after it, very briefly and the decision was made.
I don't want us to become that tactical animal that the men's game has become at the moment
“Genuinely, and I know it’s easy to say this when you have lifted that trophy, but it wasn’t all about winning the All-Ireland when we started. It was about trying to push the bar and the standard and to try to make the game more attractive as a spectacle, there were lots of things in it. I think the group will take a lot of pride from how they play, I certainly would take a lot of pride in the way the game is played by this group at present.
‘Exposure’
“And it’s amazing, like, I was talking to Paul Flynn about this on Friday and he was saying that this group are probably getting more exposure than 80 per cent of men’s teams throughout the country, which is actually something I hadn’t thought about.”
Bohan is well qualified to assess the advancement of the women’s game, given he previously served as Dublin manager back in 2003. “Fifteen years ago? No comparison. Their skill sets and conditioning bear no comparison, it’s a different game and equally there’s a long way to go. And yet, isn’t it funny, in a perverse sort of way, I don’t want it to go too far. I don’t want us to become that tactical animal that the men’s game has become at the moment.”
That men’s game, meanwhile, could possibly do with a shake-up, even in how the game is scored, similar to Australian rules. “Yeah, two points for a point, one point for a wide [behind], four points for a goal. I certainly think the points system for goals needs to increase, steal a leaf out of rugby’s book. Sure that’s what we go to see. We all want to see goals. It’s more exciting.”
