Mahon to retire?

[CollegeTillIDie]

Tony Mc Donnell spent almost a season sidelined with an injury in the 1999/2000 season which kept him out of the Intertoto Cup games. Himself and former striker Darren O'Brien ran the Reserves that year and they came second in the League. So he already has a management credential in football.
Given he is a financial manager, in his day job, his credentials would be first rate. But we have a manager ( Mahon) and an assistant (Eddie Wallace) in place and a decent coach in Martin Russell too . So we are not too badly off.

[CollegeTillIDie]

I've heard the "if you lose such and such" argument so many times during my 11 years coming to Belfield.

I used to believe it to. I was convinced before the 98/99 season that we were going down. We had lost Sherlock, Palmer, Colwell and Shay Kelly. That's 4 of the 5 best players we had but oddly enough a crop of young lads who we happened to find did well.

Doolin failed at Belfield because unlike his two predecessors and his current successor he didn't see the importance of managing the scholarship system. As a result when we did lose such and such one season he didn't have the replacements coming through.

Stu

we did even better when we lost those players cause those players only kept us up via a playoff. In 1998/99 without those players we finished comfortably 6th! Yes Doolin's huge failure was the lack of development of young talent which is the lifeblood of the club, and manifested itself in the unable to field an Under 21 team debacle, in spite of Tommy Dunne ( Doolin's Assistant Manager son of Theo) registering as a player just to play with them.

Sometimes football team building can become a case of having enough bodies in your squad regardless of the quality and Doolin failed there big time. Rico is suffering similar problems with Cork City not having replaced his departures with sufficient people never mind quality.