In Mayo, former managers are calling out current players. In Galway, current players are calling out former managers.
Without naming the former manager, Gary Sice has delivered an unusually harsh verdict on the reign of Alan Mulholland. Sice has played with Galway since 2005 and has played under six inter-county managers - Peter Ford, Liam Sammon, Joe Kernan, Tomás O'Flatharta, Alan Mulholland and Kevin Walsh.
A heavy turnover and indicative of Galway's struggles over the past decade. They've won only two Connacht titles in the last ten years, a very poor haul by their historical standards.
Sice alluded to a Galway manager who served three years in the job and failed to give the team the tools to compete properly with a very strong Mayo team.
He told John Fogarty in the Examiner.
Before, we had a management team who didn’t do the job in my opinion. They didn’t give the tools needed to deal with a Mayo side that were grinding out results and developing a machine...
And the management team in place did not equip us. The two U21 teams that came through weren’t given the tools to live at senior and Kevin has now given it to them.
Sice credits Walsh with imbuing Galway with a sense of purpose and organisation. By contrast, Sice assesses the previous management's plan as involving "hoping Galway football would take off."
He paints a picture of a management team sitting around waiting for the cycle of history to turn back in Galway's favour, like it has in the past.
It's the first time in a while that we've had someone stay on as manager - we had a three year period of management there where in my opinion, there was a bit of a lack of organisation.
They weren't in any way building something, they were just kind of hoping Galway football would take off. That's not what happens.
Kevin has a very distinct plan in place, he wants it do this way and we're going to build this way and this is going to suit what we have.
This is a damning verdict. Mulholland came across as a genial person in his three years in charge so one doubts whether he'll bite back, a la Holmes and Connelly.
Mulholland was appointed manager in 2012. His credentials from the underage grade were impeccable. One shouldn't forget that he managed Galway to All-Ireland titles at minor level in 2007 and at the U21 grade at 2011.
Galway football was in dismal shape when he took over. They had been relegated from Division 1 the year before. They hadn't won a proper championship match since beating Sligo (luckily) in the 2009 Connacht semi-final. (A five point win over New York in 2010 is not something they can credibly boast about.)
Results point to very modest progress under his management, probably too modest considering the ample time he was allowed. Certainly, Sice seems to think that.
Things began beautifully. They trampled over Roscommon in Hyde Park, a performance which earned them rave reviews from the RTE panel. For whatever reason, purist minded folk have always been stupidly quick to trumpet the renaissance of Galway football.
Unfortunately, the 2012 season panned out disastrously afterwards, losing at home to Sligo for the first time in decades and then exiting in the qualifiers by a point against Antrim. The nadir was reached when they were slaughtered by Mayo in the opening round of the following year's championship, an experience so scarring that it might have actually generated long-term benefits. A couple of rounds later, they came embarrassingly close to losing at home to Waterford in Salthill. The 2013 season ended on an unexpectedly positive with a five point win over Armagh and an excellent performance against Cork in Croke Park.
The following year, they did reach the All-Ireland quarter-finals for the first time since 2008 in Mulholland's final year but they were barely competitive against Kerry. They got within two points at one stage in the second half but never looked equipped to take that scalp. This was the game when Joe Brolly gave us his famous Rose of Tralee analogy.
Even though its usually Miss World contestants who trumpet world peace as a key policy objective.
