Conor McManus was on Off The Ball’s All-Ireland special and gave his thoughts on Seamus ‘Banty’ McEnaney’s appointment as the Monaghan senior football manager.
McEnaney will act as the Farney Army’s manager for the second time and McManus was glad to see his old manager back in the role.
“When Banty took over in 2005 Monaghan were at the bottom of the pile. We were playing in Division 2B.
“In my first year with Monaghan were playing in Leitrim, we were playing in London, we were playing in Wicklow.
“Places like that. Banty raised the expectations and raised the standards in Monaghan back then,” McManus said.
McManus knows McEnaney well and pointed out that while the new manager has been away from the senior team for many years he has still been heavily involved in coaching.
“He would have managed the Monaghan senior team back in 2007. He actually handed me my debut. He was with us for three or four years then went away and came back and managed the minor team two or three years ago.
“He also managed the u20s last year or so. He’s a Monaghan man at heart and he just wants to be involved. He’s assembled a fairly strong backroom team there,” McManus said.
Monaghan had a poor season in 2019, narrowly avoiding relegation from Division 1 in the league and crashing out of the championship in the second round of the qualifiers.
After such strong performances from Monaghan in recent years, their star forward couldn’t quite put his finger on what went wrong for his side.
“I suppose the key for any team now is getting to the Super 8s. It’s like two separate seasons now.
“You have your provincial championship and then you get to the Super 8s and regroup. That was very much our intention this year as well and things just didn’t work for us.
“We had a good start to the league and then after that everything went south. It was nearly a case of the harder you tried the worse things got,” McManus commented.
The Clontibret man did see plenty of reason for optimism going into next season however and paid tribute to departing manager Malachy O’Rourke.
“Malachy O’Rourke over the last six or seven years was a breath of fresh air for Monaghan football.
“It’s now up to the panel of players that are there and obviously the new management to carry that on and see if we can build on it a bit,” McManus said.
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