Alone he stands: Tommy Carr and countless others are expected to turn around years of disappointment and underperformance but it's not possible

Last Tuesday afternoon, I had the pleasure of Jimmy Magee's company for almost two hours, just the two of us remembering people and teams, fights and fighters – some of whom performed in a roped ring and some of whom performed on football fields. We readily agreed that a great many footballers we have both known would have earned a decent living in the noble art. Time and cups of tea passed by. We were seated in the front lounge of the new Hilton Kilmainham Hotel, reminiscing, forecasting, and occasionally looking across the road at the famous old jail. Jimmy seemed surprised when I mentioned to him that some footballers I had known very well as friends could easily have ended up in a place such as that sombre building as a result of some of their less than noble actions on the field in a Meath jersey.

For me, it was an especially historic conversation, as I actually heard Jimmy Magee ask a question, aloud, to which he immediately confessed that he had absolutely no answer.

How does a great team like Cavan stop winning? That was Jimmy's question. What happened, he wondered, that resulted in one of the finest and most powerful football teams in the country stopping in its tracks and remaining frozen on the spot for an incredible half a century?

Me? I'd no idea of the answer either. I was no help to Jimmy last Tuesday, and I am no help to Tribune readers this morning. All I've known in my time is that a long list of good and worthy football men have spent long periods of time in that county. Many of these men I have known personally like, for instance, Mattie Kerrigan. A Meath man and my first manager and someone I have known since I was 17 years of age as being a brilliant, inspiring, magical presence in the dressing room or on the sideline.

Today's Cavan manager Tom Carr is a friend of mine. Someone I know to be a smart and eloquent football man, and someone who prepares teams in the same serious and ambitious way in which he has always prepared himself throughout his Gaelic football career.

Tom Carr, it seems to me – and he has never said or intimated any such thing to me – has found the Cavan football team to be an immovable object. There are half a century of the most stubborn of roots there. Tom, I expect, will soon be leaving Cavan by the same road taken by Mattie and others who tried their damnedest before and after Mattie.

• • •

We're at the start of another football year. Last night, and this afternoon, the serious business commenced. Looking into 2010 are some counties with big ideas of themselves and also looking into the distance are a great collection of counties with no idea whatsoever of themselves.

The greatest ill at the heart of Gaelic football, in these modern times, is that there are roughly two dozen of the latter.

In Galway, there's a great buzz. Of course there is. Joe Kernan is descending on the county two or three times each week and that indeed is some sight for anyone who cares at all about the good health of the Galway football team. Kernan is as passionate as he is proven as a football manager. He builds great football teams at club and county level. Full stop.

And in Joe Kernan's home county, in Armagh, there's a little bit of excitement too (about a quarter of the buzz which is being felt in Galway, admittedly) as Paddy O'Rourke begins his first year as a guide and master to a former bitter enemy.

The question I aim to tackle this morning is this: What can one man – one man mostly on his own, and one man in a part-time capacity – really achieve in a county?

Someone as mighty as Joe might get there with Galway and, for the first time in 10 years, talk and walk one of the country's greatest football teams back into an All Ireland final. He might, but it will not be easy. He's got a chance because of who he is and he's got a real chance because of Galway's still rich and nourishing level of expectation.

Otherwise, what can one man do? Any man?

Over the last 10 or 20 years, the GAA has been preoccupied with spending its good money as fast as it possibly can on many good things such as games development – and it has spent large suitcases of money on many questionable things such as the complete refurbishment of 'county grounds' all over the country which will never be full to capacity, ever. EVER!

If I was Director General or President of the GAA – and Tribune readers know that I'd more than fancy my chances of taking up both roles, simultaneously, for a year or two – I'd be aiming the association's chequebook at the funding of full-time management teams (and not just single managers!) in a wide variety of counties.

Just as the GAA leaders in Croke Park encouraged the building of 'county grounds' over the last couple of decades, they now need to support the building of 'county teams' into more competitive and more attractive entities. I'd issue grants to certain counties to help them support full-time management structures, which would be inclusive of a manager, two or three assistant coaches, and their necessary back-up team.

It doesn't really matter how this new management structure is modelled. It could be built to look like the management and coaching structure which exists to one side of any of our provincial rugby teams or it could be built in a more humble way and left to resemble any one of our League of Ireland football teams. Doesn't really matter to me.

Dozens of counties need some serious help and they need more than one man, and his dreams and his dog, arriving into a dressing room and explaining how he is going to change everything which had happened in the past. Almost all of these counties are so badly damaged by decades of neglect and failure that they need professional help.

I'm not going to list these counties this morning. It's still too early in the year for me to start annoying people by writing some plain home truths, and naming names. But, from Dublin, who probably top my list, the whole way down to my county of birth, Carlow, there are county football teams which need to be in the many hands of a group of full-time personnel. I'd be including my 'home' county, Meath, in this emergency listing as well. Time is passing too fast in Meath.

Cavan would be on the list, for sure! Imagine if Tom Carr could deliver himself to the county for 50 or 60 hours each week and could delegate good people to work with him virtually around the clock? Would things start to change in Cavan? They might! Would a new, stronger, more resourceful, more seriously ambitious Cavan football team begin to emerge? It surely would!

The GAA has the county grounds. It now needs all of its county teams to be competitive, to be alive, and to start every new season as attractive and more valuable brands which people will spend good money to see and support.

Wakey, wakey, one last question this morning. What's the other thing dozens of county football teams do not have at the start of a whole new season?

The genuine support of their own people.

lhayes@tribune.ie