Is Micheál Martin the Mick McCarthy of Irish politics?

World of Politics with Harry McGee

I know it’s simple and fatuous to compare sports and politics – and yet there are few other arenas of life that give you better examples for explaining politics in clear terms, especially when it comes to success and failure.

In sport, when things go downhill, it quickly becomes stark and glaring and exposed. You are a winner or you are a loser; no hiding places, no room for compromises, or consolations.

Micheál Martin reminds me of a certain type of football manager. They tend to be helicoptered in to a club that’s fallen into the relegation zone or is languishing in a lower division.

The new manager comes in, injects new energy into the club, brings in new ideas, a few new players, works a bit of magic. Within weeks the have-nots have become the haves, and are out of danger, or challenging for promotion. What Mick McCarthy is doing with Cardiff City at the moment would be a good example of that.

The problem is what do you do with Lazarus after you’ve brought him back to life? In the following season, those managers are expected to kick on and bring home trophies – with initial success comes unrealistic expectations. And more often than not they are not realised.

Managers learn very quickly that miracles have a limited shelf life, and so do managers who fail to repeat miracles.

When Martin became leader of Fianna Fáil in advance of the 2011 general election, the party was in free-fall and facing annihilation.

All of the 20 TDs who were returned were male and some were what you might call confirmed backbenchers, more focused on constituency minutiae than the national picture.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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