The Philips Sports Manager of the Year was announced yesterday. Brian Cody didn't win. Again. Cody has only won eight All-Ireland titles since he was last awarded the Philips Sports Manager of the Year in 2003.
His latest 'snubbing' was to be expected. In every previous year Ireland have qualified for a major tournament the Irish manager has been rewarded with the Manager of the Year gong.
Jackie Charlton won it in 1987, 1989 and 1993, Big Mick won in 2001, while Il Trap at least departed for Italy at the end of reign with the 2011 Manager of the Year award to show for his efforts (though the prize was accepted on his behalf by Alan Kelly).
So, assuming he had studied the history of the award, Cody can't have been too cut up by his latest defeat (we're aware he wouldn't lose much sleep either way). But what about all the other years?
Cody, the most successful manager in the history of the GAA, has only won the award once, the same number of times of Liam Sheedy, Joe Kernan and Liam Griffin. All super managers but one time All-Ireland winners.
Cody isn't even out in front in the roll call of Kilkenny managers. Pat Henderson was the inaugural winner of the award back in 1982.
Does Cody deserve more? Paradoxically, is his achievement diminished in the minds of the public because the team he coaches has won so routinely over the years?
Cody has won All-Irelands so relentlessly and routinely over the years that folk are inclined to take his achievements for granted. The oddest consequence of his constancy is that he has become invisible to prize-givers. The more Kilkenny win, the less people are inclined to deify the manager. A manager who presides over a dynasty is often less celebrated than a manager who makes a raid on the elite with an unfancied outfit.
But Cody is surely the best Irish manager of all time. Unlike Mick O'Dwyer, the football manager with whom he is most often compared, Cody has won All-Irelands with completely different teams. The 2015 All-Ireland winning team boasted no players from the team with whom Cody won his first All-Ireland in 2000.
By contrast, Micko's All-Irelands were all won with largely the same core group. Paidi, Mikey Sheehy, Ogie Moran and Pat Spillane were all there as youngsters in 1975 and were still central in the 1986 triumph. Jack O'Shea and Eoin Liston were there for seven of the eight titles.
There was less turnover of personnel along the way, with the result that when those players stepped off the merry go-round in the late 80s and early 90s, Kerry drifted into the wilderness for a decade.
Cody has managed to prevent this.
Cody could definitely have won one or two more Phillips gongs. Who has stood in his way? Declan Kidney owned the award in the late noughties, winning it in 2006, 2008, and 2009. John Oxx won in 2000, the boxing duo of Billy Walsh and Pete Taylor won in 2012, while Schmidt took it home in 2014.
That leaves 2007. Who beat Cody in '07? None other than Drogheda United manager Paul Doolin. A fine achievement to win the title but even League of Ireland fans were scratching their head at that choice.
Let the campaign start now. Assuming Kilkenny win the All-Ireland next year (and given the chaos into which their nearest rivals have descended in the winter months, that assumption looks safer than ever) and assuming Ireland don't reach the quarterfinals of Euro 2016 or win the Grand Slam, then the Sports Manager of the Year award should be Cody's to lose. He's due at least a second one.
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