Vince Morrissey happy to be leaving Mallow in a strong position

While Vince Morrissey’s tenure with the Mallow hurling team last just one season, it proved to be a mutually beneficial relationship.

Having been relegated from the senior A grade at the end of 2023, the north Cork side struggled initially to turn things around in the Co-op SuperStores Premier IHC as they lost to Ballincollig and then Aghabullogue but victory over Éire Óg earned them a knockout spot on scoring difference.

Another win, against Dungourney, earned them a semi-final spot. While their year ended there, there was no disgrace in losing to the eventual champions, Watergrasshill. Morrissey is satisfied that Mallow learned from him and coach Claude Gough, while also having added to his own managerial portfolio.

“One of the key indicators for any coach or manager is that you leave it in a better place than what it was,” he says, “and I think that that’s achieved.”

An executive search specialist based in Kinsale, Morrrissey returned to Ireland four years ago after spending more than a decade and a half working in China, the US and the UK.

Having contacted Kinsale GAA Club on Facebook looking to get involved as a way of settling in the community, he helped them to win the Carrigdhoun JAHC for the first time in 13 years and then spent 2021 with Belgooly, winning a county junior B double and laying the foundations for them to go on to south-east junior A glory the following year.

In addition, two years with Sliabh Rua’s U16 camogie side yielded a P2 county title in 2023 and the P2 league and P1 championship this year.

Morrissey’s methods revolve around dealing with each individual player in his care. The focus on growth and evolution is something he first had to deal with himself, having suffered a shattered femur in a car accident as a teenager.

“At 16 years of age, I was told that I wouldn’t walk again,” he says.

“You had to rebuild yourself physically, mentally and emotionally and you had to work on your spirit as well.

“I spent three months in hospital, so I started reading books on self-development. That was really the catalyst for my own transformation.”

Morrissey went on to win an All-Ireland intermediate medal with Cork in 2003 and then, after moving from America to England, he linked up with Fullen Gaels of Manchester, playing in an All-Ireland club JHC final against Bennettsbridge of Kilkenny.

That led to him captaining Lancashire and, after an initial retirement was reversed, he kept goal for them in a Lory Meagher Cup final against Sligo in 2018. That he ended up gracing the Croke Park turf later in his career was somewhat ironic.

“With Cork intermediates, we played everywhere except Croke Park,” he says, “and I remember the manager Seán O’Brien being very frustrated.

“You’d given up on the idea of ever playing there and you go to the UK and end up playing there twice!”

Such a wide and varied career brought Morrissey to the coaching side, having first dabbled in camogie while still a player. Ultimately, he feels that the players are the most important part of any mix and each one must be attended to.

“You have to deconstruct a player,” he says.

“I don’t go in to add to what’s there, first of all I’ll observe the default mode. We all have it, the safety mechanism, and with most people it’s subconscious, a blind spot.

“It’s about highlighting that and asking if they’re open to a growth conversation. I’m not the ‘command and control’ type of leader – ‘servant leader’ is the new-age title.”

Of course, every player is different.

“I look at players as being like radio stations,” Morrissey says.

“Everyone has different frequencies and you’re trying to tune them in to the goal. The thing is that everyone has different goals, both personal and collectively.

“You’ll normally have your five or six leaders in the dressing room, but it’s about what the supporting cast will do.

“When you can get the balance right and get the supporting cast leading – the leaders are normally duals and so when they come back and realise, ‘Hold on, I need to get up to their pace,’ that’s really where you see true growth happening in a team.

“No matter what your levels of success, people will only listen to you if you’re making sense.”
Such an approach can bring rewards, but it is by necessity also quite time-consuming.

“January, Mallow, 60 one-to-one chats, average of 45 minutes,” Morrissey says.

“Everybody got a call – ‘Where are you as an individual, what do you want, where do you want to go?’ You’re breaking guys down, because I’m only as good as their ability to open up. If the desire to grow is there, I’ll match that.

“There’s a big difference between having an interest in something and being fully committed.”

The Mallow gig came about after Morrissey had had discussions with Gough, a friend for more than two decades, about clubbing together. Coming in to a team coming off a relegation and trying to getting the graph pointing upwards again is not an easy talk.

“It depends on the compound interest,” he says.

“If you’ve a team struggling for longer than one or two years, the amount of resistance to change that they’re going to build up will be enormous – even if they’re stuck in a rut.

“What happens is that you become the rut and it forms an identity and creates a shell around the mindset.

“You have to very delicate in how you deal with it. There’s no bulldozer approach – from my direct experience, that doesn’t work.

“You’re there to open up the panel to the idea of becoming their best selves. That incorporates physical, mental, work on the spirit, technical and tactical – I call it the Rubik’s cube.

“Every club is different and every club is unique, which is why I think the individual approach is best.”

In tandem with Mallow, he was still with the Sliabh Rua U16 camogie team. Naturally, dealing with adult male players and juvenile females means a different kind of messaging, but the overall principles are the same.

“Number one, you have to be really good at judging your audience,” Morrissey says, “and number two, reading the temperature in the environment.

“When you’re doing anything for so long, you can read a player quite quickly and read them emotionally, which is the important thing.

“One of the girls was nervous before throw-in but you can deal with it when you have a psychologically safe environment. That is the common thread through all groups – when they feel psychologically safe and brave that they can put their hand up before a county final and say, ‘I’m really nervous.’”
There is of course no magic wand for an instant fix, as Mallow initially found.

“After the first 15 minutes against Ballincollig, they had eight wides,” Morrissey says.

“The default was, ‘Here we go again,’ and the performance subsided for the rest of the game.

“Then we had to correct that before the Aghabullogue match. Denis Hayes was back and he made a difference, he was fearless, but it’s hard to get everyone to buy into that mode.”

Overall, there was an improvement but the bottom line was still defeat. It left everything hanging on the Éire Óg game and, while Mallow did surge into a big lead, their opponents came back at them.

“We were hanging on and then it was down to the players,” Morrissey says.

“You’ve done your moves on the line and then you have to realise, ‘We have to leave them at it now.’

“It’s down to their resolve. Unless you let them at it, you don’t know how strong it is.”

While he is moving on, he is looking forward to following Mallow’s progress from afar.

“Mallow now has a strong foundation in place,” he says, “everything was done to empower the players.

“Empowered players are there now and it is up to them to channel it into something powerful.

With the right focus on both individual growth and team cohesion, I believe the next management team can take the reinvigorated talent within Mallow and transform it into sustained performances.”

For Morrissey, there are likely to be new opportunities coming and his approach should reap more rewards wherever he lands.