HIS name is often among those mentioned when county jobs crop up – and John McEntee admits he would be open to the challenge, should the right job come along.
The Armagh and Crossmaglen All-Ireland winner was most recently mentioned in connection with Monaghan, after leading Clontibret to the 2019 county crown and Inniskeen to last year’s final, and has been linked with plenty of other roles in recent years.
Twin brother Tony is currently in charge of Sligo, having previously worked with Mayo under Stephen Rochford, and McEntee would be open to the idea of following him onto the inter-county scene.
“It’s not something I would rule out,” he said.
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“I’ve been fortunate enough I’ve been coaching 13 or 14 years now at club level, there was good success all along that, but going into county management takes you up into a different level, and there’s a lot more commitment involved.
“I have a full-time job working with the health service and it’s difficult to commit that time to it but, listen, if a conversation came up with the right team, I would certainly consider it.”
For now, though, McEntee’s full focus is on guiding Inniskeen into the last four of the championship on Saturday.
Their only defeat in Group Two came at the hands of Clontibret on the opening weekend of games seven weeks ago, and now Seamus McEnaney’s Corduff stand between the Grattan’s and a semi-final spot.
Corduff won the intermediate title last year, and have shown they mean business in senior football by advancing from Group One of the Monaghan championship.
“They’ve invested a lot of time and effort and you have to admire clubs like that,” said McEntee.
“Banty’s there with them, a Corduff man, and he has put a huge amount of effort in the last number of years as they’ve gone up to senior. It’s a difficult thing in Monaghan to come up from intermediate, teams sort of yo-yo at times, but they’ve stayed up – they got to the quarter-final last year, and they’re in the quarter-final this year.
“They have a very good management team in terms of Banty, Rory Gallagher and Ryan McCluskey - Ryan would come from an S&C background, they’re physically huge strong powerful men, really well conditioned - so they’ve had the best training you could get, they have great facilities…
“When you’re well organised, really fit and powerful, that’ll carry you really far at club level.”
Inniskeen have also made steady progress during McEntee’s two years at the helm.
They lost out to Scotstown in last year’s county final and, having lifted the Mick Duffy Cup in eight of the last 11 years, An Bhoth remain the standard-bearers heading into the business end of another championship.
But the gap, insists McEntee, is narrowing.
“We got to the county final last year, the team has been building there for a number of years, beaten in previous two or three semi-finals so last year was a step forward.
“Monaghan football is incredibly tight and any day you go out, you could be beaten by half a dozen different teams. Obviously, over the last 10 years, Scotstown seem to be the dominant side in Monaghan and everybody else is playing second fiddle to them.
“But when you’re looking at that next layer you can see there’s huge competition, everybody’s driving everybody forward. That’s the real beauty, if you’re a spectator, of going to watch Monaghan football.
“But the margins have got tighter. Scotstown are a big club with a big pick and a lot of footballers, and they’re always going to be kicking about at the top – a bit like Cross there in Armagh.
“Cross are going for their seventh county final in-a-row, even though they’ve been beaten in a few of them. That’s just the space they occupy, everybody else is fighting to face them and hoping things can go well on the day.
“But when they get that chance, everybody fancies themselves. I suppose history shows, though, that there’s still a wee bit of daylight.”
