Who knows if we'll see John Crofton, ever again, managing a football team at county level? Kildare will miss him.

They may find an even better man to take up the job in the next month or two but, still, a county like this can simply not afford to lose a man like John Crofton so quickly, so easily.

Like so many of us, of sound mind and of our own free will, who have taken the seemingly disastrous decision to 'manage a county' which appears to be going absolutely nowhere, John Crofton lasted just two years. Some, of course, last a little longer than that. Luke Dempsey, this same week as Crofton's departure, announced that he was taking it upon himself to serve a fourth year as Longford team boss.

And good for Luke. If he is enjoying it, and if he is making steady, even if it is agonisingly slow progress in Longford (which is the case on both fronts) then it is entirely sensible for Luke Dempsey and Longford to continue their partnership.

They both seem to know what they're doing, and at the very least what they are doing is ensuring that the Longford senior football team is respected by its own people, and by football people all around the country, as a serious and fairly talented bunch of lads.

The real problem for Luke, as John Crofton discovered over the last two years, is getting beyond that. Kildare have been light years away from winning Leinster for the guts of a decade. Longford, thanks to Luke, have come a long way, but are now a similar distance away from becoming number one in the province.

Meath, until Colm Coyle came around the corner last autumn in the company of Tommy Dowd and Dudley Farrell, seemed to be heading in the wrong direction in Leinster. The team, over the last two months, however, has very clearly put on the brakes. Last weekend's victory over Galway, which has positioned Meath in the All-Ireland quarter-finals, was built on a good game plan and a great deal of self-belief. The team fired, and it has been a long, long time since we have seen a Meath team do such a thing.

The win was founded upon the authority which Mark Ward and Nigel Crawford brought to bear in the middle of the field, and was signed and sealed by excellence, if not quite genius (just yet! ) of Stephen Bray up front. And in good, old-style Meath fashion, nearly everyone tackled hard and nearly everyone moved the ball fast and long.

It was a bit disappointing to see the management reverting to Graham Geraghty, and it was plain to see that 'The Geraghty Show' distracted the team and the Meath fans alike.

This Meath team, if it is to develop and win something big in the next two or three years, will have to get over the man and move on.

It unlikely that Meath are going to win anything this year, and there is a danger that we have now seen the very best which this team has to offer in 2007. But the 'change' in Meath has been for real.

They're back, they're competitive again, and they're afraid of nobody.

More than anything else, the people of Meath are now fully expecting their senior football team to respond to a manager whom 99.9% of the men, women and children in the county consider as their 'special one' . . . with my apologies to Jose Mourinho. I think the lads on the Meath team know this too.

They know that there is a special bond between Coyle and the entire county, and that has clearly had an effect on the team. It's motivating them and inspiring them. And, as everyone knows, a confident Meath team is a dangerous thing.

Coyle's only in Year One, and while it's a dangerous thing making predictions about the lifespan of county football and hurling managers, everyone knows there's going to be a Year Two, and most likely a Year Three and a Year Four and who knows what after that. Yep, there's a sense of an era beginning.

John Crofton never had that luxury in Kildare. Seems to me Kildare football folk are either half-awake or dozing solidly. There's not the same passion, pang or sense of expectation as in Meath. In Kildare, it's been a story these last two years of One Man and His Team.

Quite why the public in Kildare should fail to respond to someone who played with Kildare as long as Coyle played with Meath, and who was as 'unaccommodating' in the Kildare defence as Coyle was in the Meath defence, is disappointing as it is surprising.

Crofton had learned his trade as a team manager since his playing days, and he's always been straight and honest, and serious about himself and the Kildare senior football team.

I didn't hear any shouts for Crofton to sit down and reconsider. Of course the year was disappointing and the improvements in championship performances were minimal over the last two years. But the people of Kildare should not consider themselves special. They should look at the people of Longford.

A good man is hard to find these days. Kildare will quickly discover that the pool of serious football managers who really want to take a county job has grown smaller and smaller, since they were last on the look-out two years ago, and they might not find one man there with the character or credentials of John Crofton.

It's too easy to get rid of a good manager, and it's desperately hard to find a good one . . . especially someone within your own county who has the sense of duty and the wherewithal to get everyone, public and players alike.

Is Peter Ford a good manager? The answer to that question is a definite yes. He's hard working and thorough and resourceful in his duties. But!

He didn't have a history of winning and he wasn't a native of the county, so that immediately put him at a disadvantage when he took up the massive position (after John O'Mahony and two All-Ireland titles) of Galway senior football team manager three years ago. In that time, Ford has failed to muster up another big summer from the team, and he has also missed out on the opportunity of getting stuck into some serious rebuilding of the Galway team, and the decision to leave Padraig Joyce and one or two other Galway 'pensioners' on the bench last weekend was too late - and a little reckless - at that point in the season.

It's been a very disappointing three years, for everyone in the county. But just because he reached his third anniversary as team boss with a fairly gutless defeat by Meath in Portlaoise, should Peter Ford be sent packing? Or should he be allowed to pack his own bags and go . . . even if the county invites him to stay longer?

There is now a big decision to be made by everyone in Galway. The County Board chairman has said that he and his men, and Ford, will get their heads around this decision after the 'races' in a fortnight's time. Creating some room between the Meath defeat and the big decision is a wise move.

Ultimately, if Galway take a businesslike view of the situation, and look at the return in victories for the time and effort and money invested in the team over the last three years, it will be quite clear that Peter Ford should now be replaced as team manager.

And then the County must look into its own heart, and its own resources, to find the right man to make Galway great again. Galway now needs a Galway man as manager.

With Ford, and O'Mahony before him, it's been too long without having one of their own deciding what's good for the Galway team.