ROWING FEATURE:THE WORD creative has picked up some unfortunate connotations – think creative accountancy, creative excuses, etc – but Martin McElroy wants to honour the word in its original meaning: he intends to create a new Irish international rowing system which will rank with the best in the world.

It might seem a grandiose ambition for a country which did poorly at the first World Cup early this month and is sending only adaptive athletes to next week’s World Cup in Munich [June 19th-21st], but the 46-year-old Galwayman has both the background and the impressive start in his new job as performance director of Rowing Ireland to suggest it will be worth following his progress.

With the recent addition of former international Derek Holland as the new lead coach for juniors, McElroy has already assembled a top-class team of four to guide the sport. Rob Baker, the new under-23 coach, and Adrian Cassidy came on board from Cambridge University Boat Club with admirable records.

McElroy himself, who has a degree in engineering from UCD and an MBA from Imperial College, coached the British senior eight to a gold medal at the Olympics in Sydney. He was involved at the top level in the sport in Britain as it built outwards from a small core of top-class athletes to a system which is the envy of the world.

Talent ID will be the next piece to slot into McElroy’s jigsaw. He has signed the papers with Sport Northern Ireland so that they will provide funding to set up the system in Belfast. The goal, he says, is to also establish one in Dublin.

McElroy’s vision for Irish rowing goes beyond High Performance (HP), but it is what he is being paid to oversee, and he is clear about what this means for Irish rowing.

“High Performance is not a democracy and we seem to be operating in a mindset that somehow or other it is some sort of wishy-washy thing.

“High Performance is ruthless. It is very clear about: ‘here’s where we’ve got to get to; what does it take to get there’ – and ruthlessly pursuing that.

“A lot of times (this is) not very nice. But people have to make their minds up what it is they actually want.

“Going to the Olympics, that’s just going to the Olympics. That’s like saying: ‘why don’t I climb halfway up Everest?’ If I said to you my goal was to climb halfway up Everest, and you wrote that in the newspaper, people would say ‘what the hell’s that about?’

“If you are going to participate in the Olympics you should be setting your targets high, and your mind should be focused enough to go for it. And then you work backwards from there.

“People are still struggling with that in this country. There’s still this thing of, I suppose, ‘isn’t it great just to get there’. The problem is, when you’re there you’re just cannon fodder.”

SINCE HE took up the reins early this year he has constantly stressed the need to create a sustainable system. In 1996 Ireland had a fourth-place finish in the Olympics; in 2004 a sixth; we won three World Championship gold medals in 2001; two crews finished 10th in Beijing. These were our “few moments in time”.

“In the last Olympiad we had two crews you could say were the beginnings of the results of some sort of progress. Up to that point everything was an individual effort. If Sam Lynch hadn’t knocked on the door of St Michael’s one day, Sam would never have been on the radar.”

I suggest that Sam Lynch would say that venerable coach Thor Nilsen was a big part of his development as an athlete. “Yes, but Sam Lynch found the sport first, and then the sport found him. But he was already there, and he was determined.

“There’s a great story about Sam walking up to Thor when he was about 14 years old, saying ‘my name is Sam Lynch, you’ll be hearing more about me’. Whether it’s true or not, it’s good enough.

“It demonstrates that those are people who found the sport and they happened to be mentally strong people who wanted to succeed. In a way that was almost accidental for the sport that you find those kind of people. We’ve got to get to a position where we’re finding those people systemically.”

He accepts that work like this has a long timescale – “you won’t see the proper results of what we are trying to create until 2016” – but it has to be done. “We need to do this stuff. We can’t just go along the way we have been going. It’s almost been like being at the roulette table; having all the chips in your hand and betting on one number.

“We can’t do that. We have, being realistic, very little credibility with the Sports Council anymore – and I can understand why. We spent a stack of money, as have an awful lot of sports, and delivered little.

“This goes back to performance and the [example of going] halfway up Everest. It hasn’t been focused enough.”

So are the numbers there to provide the base for success? “There will be,” he says, “if people are totally open and honest and get stuck into it and say, ‘right, I’m going for this’, and are prepared to commit themselves [then] why not?

“I think people are a little bit afraid. What I like about the guys at the moment, people like Seán [Casey] and Cormac [Folan] and Martin Walsh, just as an example, those guys. Cormac and Seán were 10th at the Olympics and they’ll tell you: ‘I don’t want to do that again’.

“If I have to turn around and say to them: ‘the best I can see is the same thing’, they would walk away from the sport. And they’d be right. Why do it again?”

THE OTHER BIG question concerns funding. All the coaching staff, excluding the head of the Talent ID in Belfast who will be paid by Sports NI on a multi-year contract, must wait for the vote of the Irish Sports Council next year to know what their annual income is.

Success in the coming year may be limited and come London, the hope is for one boat in the final and, at a stretch, one medal. With this level of success, McElroy will have his critics. Excluding the Sports Council, who have been right to be “blunt”, he has a simple response.

“I don’t care, there are a handful of people in this country whose opinion I would actually value. It’s one of the things we Irish are good at – begrudging, and knocking people down. Unless they’ve been there and done it themselves or they have a really well-constructed point as to what we should be doing then they can sod off. I don’t care.”

The April trials drew criticism for the amount of communication with athletes, especially the juniors. He takes it on the chin.

“I would accept that . . . a few of us were trying to do too much at once. We need to get more people involved.”

Changes will also come at the National Rowing Centre, which is a jaw-dropping “€5 million building beside a lake”, but is “soulless”.

There will also be an emphasis on building up relationships with the universities. The under-23 sector is crucial as rowing is a sport which can be taken up late with success.

One call he won’t be making is to his old schoolmate from Mount St Joseph in Roscrea, Brian Cowen. Or not yet.

“At the moment all we’re doing is digging foundations. We’re down in the ground at the moment trying to sort ourselves out.

“Once we start to start to get above the ground – believe me, I’m not shy about asking for stuff.”