We may like to think that the GAA we see now each week is a much better, faster, more skilful game than was played years ago.
But if it were not for the influence of former Dublin manager Kevin Heffernan in the 1970s and 80s, we may never have had the high-class Gaelic football we know now.
The St Vincent’s clubman is widely regarded as one of the most innovative figures in Irish sporting history and, to remember the All-Ireland winner as a player and manager, a new DVD documentary has been released with contributions from several of his former charges.
Among those featured in Wrapped Up in Blue is the 1983 All-Ireland winning captain Tommy Drumm. He spoke to SportsJOE about his former boss and explained his first time sharing a dressing room with the legend known as ‘Heffo’.
“There was a Comhaltas game played in Croke Park in 1974 and a few of us were lucky to get brought along to play two games. I was looking at him across the room and I was wondering if he was going to give me a jersey and, if he throws the jersey in your direction you know you’re only going to get one shot at it.”
“There was no words, there was no coaching session, you knew the message was clear. If you have something to offer you’ll get 10 minutes and your actions will speak for your ability.”
Heffernan’s coaching and management was legendary from his early days with his own club through to the Dublin senior set up. However, the three-time All-Ireland winner explains that when Heffernan took over as Dublin manager in 1973, he identified two areas of improvement.
First up, he tackled his players’ fitness before moving on to improving their mental and physical toughness, as he tried to end the perception of Dublin teams as a ‘soft touch’ when playing in big games in Croke Park.
Heffernan was also interested in how a tactical battle could win games and how players could change position and move their opponents out of place. Drumm has fond memories of time spent at team meetings in a timber cabin in Parnell Park during Dublin sessions:
“Team talks were a whole new dimension. There was lots of talk of strategy there and where we’d have team talks and to understand the thinking around the game and the exceptions of each player to speak up as well and explain what you were going to do on the big day. You could also speak up if you thought the approach was right or wrong.
Heffernan’s man-management skills were legendary with almost every Dublin player commenting on how the personnel manager with the ESB, and later Chairman of the Labour Court, was loyal when needed, but ruthless too. Drumm said:
“You knew he was supportive of you, but he was unforgiving. If you had a bad game and you knew that, you wouldn’t be picked the next day. He knew the team had to be ruthless to be successful. He wasn’t a romantic, he was clinical, and he knew the difference between success and failure.”
Heffernan’s career was dominated by the spectre of Kerry, having lost the infamous 1955 final to The Kingdom, while his team’s record will always be matched against the Mick O’Dwyer stars studded sides of the 1970s and ’80s.
Drumm feels The Kingdom were always an opposition that ‘Heffo’ enjoyed playing and developing a tactical ploy to counteract them.
“Beating Kerry was a whole other ingredient for him. I think the loss in 1955 really hurt him and it drove him on for a large part of his career to get a Dublin team that could beat Kerry in an All-Ireland final. He got a great satisfaction out of the 1976 win.”
Drumm is full of praise for Heffernan but is a little taken aback when asked to name a weakness. After some thought he feels that a failure to fully appreciate a revitalised Kerry side in the 1978 and ’79 finals was a problem:
“When were were beaten in those two finals maybe defensively we weren’t as prepared as we should have been. We didn’t come up with a strategy to break them down and we were pulled around too much and we paid a huge price. I’m not sure it was totally his failing, maybe it was more the team, or both, I’m not sure.”
Drumm led Heffernan’s side to the All-Ireland title in 1983 in the infamous final against Galway that saw the ‘Dirty Dozen, or ’12 apostles’, claim Sam Maguire. However Drumm has regrets about about missing Heffernan’s funeral when he passed away in January of 2013.
“I’d just started a new job in London that week and when I heard he had died I flew back on the Friday night. I met his family and came back for the removal. We carried his coffin down Griffith Avenue but I flew back that Monday night and missed the funeral the following day. I watched it on TV and I was pretty upset I’d missed it on the mass.”
Heffernan’s third anniversary is approaching shortly but it’s clear in the current Dublin team that the basis of attacking football, married with a hard edge, contains echoes of the great Dublin teams moulded by ‘Heffo’.
Drumm believes Heffernan’s legacy is safe in the hands of Jim Gavin,
“I see in Jim there is a steeliness in him and look at his performance and he has Dublin playing great football all across the pitch. Where Kevin might have had a cigarette Jim doesn’t, but you can see his thought process is very clear.”
Kevin Heffernan: Wrapped up in Blue,’ is available to buy for €14.99 from Golden Discs HMV, Xtravision, Easons, Tower Records, Amazon, the Irish Film Institute, JCs Supermarket and Jones Garden Centre.
