“I rate it as high as anything I ever achieved. Just before I came to Kildare, they played Kilkenny in an O’Byrne Cup game and Kilkenny beat them. Would you believe that?”
Mick O’Dwyer is a man of standards.
You don’t accumulate 12 All-Ireland titles as a player and a manager when you accept anything short of your all. The Kerry man doesn’t do second best and that’s why, 17 years later, he still bears the scars of missing out on All-Ireland glory with Kildare.
He’s done more than any man on this island could ever dream about doing in a dugout. He’s guided his native county to Sam Maguire an unprecedented eight times. He bridged a 42-year gap with the Lilywhites and delivered Leinster success for them before turning around and doing it again. 57 years Laois had to wait before Micko brought them to the provincial promised land, and they haven’t been back since. Just like Kildare.
But, as the Kingdom prepare to do battle with the same outfit that ambushed them in Croke Park back in 1998 when Mick O’Dwyer upset the odds and sent Páidí Ó Sé’s men packing, the Waterville native has grown nostalgic.
17 years later, Kerry men and women are still cursing Denis O’Dwyer’s disallowed goal that denied them an All-Ireland final berth, everyone of them convinced that it was the wrong call to rule a square ball. Everyone of them but one.
“All Kerry people say he wasn’t in the square but I think he was, Just about. Maybe,” Micko offered a wry smile.
“It was amazing when we got them going. They were beaten by Kilkenny, that’s how low it was in the county at that time. I came for six months but sure I stayed for an unbelievable period after. We got to league finals and we got to an All-Ireland final and we won Leinster titles. We had a great run and, with a bit of a luck, we could’ve won the All-Ireland.
“We had some great players in that Kildare team. We had our full back, Ronan Quinn, who didn’t play in the final, he got injured. We had Sos Dowling and Johnny Crofton and Niall Buckley and Glenn Ryan and Anthony Rainbow and Ken Doyle and Willie McCreery,” he rhymes them off like it was only yesterday. “Jaysus, some wonderful footballers. Great players. Declan Kerrigan was another great player up front and Martin Lynch, of course, he was one of the first All-Stars.
“On the day of the final though [in 1998], Buckley was on the team but he got injured against Meath in the Leinster final, he didn’t play against Kerry and we gambled with him. He is one of the finest footballers Kildare has produced but he wasn’t right. We lost our full back, Ronan Quinn, he wasn’t able to play in the final and Glenn Ryan was injured going into the game as well. That’s the luck of the game.
“We were after beating the three previous All-Ireland champions; we had beaten Meath, Dublin and Kerry to get through to the ’98 All-Ireland final and Galway beat us. But I maintain it was because of the three players we had on the injured list.”
A man as successful as Mick O’Dwyer thinking back and hurting, wondering what might have been. It beggars belief. Perhaps it’s only in the GAA where this happens. Where your own medals and trophies mean nothing when you’ve committed so wholly to a new parish or a new county. For 11 seasons, one of the Kingdom’s finest products was hellbent on squeezing every last drop of talent out of Kildare to bring them success.
And it still hurts him to think that he couldn’t take the people of Kildare one step farther.
“I’ll tell you, the passion for the game of Gaelic Football is unrivalled in Kildare,” he explained. “It is unbelievable. They are mad, crazy GAA people and if they could just get their football team going. When I was there, every town and every village in the county were covered in white: flags, buntings, they were even cutting up sheets to make flags. Everywhere you travelled with the county at that time, there was white flying somewhere. It was unbelievable.”
This Sunday
But O’Dwyer doesn’t believe that Kerry will be caught on Sunday in the All-Ireland quarters like they were when the sides last met in the championship at the tail end of last century. Complacency is not an option with this current crop. They don’t underestimate teams.
“You can be damn bloody sure that they don’t because they’re a team on the way up themselves,” he spoke with SportsJOE. “Whereas that Kerry team in the period of ’98, they were going well and they had won a few All-Irelands and they were looking good.”
“They don’t talk too much about this team but that All-Ireland win last year was an amazing achievement in my opinion because they came from nowhere. Nowhere. And, I’ll tell you now, I think they’re getting better and better.
“Two of the best midfielders in the country in my opinion, in Moran and Maher. Then you have Bryan Sheehan as well who you can fit in in the middle of the field and you have Johnny Buckley who you can fit in there. Midfield has a big bearing on games all of the time. People think it hasn’t but it still has.
“Kieran Donaghy coming off in the last game against Cork won’t do him any harm at all. It will liven him up a bit.
“Colm Cooper, I’m just wondering if he’s 100 per cent. A player of his talent, you would use him in any game but he mustn’t be 100 per cent right. He only needed one pass the last day against Cork. He created the goal and he made the difference in the game. He was no sooner on the pitch than he got possession and he reminded me of Mikey Sheehy against Dublin with his quick free kick. It just shows you the way he thinks, one of the best players we’ve ever produced. He can change the game when he’s on but it might be a bit too late at times.”
“Kildare reawakened the interest in Leinster the last day against Cork,” the Kerry legend continued. “Jaysus, they gave a marvellous performance. They have some lovely forwards there. You have [Eoin] Doyle and [Emmet] Bolton in the back line, two fine players. And [Thomas] Moolick and [Paul] Cribbin in the middle of the field are not bad players by any standard.
“Then you have [Eamonn] Callaghan and [Alan] Smith up front with Niall Kelly and Eoghan O’Flaherty. They’re all good forwards and good finishers but Kelly was a revelation the last day, he played very well. Kerry will have to keep their eyes on them fellas, they’re pretty good.”
Dublin
Last season, Kerry had the luxury of winning Sam without having to worry about the problem of Dublin. The likelihood is that they won’t win another championship without overthrowing the capital.
But it’s a prospect Mick O’Dwyer, for one, is relishing. He always does.
“They’re looking exceptionally good at the moment,” he admitted. “I think they’re the team to beat, to be honest. It would be nice if we had a Kerry-Dublin final again, wouldn’t it? Kerry don’t fear coming to Croke Park, most other counties do. I think that’s the big difference. It would be a cracking final.
“Jim Gavin and Eamonn Fitzmaurice are certainly the two best managers but there are good managers down the line as well who don’t have the same materials. You have to do well at underage level if you are to achieve something at senior level and a lot of the counties are not putting in the work at underage. It all starts from underage.”
Modern football
In an era where even club players are squatting more than they are kick passing, O’Dwyer believes that some teams have lost their way and they have lost sight of what actually happens on the field.
“I think there’s not enough football being played in training, to be very honest,” Micko stated. “The ball should be used in every exercise you do. If you do that, the players will become better at the skills of the game.
“It’s a terrible state of affairs now when you have to bring out your goalkeeper to kick a 45’. That’s crazy. Crazy. That will tell you that they’re not practicing the art of kicking the dead ball off the ground. And that comes with practice.”
“If you want to be good at any part of the skills in Gaelic Games, you have to practice them regularly. And, if you’re watching now, you could have 30 passes before a ball is kicked. I mean, you have to wonder. A ball will always travel quicker than a man at any time.
“If you have the right structure with big men in the square, I think the quick, direct ball is the best gambit of them all.
“You could be the best athlete in Ireland but you might not be able to play. You want to be a good footballer. When you go out onto the pitch on a given day, what do you have to do? You have to play with a ball.
“But you see all of the bloody stuff that’s going on at the present time now. Teams spend about 20 minutes warming up before they even start their training session. Then they go through most of the training session without the ball. I think a ball, from the moment you get onto the training pitch until the moment you get off it, should be used.”
But the former Laois, Wicklow and Clare boss hardly ignored a bit of hard work either. One of the myths that surround his greatness was that he would send his teams on long-distance runs. He knows the scientists would tell him it’s not sport specific, he knows that he’s not developing marathon runners. He knows all of that. But he did it for one reason and one reason alone. Character.
“That’s the way you’ll test the mentality of a player, distance stuff. In any other little tricks around, they’ll escape it or get away with it but if he’s a player that will give you 100 per cent, he’ll go the distance. That’s why we got to where we were with Kildare, with the amount of work we did at The Curragh. We did a pile of work at The Curragh.
“That was the one example, if you look at it. From being beaten by Kilkenny, to being pipped in an All-Ireland final, winning two Leinster titles after it, it will show you that it paid dividends.”
“I’m still a big believer in it. But you must play plenty of football. There is a time to do the distance stuff, which is very important. It shows you the calibre of the player that you have. It was for mental reasons more than it was for physical reasons.
“The belief that you can stay going forever. Sure some of our players, Spillane and Jacko, they’d run all day for you. Up and down the field all day long. That’s what you need in players.
“I remember one All-Ireland final, our goalkeeper got injured and where was Spillane? He was on the goal line and the next minute he was up front scoring a point. But all that came from hard work, distance stuff. Belief. That comes with distance training, I don’t care what anybody would tell me. I would still do that today. But playing plenty of football as well.
“Of course football has changed. There’s a lot of defensive football now, like soccer. And then you have a lot of basketball with all the passing so it has changed a bit but it generally does anyway, it evolves in every period. But Kerry won an All-Ireland last year by stationing Donaghy in the square. He made the difference. That was an old system and it is still working.”
“Teams like Donegal, they’re working with the players they have,” he continued. “They thought that was the only chance they had of winning, to play a defensive game and they had it well worked out. It worked for them. And that’s what it’s all about, winning. Whether you like it or not.
“It’s a system that’s working and there’s a fair bit of intelligence put into it as well. But you can’t beat having a couple of big men in and around the square and kicking that ball and moving it quick and fast. That style will win All-Irelands and, if you get a team with big men up front and playing the ball quick and fast, I think it will still work.
What’s the secret?
So just how did Mick O’Dwyer do it?
You don’t make history in three different counties – and make history for the entire sport – without having something between the ears or some sort of trick to the trade.
But, for Micko, there was no magic potion; not even a secret.
It came down to football. Football and work.
O’Dwyer’s teams did their work on the training ground – and they played plenty of football while they were at it. So there was no real need for the pre-game hair-raising speeches. He didn’t even need to go ballistic on the sidelines. The work was done.
“You can complicate it too with a lot of teams. If you have outstanding, class players who are giving you 100 per cent in training, when they have that done, they’ll not be far away,” he said.
“There are times when you have to let a team go onto the pitch and play as they want to play. And the way you can do that is by having them in training, doing the things in training, and you don’t have to be lecturing them anymore. You do it all on the training pitch in the lead up to a game.
“In ’75, we trained for 27 consecutive nights. We did everything and the players got to know each other so well from doing the backs and forwards and the football games and then they got into their own moves and the whole lot.
“Stereotype stuff, I don’t agree with too much. You let the players do their thing. Put them on the pitch and let them do it. Yeah, you have to plan, of course, but our plan was six backs, six forwards, tight marking, win the ball, play it quick and fast. The moment you got it, release it. Release it straight away. And it worked. It would still work today.”
Still, there must be something – anything – that they’re doing in Kerry that has seen them accrue 37 All-Ireland senior titles. If it’s not in the water, it must be in the breeding.
“Every player in the county that plays in Kerry, their one ambition is to play for the county,” Micko offered the simplest of explanations. “And, by Jesus, when they get a chance, they will give it everything. They won’t be ducking and diving and dodging or anything like that. They give it 100 per cent. And that’s why they win All-Irelands.
“No shortcuts.”
Mick O’Dwyer might look back over the most successful managerial career the game will ever see with a couple of regrets that a few of the big days were left behind. But through all of the near misses and all of the success stories, he can be satisfied that he was true to himself. He can be satisfied that he always gave it everything. He gave it everything for the cause.
100 per cent.
That’s all he ever asked for. And that’s what he gave himself, too.
100 per cent.
No shortcuts.
Brady Family Ham, proud sponsors of Kildare GAA, are encouraging fans to look out for complimentary Brady Family Ham pre-game snacks at Maynooth and Heuston train stations before kick-off on Sunday.
