Duhallow boss reaping his rewards
Exhibit A: how did a Kilbrin man end up singing at the Munich air disaster memorial in Manchester back in 1958?
“I was in boarding school in Manchester at the time,” he says.
“St Bede’s in Moss Side, about 600 yards from Maine Road, Manchester City’s old ground.
“You were either a City or a United supporter. I was a City supporter, and every second Saturday you’d go to Maine Road or Old Trafford. Best, Law, Charlton, all of them.
“When news of the Munich disaster came through, everyone in the school — everyone — was in tears.”
St Bede’s school choir was chosen to perform at a general memorial service in the Manchester Free Trade Hall. The city was freezing in a cold snap, recalls English, with daily reports coming through on the progress of Matt Busby and others in hospital in Munich. He can remember looking down from the stage in the hall at the weeping audience.
“The atmosphere in the entire city was tremendously emotional at the time. The north of England working-class people were ferociously passionate about their soccer and their rugby league then; the fans of Spurs and so forth were the yuppies of the time, but in the north of the country they were genuine, they were passionate.
“I suppose it’s something that’s always stayed with me. There was real grief in Manchester that time. The weeks of young men fighting for their lives... it was so different from anything else you might have experienced. It left a lasting impression on my mind.”
English came home to Ireland and was sent to school in Blackrock College in Dublin, the famous rugby nursery.
“I finished my education there and I’ve had a ferocious interest in rugby since — I think it’s a very honest game.
“A Kerry man, Fr Jerome Godfrey, was there that time and was probably the most successful coach of all time in Leinster Schools rugby.
“He had one lung and all you’d hear from him was ‘foreign games, foreign games’ in his Kerry accent.”
Liam Hall of Garryowen was a contemporary of English’s in the college, as was Ruairi Quinn, latterly to be found antagonising teachers all over the country. There was quality a few years below them, too.
“I remember an old priest reading his breviary as he walked around the grounds, passing a group of 12-year-olds playing rugby. And the priest pointed out a lad with a shock of blond hair in the middle of them and said, ‘he’ll be one of the greatest rugby players of all time’. That was Fergus Slattery.”
His interest in soccer hasn’t remained constant: “Modern soccer doesn’t interest me as much. It’s too coached now, the defensive set-up is too boring for me.
“To me it was better with wingers, with inside forwards, and it was more interesting for the spectator because there were more mistakes, and hence more goals.
“That’s not to say it’s less interesting now for the player, mind you. But back then soccer was the game of the people. You could go into the ground every week without buying a ticket beforehand — you only needed tickets for cup games — and one and a tanner got you in. There was no hooliganism, just a barrage of noise, the people swaying — the grounds well over capacity by modern standards.”
When English turned to GAA he picked another packed house to begin with. His first football game was the Offaly-Down All-Ireland final of 1961, with 91,000 official spectators and a good few more who entered Croke Park through gates which were broken down. His first hurling game was a Munster hurling final in Limerick. Cork and Tipperary. He was staying with an aunt in north Cork who, pestered by appeals for freedom, prevailed upon the local curate to bring him to the Gaelic Grounds.
“The priests weren’t allowed to go to the greyhounds that time, so Fr Donie, the curate, used to watch the dogs from the hare box in the track in Cork.
“He was a character. He’d played hurling for Cork in his time, so he collected me in the little Volkswagen and we set off. The first stop was a barber’s shop in Buttevant, where we picked up Batt Thornhill, a great Cork hurler in the 40s. They talked hurling in the front, all the way back to Mackey, and I sat in the back listening. Agog.”
In Limerick, English was lifted over the turnstiles and sent up to the back of the stand, between the last seat and the galvanised, in his own words.
The company was good: Micheál Ó hEithir was a yard away, commentating live.
“That kind of cameo would live with you. So did the fact that Fr Donie’s masses only lasted 20 minutes.”
When English went to UCC to study he acquired more than a degree in agricultural science. He picked up the skills of Gaelic football from the best teachers available: “I had to learn the game of Gaelic football. It didn’t come to me instinctively, so I had to make a big effort in learning it form the likes of Dave Geaney, Mick Fleming, Frank Cogan, all these guys who were very generous with their time and who were willing to share their expertise.”
The variety in his background has helped him in coaching, he says. Cross-pollination can only help.
“There are some aspects of rugby which would be terrifically applicable to Gaelic football, but the reverse is true as well.
“What I like about rugby, a feature that could be brought into Gaelic football is the attitude of the players — they get up and get on with it, the comradeship, the attitude that you give it, take it and you move on.
“It’s very organised — in rugby you say what you’ll do and you do as you say. If you say you’re going to hit the ruck then you hit the ruck, and that kind of honesty could be incorporated into modern sport, not just Gaelic football.”
The holistic approach to preparation is a cornerstone of the English approach.
“I’d compare coaching to the Grand Prix. If you put Mika Hakkinen into a Ford Escort, you’ll win nothing; if you put me into a top McLaren Formula One car, you haven’t a chance.
“The marrying of the mind and the body is the marrying of the car and driver. My attitude in sport relates to the intrinsic, inseparable marrying of psychology and physicality. People think you can only have a dash of psychology — that you condition a team physically, and then it’s ‘oh, bring in a sports psychologist to talk to them now’. Icing on the cake, if you like.
“That’s bull. Sports psychology ripples through every practice session, every touch of the ball, every moment on the field. Looking at it that way, there’s no way you move a muscle without your mind telling you how far you go, where you go, your judgment. Everything is under the control of the mind, so marrying the mind and the body is the magical key to coaching.”
When you serve up the cliche of the gifted player who can’t coach because he can’t understand why his players don’t have his skills, English volleys back a concrete example.
“I think there are too many former players who take over teams and then go on to play their own game through the new bunch of players. They can be limited in their outlook on the game.
“I remember John Egan, God rest him, taking a session with Bishopstown footballers one time. The forwards were taking shots but were putting them wide. John took the ball off them on the 45-metre line and put it over the bar in his wellington boots.
“He said, ‘that’s the way you do it’, but that’s not coaching. He was one of the greatest Kerry players of all time, and if you wanted a man to kick a point you wouldn’t get better, but that’s not teaching players how the skill is learned. You must show sports people what is involved in mastering a skill, physically and psychologically.”
If English doesn’t spare coaches, he’s frank about players as well.
“I think Gaelic footballers, a lot of them are wimps to me in the sense that you look at others and their attitude to preparation for their sport.
“Look at swimmers, up at four in the morning to train. Sport is a function of so many components, and a search for perfection in those. If you want to compartmentalise it, there’s nutrition, physical preparation, mental preparation, self-analysis — though that’s being self-critical in the sense of ‘what can I change to improve?’
“We’re about a holistic approach in the sense we don’t feel there’s any one component is more important at the expense of the others. They must interact.
“You must empower players; you must give them the power to deal with situations rather than counteracting one specific tactic they may face.
“Take forwards. They must be able to score, which means they must be able to shoot. There’s a whole technique there. I’ve had players up in the field in Kilbrin for six hours on a couple of occasions to improve their technique. They made the improvement. I just facilitated it.”
He helped John Kiely out with a couple of sessions in Waterford, and he was linked to the Clare manager’s job recently. Inter-county coaching has an appeal for English.
“I’d have ambitions to coach the Cork team but never got an opportunity, and never will.
“The inter-county scene is closed. It’s hierarchical it’s not based on merit... when you’re a sports person like me, you’re interested in trying to perform at the top level, and I’m interested in performing at the top level myself.
“I’d love to coach at inter-county level because I’d love to have a group of players you could have more or less full-time, and at the moment, in terms of players, that has to be an inter-county team, because you wouldn’t have the access at other levels.”
The conversation ranges on. Coaches he admires like Eamon Ryan (“Probably the man I respect most in terms of coaching, a fantastic coach and a fantastic human being”) and Mickey Harte. Peter Stringer’s determination. The enthusiasm these days for Donegal’s football style.
Does he ever get back to Manchester, by the way?
“No,” he says. “Once I got out of there I hardly ever went back.
“I didn’t like St Bede’s, certainly. It was very strict. During Lent, for instance, you weren’t allowed talk during meals.”
That’s a rule that would never have appealed to him.
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