Christy O'Connor: Tom Mullally hopes to make local knowledge count
Of the expected starting teams for Naas and Mount Leinster Rangers on Sunday, Tom Mullally and Christy Kealy have managed and coached 24 of the 30 players. Pic: Matt Browne/Sportsfile
By the end of 2017, Luke Dempsey had done 23 uninterrupted years as a football manager at club and inter-county, across eight different teams, in four different counties. After spending nine years with Westmeath sides from minor, U21 to senior, where he won minor and U21 All-Irelands, Dempsey spent an interim year in Carlow, then four with Longford, followed by another four years in Carlow.
After leaving Carlow in 2012, Dempsey managed Moorefield in Kildare, guiding them to successive county titles in 2013 and 2014. By 2015, Dempsey was content to return closer to home, taking over St Loman’s in Mullingar, who he led to three Westmeath titles in-a-row. In 2017, Loman’s reached a first Leinster final. And facing them in the other corner were Moorefield.
Ross Glavin, who’d been Dempsey’s captain in Moorefield, was now the opposition manager trying to take him down. So was a squad of players who Dempsey had developed such a strong relationship with just a few years earlier. Moorefield and St Loman’s meeting in a Leinster final was a long-shot and, while it wasn’t an ideal match-up for Dempsey, he had long accepted from his time on the inter-county scene of what it was like to meet old friends.
“I’d much prefer to be going to Portlaoise nervous and tense, than sitting at home watching someone else play Moorefield,” Dempsey said before that final.Â
“It’s a great novelty, a great opportunity for this club (Loman’s). I really enjoyed my time in Moorefield, but you can’t get sentimental either.”Â
The GAA isn’t like soccer where managers can face their former players so shortly after leaving their previous club; when Graham Potter left Brighton and Hove Albion to become Chelsea manager in 2022, he ran into that Brighton squad again just three weeks later.
The Premier League chews managers up and spits them back out for fun, but the GAA has become such a constant hive of managerial and coaching flux that running into people who those managers and coaches had shared a dressing room with the previous year has become a very common theme. Sunday in Dr Cullen Park though, will be an even stranger experience again for Tom Mullally, whose Naas side face Mount Leinster Rangers in the Leinster quarter-final.
Mullally knows MLR better than anyone because he managed them to one of the greatest club hurling achievements of the modern era; 24 months after leading MLR to the All-Ireland Intermediate title, Mullally guided the Carlow club to the 2014 All-Ireland senior final, which they lost to Portumna.
It's ten years now since Mullally left MLR but he still knows a raft of their players better than anyone else because he has been Carlow manager for the last five years. There were 11 MLR players on this year’s Carlow squad.
Mullally has become well accustomed to having plenty of inside knowledge on certain teams; when his Carlow side played Kildare in this year’s Joe McDonagh Cup, eight of the Kildare starting team, along with one sub introduced, were from Naas; Richy Hogan, Rian Boran, Cian Boran, Daire Guerin, James Burke, Simon Leacy, Jack Sheridan, Cathal Dowling and Killian Harrington.
With Christy Kealy also coaching Carlow and Naas under Mullally, the pair have been a very successful combination. A year after guiding Naas to the 2022 All-Ireland Intermediate title, Mullally and Kealy steered Carlow to the Joe McDonagh Cup title. They’ve also led Naas to the last six county titles.
Of the expected starting teams on Sunday, Mullally and Kealy have managed and coached 24 of the 30 players this year with Carlow and Naas. Their inside info on the Naas players didn’t pay the dividend expected back in May when Kildare defeated Carlow by six points. Returning to Dr Cullen Park again on Sunday though, Mullally and Kealy will hope to put their unique local knowledge of the opposition to far better use now.
Want an example to showcase the confidence and fearlessness of youth? Watch the closing minutes of the Tyrone semi-final replay between Loughmacrory and Carrickmore on Tyrone TV. Loughmacrory, playing in their first ever senior semi-final, were two points up with time almost up when they were awarded a penalty. RuarĂ McCullagh had no interest in playing it safe and tapping the ball over the bar. He went for broke.
The decision almost proved to be deadly. McCullagh hit the post and Carrickmore won a penalty off their next attack, which Tiernan Loughran buried to put them ahead in additional time. Chasing an equalising score to take the game to extra-time, McCullagh, once again, had no interest in playing it safe.
Moving away from the goal at an awkward angle for a right-footed effort, McCullagh lashed the ball over the bar from outside the arc to raise an orange flag and win the game for Loughmacrory by one point. Nerveless. Fearless. Full of the confidence of youth.
McCullagh is a rare young talent and yet he still sits in the shadow of his club-mate, Eoin McElholm, the most talented U20 footballer in the country. In the All-Ireland U20 final back in May, McElholm scored 2-4 from play against Louth. In the previous year’s All-Ireland U20 final, McElholm took Kerry for 0-7 from play.
On the same afternoon, McCullagh bagged 0-4 from play. When Tyrone defeated Kerry again in this year’s All-Ireland U20 semi-final, McCullagh was the game’s top scorer with 0-9.
It's rare that one club would produce two outstanding young talents of the same age. McElholm has already played senior championship with Tyrone, while McCullagh has yet to join the panel, but McCullagh has never been far behind McElholm in terms of producing big performances on big days.
McElholm captained Omagh CBS to the 2023 Hogan Cup title, scoring 2-5 in that final against Summerhill College, but McCullagh was still chosen as the official man-of-the-match that afternoon, bagging 2-2. When Omagh CBS retained the title in 2024, beating Mercy Mounthawk in the final, McCullagh repeated that scoring feat when scoring 2-2 in Croke Park again.
As Loughmacrory take on Kilcoo in Saturday evening’s Ulster quarter-final, stopping McElholm and McCullagh will form a critical plank of Kilcoo’s gameplan. They’ll have done their homework on that lethal duo but the Down side will appreciate too how hard it is to legislate for that lethal cocktail of mercurial talent and the confidence of youth.
When Rathgormack took Dr Crokes to the wire in last year’s Munster semi-final, losing by one point, they again proved their giant-killing potential. However, while they had the giant penned down once more, Rathgormack failed to finish the giant off. Again.
In the history of the Munster club championship, no club that has won so few games in the province has gone so close to scalping the big guns either.
In 1996, Rathgormack drew with Laune Rangers – the reigning All-Ireland champions – before losing the replay. Three years later, they had a star-studded UCC side on the rack in Páirc Ui Rinn before the college scraped a draw and won the replay. Rathgormack bit hard on another top-dog last year but they came up short once more. And in each of those three years, their victors went on to win Munster.
In nine games to date in the provincial championship, Rathgormack have only won two matches, both against Moyle Rovers, in 1996 and 1999. Having secured the three in-a-row now in Waterford for the first time since the club first managed that feat over a century ago, between 1912-’14, Rathgormack will feel more emboldened than ever to have another right cut at Munster on Sunday in Ennis.
They’re going up now against another domestic powerhouse that has won four of the last five Clare titles. The critical next step for Éire Óg though, is to try and transform that domestic dominance into a consistent run in Munster too; Éire Óg have won just four out of nine games in the province.
Two of those wins came against Limerick opposition (Fr Casey’s Abbeyfeale in 2000, Adare in 2024), while they beat Tipperary’s Loughmore-Castleiney in 2021 and The Nire from Waterford in 2022.
Éire Óg lost their other five games to Nemo Rangers (2000 and 2006), St Finbarr’s (2021), Kerins O’Rahillys (2022) and Loughmore-Castleiney (2024). The closest the Ennis side came to making the breakthrough was that 2022 semi-final when running O’Rahillys to one point in Austin Stack Park. And the Tralee side went on to win Munster.
This is a different Éire Óg team now as only eight of the starting team from that 2022 Munster semi-final started the recent county final win against St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield. They have greater depth. This side is also more experienced. And, similar to Rathgormack, Éire Óg are also desperate to make a real mark in Munster.
