Tommy Griffin: Out of the West
one end of the Páirc an Aghasaigh pitch in Dingle town, Dylan Geaney is practising with 13 footballs. Kicking points and retrieving every ball from behind the goal. And the 13-year-old does it again and again before Tommy Griffin hooshes him up the other end of the field because he’s setting up a training session for the local school team.
And then the coach realises what he’s done.
“I didn’t realise he had 13 balls with him, and then I see him struggling up the field with them and starting all over again. Going behind the goals, drawing them all out again..”
Dylan Geaney is Conor Geaney’s brother, the Kerry minor captain in tomorrow’s All-Ireland semi-final in Croke Park against Derry. He’d be a first cousin of Paul Geaney and Mikey Geaney, the current Kerry seniors, the son of Colm Geaney, and nephew of Sean Geaney. There’s a bit of pedigree there, but Griffin has no notion whether he’ll come out the other end of the Kingdom production line.
“There’d be a few fellas around the place now who you’d be thinking have all the necessary tools. BriainÓ Beaglaoich from the Gaeltacht is a serious talent (and his young brother Caoimhín with him), the two lads here from the town, Barry ‘Dan’ (O’Sullivan), and Mark ‘Diony’ (O’Connor, grandson of Tom ‘Gega’). They were all on the Kerry minor team last year. But sure they could go off to college and do wreck.”
Griffin is sitting on the elevated front wall of his new home, high above Dingle, the town and the bay. Over his right shoulder is Pairc An Ághasaigh, directly behind him is Pobal Scoil Chorcha Dhuibhne, the home for the last two years of the All-Ireland Colleges senior football champions. Over his left shoulder is the school’s soon-to-open new pitch, where Griffin will help coach them into a new fall colleges campaign.
The five-time All-Ireland winner may be a conscripted interviewee, but as a weathervane for the state of football in Kerry, he’s no bad place to be recording notes. He may also be a future Kerry minor coach too, possibly Jack O’Connor’s successor. The butcher in Dingle is asking him about it. Griffin’s heard nought, and with the house, the business - Muiris Dan’s pub and B&B on Sráid Eoin - a bit of farming, and a commitment to Pobal Scoil, that seems unlikely for now. But there’s little doubt that the front wall of his house offers a seductive vista over the medium term future of Kerry football.
Pockets of power are, by nature, cyclical, but right back to their Under battles, it was manifestly evident the Gaeltacht and Dingle would be feeding youngbloods through the arterial lines over the course of the next decade.
Some may slip away too, of course, though not if Jack O’Connor, next year’s Kerry Under 21 coach, can help it. Take last year’s Kerry minor corner-forward Tomás Ó Sé.
“If he sticks with it, he has everything,” says Griffin. “But his star is rising in that (Irish dancing) field, he could find himself leading the troupe in Riverdance very soon. He’s already making a nice few bob from it. He played in the Under 21 championship game a few weeks back against us (Dingle), the fecker, and he caused wreck. He flew home from London for it. I hope Jack will get him playing again next year. The power he has, the strength, the balance, the speed... but this dancing career has really taken off.”
Tommy G’s five All-Ireland medals were won under three different coaches. Páidi Ó Sé. Pat O’Shea. Jack O’Connor. But it’s the fourth Kerry coach he’s worked cheek by jowl with. Eamonn Fitzmaurice, a teacher in Pobal Scoil Chorcha Dhuibhne, approached him in fall of 2012 to give a hand with the school team while he was overloaded with the county’s Under 21s. Griffin has picked up a sheaf of ideas, not-to-do’s and creeds. Unknownst to himself, he’s gathering quite the volume.
“Some of it will always go back to the games you played, things that happened. I remember an Under 16 final we lost to the Gaeltacht. A friend of mine, Tom Walsh, was down from Dublin a couple of weeks ago, and we were chatting on the stag. The game was level, one of our lads was fouled for a 13m free. A tap over in injury time. And he goes for a goal! He missed it, and the referee blows the whistle. We went back to (Gaeltacht’s fortress) Gallarus for the replay and got annihilated. Rob McGearailt, Sean Sheehy and those lads tore us apart in the second game. That still isn’t forgotten. From that alone, you win a free in the inside line with no time left, you know what to do.” What else is in that ledger Tommy G?
PAIDI Ó SÉ
“There was definitely more enjoyment back then. We were winning All-Irelands (2000), but we were having the craic too. I was on the panel in October 1999 when they played the League games before Christmas - Enda Galvin, Kenneth Dillon, Mossie Lyons, myself, we were pure novices then. We got a week to the Canaries, a drinking camp basically. We were 20 years of age on a panel with Darragh (Ó Sé), Seamus Moynihan, the Hassetts, sure it was dream stuff for us. Then we won the All-Ireland, that epic year, a replayed semi against Armagh and replayed final against Galway. You couldn’t write away for a season like that.
“It’s so easy now in one way when you have the video guys, the technical back up, the GPS systems, but Paidi spent hours with his recorders. He was the first man I ever saw doing video analysis of different things, not just game tapes. Like Mike Gibson, the legendary rugby centre. A very unselfish player, a different angle from Paidi, who wanted to show us someone who brought others into the game, who got as much enjoyment in creating as finishing. Páidi didn’t get the credit for a lot of the things he did and it ended how it ended. But he’d had a good seven years, and he straightened out Kerry football. he got us back on track. His time might have been up with Kerry but you saw what he did for Westmeath the following year.”
JACK O’CONNOR
“A seriously organised man. He knows the guys to bring in, to give the jobs to. You see, Jack had won a heap of All-Irelands before anyone had heard of him. Colleges, vocational schools titles. He was contesting Hogan Cups, then he was Under 21 manager, then a selector with Páidi. He mightn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, he mightn’t be the world’s most diplomatic man, but he calls it as he sees it and possesses a serious football brain.
“Very few people can come near Jack, and he has managed to move with the times. He’s old school in some ways, but he’s gathering ideas and data the whole time. Bringing Pat Flanagan on board (in 2004) changed the fortunes of Kerry football at the time. We went on a training week to Lanzarote, a proper one, which wasn’t heard of then - now it’s two or three a season, with weekends away. He has that something special, that he can turn any bunch of lads into a seriously drilled unit.”
EAMONN FITZMAURICE
“If you’d played with Eamonn, you’d have him picked out as a future manager. Those Paidi video sessions - it was Fitzy who was hooking up the video and packaging them up. Páidi would hardly boil a kettle for you. He’s a leader on the field and off the field, his organisation - which I see first hand with the school - is exceptional. He’s a special manager, ruthless too. He has thought of the very last detail that no one else will. People will say he has a serious panel of players now, but he’s moulded new ones, he has found new talent for Kerry, who’ve come out of nowhere.
“He sets his own bar high, and he doesn’t think he knows all the answers. I liked what he said about a bad day on the line in the drawn Munster final. And I don’t think that was a calculated statement, it was simply matter of fact. No ego, see. If he’s nothing to say, he won’t feel the need to plamás.
I had never been involved with training teams when he brought me on board. Now with the bit of hindsight I see how the kids in the school would have massive respect for him. Again he wouldn’t be looking for that. That’s a skill in itself, isn’t it?”
still keeps in touch with the old gang. Fitzmaurice and Diarmuid Murphy, his club mate. Mahony still knocking around, Marc too. Seventy years between them.
“I hear (Aidan O’) Mahony is still driving the thing on in training, especially the young lads. Mahony would play in goals for you. He’d throw out the water bottles, strap a few ankles. Anything for Kerry. Marc’s the same. He mightn’t go after this year either. I hope he doesn’t. There big holes to fill and if you were in Killarney seven weeks ago against Cork, you wouldn’t have said Kerry were in a great place.”
Griffin had his own decision to make after 2012. He met Jack in Killorglin one day and went home to sleep on it. Matter of fact. No Jack, I’m done.
Then Fitzy came calling. Griffin knew better than most what was coming out of the west. Every lad in Pobal Scoil who can kick a ball more than forty yards is in the senior squad. Griffin is too sober a personality to conjure up images of a giant-killing on the colleges field but with a school of less than 200 pupils, to win a pair of All-Ireland senior colleges titles in Croke Park is an outrageous achievement.
It is said that there was even a bit of shoulder-shrugging around the town after the second one last Easter. Griffin won’t do anything to embellish the heroics. What’s done is done.
Matter of fact.
“I wouldn’t be going hugely over the top about it. It’s done, we’ve moved on and so have the lads. Barry ‘Dan’ in with the Kerry seniors, more of the lads with the minors this Sunday against Derry, other lads were with the Under 21s. They’re scaling fresh peaks. It was still a big celebration when we came home but this year, lads were going back to school the following day. The first year was leading into the two-week break for Easter, whereas this year it was at the end and everyone was a bit high.”
It’s a moot point who or what is the architect of this fairytale streak of success back west. The club coaches who nurtured those diamonds in the rough? Fitzmaurice? A bit of Griffin guidance. Tomás Begley, who worked on enhancing their strength and conditioning? Irrespective, the harvest is being harvested.
“We didn’t get going properly until after Christmas,” Griffin reflects. “Tralee beat us in the O’Sullivan Cup (Kerry Colleges) semi-final, possibly the best thing that happened us. There was a bit of second- year syndrome, fellas kind of going through the motions. Management had to knock heads together too because we realised the status quo wasn’t going to be good enough to retain a Munster title - we weren’t looking beyond the Corn Ui Mhuiri really this year.
“We had a challenge game against the Kerry minors on January 3rd and after that we really upped the ante, drew Tralee in the quarter-final.”
The key - and an instructive tale for other counties - to the whole success of the last two years was the co-operation with the Kerry minor management.
Explains Tommy: “We had such a gang from here training with the Kerry minors, there had to be co-operation. If there wasn’t...the previous couple of years there hadn’t been. Straight up.
“(Kerry coach) Alan O’Sullivan was in Tralee, he’d come back, do a few sessions here, and was a great help to us and to me especially. Arthur Fitzgerald was looking after the Sem (St Brendan’s Killarney), Micheal O’Shea was in Killorglin, and Jack was in South Kerry with Coláiste na Sceilge. So instead of 30 Kerry minors, you had 150 young lads training like Kerry minors, so even fellas who wouldn’t make the minor squad were getting that quality and intensity of training. The coaches were coming out to the players rather than the other way around.
“It saved study time - they were home in their bedrooms at 6. If they’d been going to Kerry training in Killarney, that would have been 11pm. The Kerry minors called them in at the weekend. It saved money from a travelling expenses point of view too. Alan took a few sessions here, I took notes, took their advice. If a lad had trained hard with the minors on Saturday, we might sit him out of Monday’s session.”
Ridiculously sensible.
He stood on the Croke Park sideline last April, savouring a four-point come-from-behind victory over Roscommon CBS. Thinking. He never thought he’d be anywhere in the ground but the stand after 2012. It jolted his senses. Tomorrow will stir the passions of course, but he watches with a colder eye now.
“I thought Tyrone-Monaghan was fascinating, even if it was like Puck Fair in the last ten minutes with bodies all over the place. Tiernan McCann had some 60 minutes, he can carry serious ball. Tyrone will get a bad rap no matter what they do, and I don’t think they really care.
“I think deep down here in Kerry, people realise now that we learned quite a lot from them and other teams who were passing us out at one stage. The game was changing back in the early noughties. We weren’t. But as long as no one gets carried away, and everyone settles, Kerry is in a decent place now. Not as good as some say, but not as bad as some suggested back after the semi-final in 2011. We won an All-Ireland minor last year, a senior too, and a junior this year. We’ve have a couple of colleges wins now too to feed the future.”
Perhaps at some stage tomorrow, Tommy Griffin might look down on the small square at the Davin End and think of 2009. The Slip. Colm O’Neill. Or maybe he won’t. He’s never watched the video of that All-Ireland final against Cork. The day he went from Kerry player to festooned hero. A man with a past.
On the sideline, Jack and Fitzmaurice are holding their nerve. As they should. Griffin’s no teenage rookie. O’Neill had taken Griffin for 1-1 inside the first eight minutes
“It was probably one of the most important All-Irelands we won, with so many of us coming to the end, and what had happened the previous year against Tyrone. We barely got out of Longford, then Sligo and the Antrim in the qualifiers after being down in Cork. Badly. Then to come back and destroy Dublin....
“Nobody remembers the Longford game now, but that was a tighter game than the Sligo one where they missed the late penalty (which I conceded). Above in Pearse Park in Longford, they kicked 11 wides in the second half. We were a beaten docket that day. They just couldn’t put us away.
“The final? Yeah, he had a point got before the goal. I wasn’t panicking, maybe Jack and Fitzy were. O’Neill’s an inside forward, it’s not like the wing-back had slalomed up the field for 1-1. I wasn’t a rookie defender either that Jack was going to whip me. Once we settled, the pressure out the field on Cork possession was excellent. I finished strong.”
Finished strong. Better to say the Dingle man’s last stand was one of the vividly evocative episodes from a remarkable season. Tom O’Sullivan got man of the match, but Griffin was even more heroic. Tommy Walsh kicked four points. His tale’s ready for a new chapter too.
“Yes. I’m proud of the fact I was a Kerry footballer. I’m not sure you’re a Kerry footballer. It was something I did. It’s done. If I was 27 when I finished playing (he was 33), that might be different thing, but you don’t look back.”
He can’t afford to. Too busy mapping out the future. Too busy watching Dylan Geaney kicking all those footballs over the bar.
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