O’Dwyer’s finest hour marks start of Kerry glory

THE beginning of one of the most extraordinary chapters in the history of Gaelic football was marked in Clonmel 30 years ago when Kerry played Tipperary in the Munster semi-final.

It was a game which also launched the phenomenal managerial career of Mick O’Dwyer. Nobody present that day could have anticipated that the Kingdom would virtually monopolise the championship over the next 12 years. They would win a remarkable eight All-Ireland titles and - interrupted by a sole defeat at the hands of Cork - 11 Munster titles. It was the start of ‘the Golden Years.’

The background to O’Dwyer’s appointment as manager (pushed by then County Board chairman Gerald McKenna) is interesting because Cork had won three of the previous four Munster titles and had celebrated an overdue All-Ireland success in 1973.

Having been involved with the U21s, O’Dwyer took over from Johnny Culloty. According to Owen McCrohan in O’Dwyer’s authorised biography, McKenna ‘bulldozed’ the appointment through the board. “If it had gone to a vote the outcome might have been uncertain,’ he wrote.

Tipperary were fairly strong at the time, having a proven ability to regularly compete with the ‘big two’ on fairly even terms.

It was indicated by a runaway 7-18 to 1-5 win over Limerick in the first round in Emly, to which dual star Jim Kehoe contributed an impressive 4-2.

Babs Keating, who was an accomplished footballer (winning a Railway Cup medal in 1972 in the company of O’Dwyer and Mick O’Connell) played that day and again in Clonmel. Their goalkeeper was hurler John O’Donoghue.

The actual game was noteworthy for the fact that at half-time Tipperary were on level terms and that they led through Colm O’Flaherty for a brief period early in the second half.

But they eventually lost by 13 points after John Egan was moved to centre-forward and inspired his team with two goals and three points in a five-minute period.

While opinions have since varied about the team’s outstanding forward - between Egan, Michael Sheehy and Spillane - nobody could ever doubt that the Sneem man had real class. In my view, he was the quintessential corner-forward.

“We genuinely felt we had a chance of winning that day,” says Keating. “A few years earlier we had won the Division Two League title after beating Down in the semi-final.

“Our hopes of making a breakthrough were always high around that period, but we always had a bit of misfortune. We were a bit like the Waterford hurlers now in that we had 10 or 12 players who could hold their own with the best.”

The Kerry success that year didn’t surprise him. He would have known from Kerry’s performance at minor and U21 level that they had good players coming through. And, as great as O’Dwyer’s influence was, he felt he was lucky with the quality of selector he had working with him.

“Nowadays you have this attitude of the manager ‘being on his own.’ But I know that when I was with Tipperary (hurlers) I couldn’t have done it without the help I got.”

Kerry ended Cork’s bid for three-in-a-row in Munster in Killarney, gaining the boost of an early ‘own-goal’ conceded by hurler Martin O’Doherty and Sligo put up no real opposition in the All-Ireland semi-final.

And, while Dublin put up a powerful challenge in the final, Kerry looked likely winners from an early stage. Again, Egan was to the fore, with a goal after only three minutes.

McCrohan suggested that by right that Dublin team should have ‘razed’ what was still a young and inexperienced Kerry side ‘off the face of Croke Park.’

“But they did not. O’Dwyer’s intense brand of motivation, allied to tremendous speed, hunger, stamina and aggression, had seen to that. It was his finest hour,’’ he wrote.

The rest is history.