A different ball game for McGrath as Kilmacud eye final spot

DON’T ask Nicky McGrath how he ended up managing the Kilmacud Crokes senior football team. The guy has simply no idea.

Though he has lived in Crokes’ Stillorgan catchment area for nigh on 25 years, he’s not even sure if he ever kicked a ball in their distinctive purple kit.

Actually, he might have played a county junior semi-final once, but he can’t be sure. The match, whether he played in it or not, is buried somewhere in the mists of time.

Hurling was always his drug. His native Laois might be a dual county but around Ballinakill way, “our football team was just our hurling team without our hurls,” McGrath laughs.

He enjoyed his fair share of highs. In 1970, Ballinakill won a county minor title when they beat Borris-in-Ossory after a replay and by the time McGrath moved to Dublin to join the Garda Síochána he had three county U21 medals in his back pocket as well.

He kept up the hurling in the big smoke and filled in the cold winter evenings by playing a bit of rugby.

Football remained a distant cousin rather than a close family member until his sons Nicky and Brian began to show some real promise at the game.

Crokes was the nearest nursery in which to nurture their skills and slowly but surely, McGrath Snr found himself being wound ever more into the fabric of the game.

Mick Dillon stepped down as manager after last year’s Leinster defeat to Portlaoise. For a spell, no one seemed willing to pick up the baton, despite the recent success and remaining potential.

With Nicky and Brian now defensive stalwarts of the senior side, the old man agreed to take over and Kilmacud’s graph just kept on rising.

Of course, it isn’t the first time a hurler has swapped codes to manage a football team, or vice versa.

Sean Boylan’s background was also dominated by the small ball game before he took the job of resuscitating Meath football. Former Laois football manager Michael Dempsey has made the leap in the opposite direction. He spent last year serving as a selector with the Kilkenny hurlers.

These men are very much exceptions to the rule though and few have had CVs so bereft of prior experience as McGrath.

Masterminding success in an entirely new code can’t be easy. Can it?

“I suppose it’s just my magnificent management skills,” he laughs again.

“No. Managing teams is just about managing people.

“You’re dealing with 30 people and they’re all individuals who need to be approached in different ways.

“After that, it’s a question of getting different things right. You’re dealing with medical staff, selectors, organising things like training.”

Last Sunday in Portlaoise, Crokes squandered a seven-point half-time lead, conceding two scrappy goals to long balls in the process and handing Rhode an unlikely draw.

Enough to make any manager scream, but not McGrath.

“Ah, these things happen.

“Rhode will feel the same about the goal they conceded.

“Not everything can go right for you in a game. That’s the way it is.” Win tomorrow and Kilmacud will face Sarsfields in the Leinster final next week, yet even the possibility of playing three games in 21 gruelling winter days doesn’t phase him. “It would be a wonderful position to be in,” he adds.