We were just as fit as today’s finely-honed stars

A few decades ago they were the talk of the GAA, footballers supreme; a few weeks ago, they were the talk of the nation, as, along with former Meath star David Beggy, they sang and danced — terms used loosely — in RTE’s Celebrity You’re A Star show. Kerry’s Jack O’Shea and Barney Rock of Dublin met with Diarmuid O’Flynn to talk of times present and past, not to mention tomorrow’s semi-final clash.

Diarmuid O’Flynn: I’ll just leave the recorder down there lads, ignore it, talk away.

Barney Rock: “That will be no problem anyway – when we were able to ignore the tv cameras, we can ignore anything. We didn’t even see them, eventually.”

DO’F: What was that like, the showbiz experience?

Jack O’Shea: “It was great, to be honest, very enjoyable. A bit nerve-wracking but you could hardly see the audience anyway with the lights; what I was trying to do was block myself out completely, not be conscious of them at all, a white sheet in front of me, concentrate on what we had to do.”

DO’F: Had ye ever done anything like that before?

BR: Never, not for me anyway.

Jack O’Shea: “Nor for me. And we had no prompters either; every other year they had, but we had to learn all those songs off by heart. Ah, it was a great experience, we enjoyed it, a great craic.”

DO’F: Would ye do it again? Can ye take the show on the road?

JO’S: “Well we’ve had a lot of offers already from all around the country, there was a huge response to it. You never say never, and it is very demanding, but once a charity is benefiting from it we’ll probably have a go. The Gary Kelly Foundation – make sure you give it a good mention! It’s a very worthy cause.”

DO’F: How did it compare to performing on the field in front of a live audience of 80,000, millions more on television?

JO’S: “We had great fun with it, but it’s totally different to playing a match. For one thing it’s all over in 90 seconds!”

BR: “One area where it was similar, the waiting beforehand to get started, the hanging around. All you wanted to do was get out of the dressing-room and get on the stage, get it started.”

DO’F: Talking football, when did all this friendship between Kerry and the Dubs start?

JO’S: “Well the rivalry started in ‘75, when Kerry won with a very young team. Dublin came back then and won in 76 and 77 – that was my first year. We were meeting so often that we were bound to form friendships.

“It became bigger than just a rivalry, there was a determination there, from both of us, that neither team would give in to the other. We just didn’t want to be beaten by Dublin, in any game, and they didn’t want to be beaten by us. Fierce rivalry, but healthy rivalry, great mutual respect that grew over the years.”

DO’F: When did the socialising start?

JO’S: “Hard to put a year on it. We just kept meeting at different places all over the years, got to know each other better. I’d be meeting lads very regularly, living in Leixlip. I came to Dublin first in ‘78, was there for about a year and a half, in a flat in South Circular Road, then moved out to Leixlip in 1979. All the work was around Dublin (Jack was a plumber) so I’d be meeting all the Dublin supporters – great banter, great craic, and it was always healthy, huge respect there. It was the same with the Dublin players; no matter what might have happened on the field it was left there, there was never any afters, never anything said. It was just accepted, and we moved on to the next day, when it started all over again, and always in the best of spirit.

“We played so hard I suppose against each other that genuine respect was earned; we appreciated what they could do, they appreciated what we could do, and we each knew the effort that went into it. Out of that then came the friendships over the years and those friendships have lasted to this day.”

DO’F: That was the greatest team ever, without a shadow of a doubt, that Kerry team — what was it like to have been a part of it?

JO’S: “It was a great team but at the time it was just a bunch of fellas with a great attitude, and a great manager. Micko was a great man-manager, a great man to keep us together. He had to control us a lot of times but he did that, he was very good at that, and he’s proved it since with every county he’s gone into; he has always improved them, he’s able to get the best out of people, get them to do things that no-one else could get them to do.

“I came into the senior setup in late ‘76 while still a minor, trained with them that year, got my chance in ‘77, and even that was a surprise. Anyone leaving Croke Park after the All-Ireland final, Kerry winners with 13 fellas U-21, you’d have said there would be no change in that team for a good few years. And yet two years down the road, five of the minor team who played that year were on the senior championship team – that was Micko.

“You got into a winning groove, a winning ambience all around the team. You were part of a unit, a winning unit, and you wanted to keep it going.”

BR: “An advantage ye had at the time, though, Jacko, was that ye had only one real game in Munster, that was it, while we had a few competitive teams in Leinster.”

JO’S: “That’s true; we used to gear ourselves for two matches every year, Cork and the Leinster champions. With all respect to the Ulster teams of the time, they weren’t as much of a threat as they are now, and neither was Connacht, you always expected to beat them.

” You had to peak for Cork, and you had to peak for the Leinster champions, the big rivalry was between Munster and Leinster. From 75 to 83, the All-Ireland final every year was between Munster and Leinster teams; Galway broke that sequence in 83. You talk about Offaly coming in 1980 – that wouldn’t have happened but for Dublin being so good in Leinster, Offaly had to raise their game to meet them.

“For a few years they suffered badly at the hands of Dublin, and by the time they came out of Leinster, they were a fine team. We played them in the semi-final in 1980 and it was a fantastic game, something like 4-15 to 4-11 – Matt Connor scored 2-9 I think, Gerry Carroll 2-1. The following year it was the All-Ireland final, only a few points in it with a few minutes to go, I got a goal to put us clear again. They were getting closer and closer, ‘til 82.

“That was a great game of football, a great Offaly team; they had learned bit by bit over the years – Seán Lowry had been centre-back, he was centre-forward in 82, a different player. They got the break on the day, deserved their win. A lot of people talk about the push – I have no problem with that. The one crib I’d have is the two frees they got coming up to the end – very soft, I didn’t think they were frees at all, but those points brought them within two points.

“Much the same thing happened to us against Cork in 1983, we were two points up in the closing seconds of the Munster final and Tadhgie Murphy got a goal, put us out. Think about it — we lost two championship matches between 1977 and 1986, both of those by a point, to a last-minute goal. Not a bad record!”

BR: It wouldn’t have mattered anyway Jacko, we’d have beaten ye those two years!

DO’F: Was the real Kerry rivalry with Dublin, or with Cork?

JO’S: “It was both, really, with Cork first up every year. To me, Cork were in the top three every year through all those years, without a doubt. The problem they had was they could never get a run going. Some of the best players I ever played against were with Cork, and we were very fortunate to win a lot of those games.

“One of the players I really admired all my life was Dave McCarthy, a superb athlete, never stopped running. Then you had Declan Barron, Ray Cummins, Jimmy Barry-Murphy, Dinny Allen, Tom Creedon Lord have mercy on him, a fabulous player, Humphrey Kelleher, Jimmy Kerrigan, Kevin Kehilly, Dave Barry – fantastic footballers, every one of them, household names, but they never got a real run. If they had beaten Kerry in 75, who knows what would have happened.”

DO’F: Were they a bit cocky by 75, having won so easily in 73 and 74?

JO’S: “They might have been, but they were a bit unfortunate as well. And they had too many changes in their team, they always seemed to have someone different, someone new. Cummins could be full-forward one year, Barron there the next.”

DO’F: Did you see the Offaly win coming in 82, Barney?

BR: “We had seen Offaly coming for a few years before that, but they were still very fortunate in 82. Who would have believed Offaly would score that goal, a long hopeful ball in? And Kerry had the chance to draw it again afterwards, a lot of people forget that.

“Football is about what you do on the day; if it’s all over and you’re beaten by a point, and you know you missed an opportunity earlier in the game, doesn’t matter. When the final whistle sounds, bang, it’s over, you’re gone.”

DO’F: Ye’re both still close to the scene, how does the current setup compare to back then?

BR: “Very different – we’d have met up in the park at half two for a half three start, none of this getting together at 12 o’clock lark. You’d drive your car to the ground, through the crowd, park, get out, walk up to Croke Park, have the craic with the fans – totally different to what you have now.”

JO’S: “I’d meet up with the lads in Malahide on the Saturday evening, stay at the hotel, but nothing like the same sort of collective stuff you have now. A few sandwiches and a cup of tea before you left the hotel for Croke Park, that was all. None of the pasta, the special lunches – the approach is much more professional now.”

DO’F: How much fitter are teams now than ye were in that team?

JO’S: “I don’t think they’re any fitter, to be honest.”

BR: “They’re eating better, they’re preparing better, they’re looking after themselves better, spending a lot more time together, but I think that what makes them look bigger, look stronger, is that when we were playing it was just the few long-distance cameras and the old small-screen TV’s; now you get the huge close-ups, and you have these massive widescreen televisions.”

JO’S: “When I think back to our team, I can’t think of anyone today who would have been faster than Ger Power or Mick Spillane, and I don’t care what county they were from, nor is there any footballer in the country at the moment who is a better athlete than John O’Keeffe was, in his prime. When I look at that old team, it’s very hard to think that lads today are any fitter, or faster, or stronger.”

DO’F: Did you take part in the legendary sessions under Micko, or was it always with Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh here in Dublin?

JO’S: “It was nearly all here, in Dublin. That heavy stuff was all done at the start of the year, those 20 laps and wire-to-wire, all that sort of stuff, for the lads who had let themselves get out of shape over the winter. I’d always have kept myself in pretty good shape.’’

DO’F: Still do, by the looks of things.

JO’S: “I would, yeah. But that time I’d train only two nights a week, I wouldn’t do anything more. Stay fresh, that was my philosophy. Two weeks before a big game I’d go down to Kerry for a week, and we’d train four nights that week – I used to dread the first night.

“Dwyer used really test me, see whether I’d been keeping myself in shape. He had this wire-to-wire sprint drill — touch the wire, back again to the other side. One night he gave me four in a row, without stopping, and each time he put me up against a fresh man. I remember the fourth time, I touched the wire, turned back, and my head went light, no oxygen.

“But I wouldn’t give in to him, that was the attitude; if he saw you were weak at all, he’d go at you. But I think the whole secret to training is yourself. It doesn’t matter who’s training you, or who’s training with you; anyone can go out and go through the motions, but you’re the only person who really knows how hard you’re pushing yourself, and you must do that.

“You have to give it everything, you have to be tired, you have to exhaust yourself. We had Mick Spillane in Dublin at the time, Kieran Murray from Monaghan – a fantastic athlete, now the masseur with the Irish soccer team – and we had the likes of Dermot Flanagan from Mayo, another fantastic man to train. The attitude was there in that group, though we had other county fellas as well who didn’t give a shite.

” They wouldn’t hurt themselves, did things when they wanted to do them, but only up to a point, and that would always show, eventually. I knew I was training hard in Dublin, I knew the lads were training hard in Kerry, and there was never any problem.

DO’F: Did you ever do weights? You looked like a guy who spent a lot of time in the gym.

JO’S: “I never did weights in my life, never touched a weight, but I always worked hard, physically. Dwyer always said it about me, I never got injured, never pulled a muscle in my life. That was down to the fact that I’d play a match at the weekend, then be out working on the Monday morning. You’re on site, you’re pulling yourself up into attics – I remember the physio telling me one time, you’re walking across joists all day, two inches wide or less, so you’re balancing on your feet, strengthening your ankles. The same walking around site, on broken brick, rough ground, you’re always balancing, strengthening the ankles, always in shape. In fact I used to put on weight, when I was in serious training.

DO’F: Paul O’Connell is the same, has to watch himself out of season, keep eating or he’ll lose weight.

JO’S: “I’d be 14st 3lbs, that was my normal weight, but by the time of the All-Ireland final I’d be up to 14st 8lbs, up five or six pounds.”

BR: I’d have been around 13st, maybe less.

DO’F: Light for your height?

BR: “Yeah, I’m 6’1”, but I never carried any excess weight, more bony than anything else.

DO’F: What was the high points for ye?

BR: “Most people would say it’s winning the All-Ireland, but for me it was the 1983 All-Ireland semi-final replay against Cork, in Cork, that was an unforgettable experience.”

JO’S: I was doing radio commentary that day, Heffo had you out at the corner-flag. You got the early goal, then straight back out to the corner-flag again, in for a point, back again. He was using you to keep Jimmy Kerrigan out of the game and you did, very effectively. A great win for Dublin.”

BR: “The atmosphere was electric that day, but I think Jacko would agree anyway, most of the time the semi-finals were better than the finals, less tension there, more freedom to play. But that was a carnival, it took us three days to get home! We were out of Croke Park, which was unique for an All-Ireland semi-final, lovely day. We travelled down on the Saturday, stayed in Blarney. We were there for seven, had a meal, then Heffo said to us, do what ye normally do on a Saturday night but don’t overdo it.

“Some of the lads went and had a few pints, the normal thing, we went across the square to the Blarney Park Hotel, sing-song going on. Kilkenny were playing Cork in a hurling match beforehand, good crowd building up, but when we got onto the pitch, it was packed, unbelievable atmosphere. I’ll never forget that game.”

DO’F: Yourself, Jacko?

JO’S: My high point? I’ve so many — just to be on the big stage, to be able to perform, is gratifying in itself. But there was the first All-Ireland, then in 1985 scoring 1-3 in the first 10 minutes, the goal in ‘81, to be at the end of such a fabulous move. Then there was the Australian experience, the Compromise Rules, captain of your country, working under Heffo, the manager I had always worked against.

“The greatest thing I take out of the game is the friendship, the friends I made. I never abused or hurt anyone, player on player, and to be respected by your peers, still, is very gratifying.”

DO’F: Big question – who’s going to win tomorrow?

BR: “Depends on which forward line plays better. If Keaney and Brogan play to their potential, Dublin have a great chance, but we’ll have to keep Gooch and Donaghy quiet at the other end. Everything has to go right, but if it does, I’d say Dublin.”

JO’S: “On form you’d have to say Dublin. They’re playing better at the moment, they have the momentum, they’ll have the weather – it’s predicted fine – and they’ll have the crowd.

“But Kerry have the players. They haven’t performed to their full potential this year yet, for a full game; a while in the first-half against Cork in the Munster final, very poor against Monaghan.

‘‘Only one player played well for the full game, Marc Ó Sé; everyone else was under pressure.

“There is huge potential in Kerry, they have the forwards, they have the subs, two or three vital substitutions the last day won the game for them, changed the pattern. I think there’ll be changes for the next day. The talent is there, they have it all to do, but I think Kerry.”