Genuine All Star will be revered by the Banner

The GAA’s greatest and most enduring All Star was never selected as an All Star!

Imagine that. Mighty Mick O’Dwyer, due to wake up this morning as the new Clare senior football manager, 76 years young, heads into another season bearing a different banner yet again. What a luminous legend of the world of Gaeldom the Waterville man continues to be! His incredible record as coach and player surely makes him the brightest All Star of them all.

Whatever lies ahead of the Banner is certain to be both stimulating and exciting. O’Dwyer does not do the mundane. This is a man who broke both his legs in 1966, in his football prime, and they said he was finished. But he was back in a short two years in the Kerry strip and played some of his best football after that. This the man who did not hang up his county boots until the age of 37 years. And this is the man who crafted the greatest Kerry team of all time as manager in the years that followed. For sure the followers of the Banner are in for a new dimension over the next year at least. It’s an intriguing prospect.

I was fortunate enough to see him play in Croke Park just once.

It was near the end of his career but already he was such a “name” that one watched him in action as closely as the game itself.

He was a veteran by then, blocky and burly, close to the ground and carrying more weight around the middle than he ever allowed any of his players to carry in the years afterwards! But he still had the speed off the mark the good ones never quite lose, he was the kind of tough canny forward all backs hate to mark, hard but fair, tough as nails, as likely to go through his marker as around him, a combination of velocity and controlled ferocity if you like. He clipped over a few neat points in that game and some of them came off passes from midfield from Mick O’Connell.

In what was only a few years later I was one of the Sunday hacks on the fabled Ghost Train out of Tralee on the Saturday afternoon before the All-Ireland. O’Dwyer was now the manager. In one corner of his carriage a raw young unknown called Eoin Liston was getting a lesson in poker from some senior colleagues. Liston did not hit any jackpot until the following afternoon in Croke Park against Dublin when he crashed home three goals and established the legend of The Bomber. O’Dwyer, on that trip up to Dublin, looked as fit and fresh as his paddock of colts. Dublin would be a tough nut to crack, he predicted, but he was confident enough. That was the beginning of a unique coaching career which broke all the records.

All Star indeed.

What is special about the Waterville legend? What man management and football development gift has he been endowed with? If it could be argued that it was relatively likely that a gifted Kerry team, well managed, was likely to win successive titles for any competent manager, then it is of huge significance altogether what Micko subsequently achieved with counties like Kildare and Laois. Were their Leinster titles during his tenure maybe more difficult to win than just another Kerry All-Ireland title to add to the long list? After years of failure before O’Dwyer’s arrival, and the perennially challenging Leinster cockpit, the Kildare and Laois crowns were a watershed for the development and progress of the code in both counties. Wicklow football was often the butt of jocular remarks before he took over the reins down there. He revived the county from the green shoots up to the point where all opposition takes them seriously nowadays.

Experts say that it is not just the senior footballers of a county who benefit from O’Dwyer’s leadership and magnetism. More young players are attracted into the code, clubs grow stronger and more active, and today’s U14’s are the root stock for tomorrow’s hopes and dreams. Every county in which the Waterville hotelier has served has benefitted immensely from his stewardship. There is no reason to fear the situation will be different in the upcoming season in Clare. Football fans in the county have been agog with anticipation since the news spread that Micko was the agenda for last evening’s special meeting of the County Board.

The man who broke both legs but came back as a player with a bang at the top level will not fear the challenges ahead of the Banner County who, at any rate, have been on a slight upward curve in recent years. At 76 years of age, with all that football lore intact, he is likely to provide the seniors (and the rising stars he is so good at spotting) with just the fillip they need to hit new heights and targets in 2013. The burly forward who scored 6 goals and no less than 129 points for Kerry in his day is not finished scoring yet as the maestro manager of them all.

Driving through Waterville a few autumns ago in the rainy evening I saw him walking along the front. He was alone, walking slowly. It was striking to see him so. This is a personality forever bound to teams, crowds, high excitement and sideline craft and the passions of Gaelic sport.

He will enjoy himself in Clare and Clare will relish his presence and the hope and promise of triumph he brings with him.

The genuine All Star has arrived in style.