Valerie Mulcahy: We were blessed, lucky, honoured and so greatly privileged to be guided by Éamonn Ryan
2014 TG4 All Ireland Ladies Senior Football Championship Final, Croke Park, Dublin 27/9/2015.Cork vs Dublin.Cork Manager Eamonn Ryan and Valerie Mulcahy celebrate at the end of the game .Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne
The last time I spoke to Éamonn Ryan was in late August. I can still vividly remember the moment for more than just reasons of it being our final conversation; I was in the schoolyard in Gaelcholáiste Mhuire, AG with a stack of books in my arms, when the warmth of Éamonn’s words lightened the load, as they always did.
It was almost apt that we spoke in AG because Éamonn was a very proud past pupil of the school formerly known as North Monastery.
He was chatting about some of our great days together with Cork, our resilience as a team, and how those qualities had transferred into our daily lives.
“I know now I’m being philosophical,” he said. I told him that he was always philosophical. It was just his nature.
Éamonn was reminiscing and appreciating how we had all developed as people through our sport. In his mind, those many battles on our great journey together, and how they had shaped our character, would always be more valuable to us than the multitude of All-Ireland medals we won.
When I think back to that conversation now, Éamonn was more reflective than reminiscent. He didn’t say it — he never had to — but his words were coated in contentment, secured by the satisfaction of what he had achieved with us as much off the field, than on it.
The greatest legacy any manager or coach can leave is the part they play in shaping, moulding, and developing the people they lead. And we were all so blessed, lucky, honoured, and so greatly privileged to have been guided by Éamonn Ryan.
Some of the greatest managers in the history of sport have left a wonderful legacy in terms of success but those empires were still often constructed at a great human cost; players were hurt by how their careers finished, or how they were casually discarded when the end-game arrived.
The easy and often lazy response is that the ruthlessness applied to the regime is what made the regime in the first place.
Éamonn never dropped anyone off the panel; players knew themselves when it was time to go. Is that soft and avoiding being the bad guy? Soft doesn’t win 10 All-Irelands and nine league titles. The good guy doesn’t necessarily have to become the bad guy just for the sake of it.
He was a brilliant coach. My earliest coaching memory with Éamonn was out in Macroom Amenity Park pitch during one of our first sessions. I was playing half-forward when I passed the ball into the corner-forward and just stood my ground. I wanted to create that space for the corner-forward which would have allowed her to take on her defender in a one-on-one situation, and not clog up her space.
Éamonn asked me afterwards why I hadn’t played a give and go. Once I told him my rationale, he was happy to know there was a reason behind my decision other than the notion that I was being lazy. I instantly liked the way he was inquisitive, rather than presumptuous.
Éamonn never identified one player above anyone else. He would never have said ‘Let’s get the ball into Valerie’, or ‘let’s try and get Juliet (Murphy) into the game more’. Everyone was treated equal, but he would still privately build you up into feeling on top of the world.
I remember after winning one personal award when Éamonn compared me to Gooch and Maurice Fitzgerald. It might have seemed far-reaching to someone in a female sport, but Éamonn never saw any reason why there should be a distinction between someone at the top of their game in their particular sport. Despite the huge disparity between the profiles of male and female sports, Éamonn always believed that we deserved the same respect as the men.
That equality permeated through every aspect of his management. Éamonn never shouted or roared at us. The one time I remember him getting flustered on the sideline, it was actually unsettling for us, because his temperature was the gauge of our calm collective mood.
Éamonn may have appeared like he always had the answers, but he was never slow to search anywhere and everywhere for an edge. You knew he had read all the coaching books.
He’d regularly quote sports psychologists or former successful players or managers, but he was never shy to ask for help; I remember him ringing Cian O’Neill before one All-Ireland final to ask his advice. Éamonn had done it all by that stage but he still had the humility and the insight to keep asking, to keep searching.
That pursuit was glorious, and we would have done anything for the man. We had so much fun together. He wasn’t sarcastic, but he had this great dry wit. He could be cranky but that crankiness was just another way of expressing how he always wanted the best for us, and for us to be the best versions of ourselves.
Éamonn’s humour and story-telling grabbed our imaginations and, more importantly, held them. In the dressing room before the 2011 All-Ireland quarter-final against Dublin, he told us a story about listening to a woman on the radio whose husband had died a few days earlier.
As he described her attitude towards dealing with his death, and how she intended to move on, Éamonn leaped up about three feet in the air. It was like an act of defiance. We had lost to Tyrone at the same stage 12 months earlier and it was a powerful moment. We needed something special that day as we came back from the brink to defeat Dublin.
Éamonn’s ability to encapsulate a story with a phrase was masterful. He would tell us at the end of the season not to “come back with big heads or big arses”.
He was so well mannered and had such a good way about him that he never really cared about saying the wrong thing. I was at his son Don’s wedding when Éamonn said from the top table that “a good speech should be like a mini-skirt — long enough to cover the essentials, but short enough to get your attention.”
He was old enough to be our grandfather but Éamonn still always knew what to say and when to say it. He was from a totally different generation but he was so comfortable in our company because he enjoyed being around young people. I think it kept him young.
He was with so many of us throughout our careers. When many thought the team was almost over the hill in 2014, he told us all at that year’s All-Ireland homecoming on the South Mall that “what they don’t tell you is you gain momentum on the way down that hill”. That was a massive motivation for us going into 2015.
He had more angles than a compass. One day, he was reflecting on someone’s reaction to him driving his tiny white car along the road to training from Ballingeary. He told me that their angst was a “reflection of them and their character, and not a reflection of me”. That phrase stuck with me so much that I moulded it as an internal response to any peculiar or negative reactions to my own personal story.
He gave us all so many life lessons. As I embark on my own coaching journey now, I always compare myself to him, and ask myself: “How would Éamonn have dealt with this situation?” Whatever I do, I know that he would want me to enjoy the journey, wherever it ends. He would also want me to appreciate the journey for what it is, and to live it to the best of my ability.
Living a full life was everything to Éamonn. He always made us feel fortunate to be able to do what we did. One of Éamonn’s pre-All-Ireland final speeches came from witnessing a man in a wheelchair outside the bus needing assistance to cross the road.
He once wrote in a team meeting the night before an All-Ireland final to “appreciate what you have before time teaches you to appreciate what you had”.
Now that he is gone, I am so grateful to be able to appreciate what I had with him, that beautiful symbiotic relationship that very few people are able to have with a former manager. Because while a great mentor can change a team, they can also change a life.
Éamonn was like a grandfather to me and many others. He was always very approachable, always willing to help me, whether it was with kicking frees or my Irish preparation for an interview. You just knew he was committed to the person and not just the player. We had the best of days together.
When I heard the news yesterday, I was heartbroken. Throughout the day, I repeatedly played the Tina Turner song ‘Simply the Best’. That became our theme tune with Cork, which we repeatedly sang on celebratory occasions.
It was also a song especially loved by Éamonn. In the early days, he even requested it be sung after wins. By the end of his tenure, simply being the best had become encrypted into our DNA by Éamonn.
It’s difficult to describe the monumental impact this great man had on the team I was so grateful to be a part of. Winning 10 All-Irelands certainly didn’t happen by chance. It wasn’t because we were the best footballers — it was the bond that was created, the friendships formed, the environment harvested, and the desire nurtured and maintained in such a supportive and inclusive environment by Éamonn Ryan.
He simply was the absolute best.
Ni fheicimid a leithéid arís.
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