The Big Interview: Five football men chat jubilee honours, life and the modern game
WE DID IT: Kerry Manager Paidi O'Se congratulates Stephen Stack of Kerry following the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final at Croke Park in Dublin. Pic: David Maher/Sportsfile
They can’t all be dinosaurs.
For one it’s only quarter of a century since they bestrode and ruled the Gaelic football world, all five of them All Ireland winners and all but one of them All Stars.
Only one of them isn’t still actively coach the game at some grade or another.
The eldest of them in fact still plays, being about the freshest, trimmest 60-years-young man you could come across.
So while you’ll be glad to know that they’re all keeping the best, thank God, and all their teammates from 25-odd years ago are still above ground – something which some previous jubilee teams unfortunately weren’t able to say – it’s a bit more disconcerting to hear each of them express concerns about the game itself.
They know, they know. That it wasn’t always pretty back in their time either. John O’Leary lifted the cup in 1995 after a game in which no one knew for four minutes if Charlie Redmond had been sent off. Tommy Dowd lifted it in 1996 after a game in which there was a free-for-all that seemed to go on for four minutes. About the only saving grace about the 1997 final was Maurice Fitzgerald. The average winning score across all those finals was 1-10, a return that would have won only two of the past 12 All Ireland finals.
The game has cleaned up. The scoring has gone up. But the killer for them is the process of working a score has slowed down. At times to a snail’s pace. Unrecognisable to the game they played, the kind game of they’d like to see, and the game they coach and wish for their kids.
Of course some things about the game are so much better now. It’s just it could be even so much better.
Anyway, time to introduce them, just as they will in Croker tomorrow.
All Ireland-winning captain of the Dublin 1995 team. Won his fifth All Star that year.
1995 Footballer of the Year. Won his second of three All Stars that year.
All-Ireland winning captain of the Meath 1996 team. Scored the winning goal and was Man of the Match in the final replay. Won his fourth All Star that year.
Corner-back on the Kerry team that won the 1997 All Ireland and national league double.
Wing-forward on the Kerry team that won the 1997 All Ireland and national league double. Won an All Star and Goal of the Season that year.
I’m the finest, thanks. Yeah, I’m coaching the U14s in Fingal Ravens and also the same age with Wild Geese, the local hurling-only club; my son Jack is on both teams. I’m actually back playing myself [at 60]!
Two years ago we had a good minor team coming up and needed some place for them to go so we started a third team to accommodate everyone. That meant me putting my hand up to make sure we had the numbers.
My first game back was actually against my old club, O’Dwyer’s, and it was great fun, the number of lads saying, ‘What are you doing there?!’ It’s the ideal team. You don’t have to train, you don’t even have to do the warm-up, but you can still tog out!
I’m what you could call a breadbasket full forward: I get it and get rid of it as quick as I can! But then I always played my club football out the field; after I started making the Dublin minor team, I felt I had to get fitter and stronger so I moved out the field for the cub, usually playing at six or midfield. It helped my game massively, the same way it helped Cluxton’s. You get used to that cut-and-thrust, having to fight for the ball and go past fellas. Even if a fella doesn’t play out the field for his club, he should play there in training, just with the spatial awareness that comes from it and allowing you to play that further 20 or 30 yards outs from goal.
I’ve actually played a couple of games for us in goals when the lads have been stuck. Kicking off a tee was a new one for me but great craic! One game there I must have been 100percent with the kickouts, just clipping it off that little tee! Less hardship on the league, easier to hit the sweet spot; that’s one thing about the game now I’d have liked in our time.
All’s good, thanks. I finished up with Cuala at the turn of the year. It was great to win the Senior B championship again, we were the only team [in Dublin] to retain the championship they’d won the [first] Covid year, but at the time with the number of Covid cases through the roof, it was looking like the lockdown could continue indefinitely and I just couldn’t have another season only seeing the players on zoom for a lot of it.
But after the few months off and things opening again I got a call from an old sparring partner, Richie Kealy [an All Ireland winner with Meath in 1999]. He was managing Dunshauglin. So we met and hit it off and so I’m helping him. There’s the personal connection as well with my father [Noel, a 1967 All Ireland winner with Meath] being from the club. And I’m really enjoying it. We’d six lads starting in the league final a few weeks ago who were just after finishing their Leaving Cert. So there’s a lot of youth, a lot of enthusiasm and vibrancy about the team and club.
Sure I’m the best, all’s good. I’m still in the heat and oil game. I sold my business a few years ago but am still driving a truck for the company that bought me out. Ah, it’s taken a lot of pressure off me. It happened just at the right time, before Covid and all this shit with the war.
I’m not training any teams, no. My own two lassies, Mandy and Emma, are 27 and 25, both teaching, but they don’t play, so I’m not coaching them or anyone else. I finished up with Meath in 2000, played a few more years then at club, thankfully won a senior with Wolfe Tones, Cian Ward’s club, before I finished up, and then took a few teams. But when you’re at something all your life and then you stop it, it’s hard to get back into it again. I certainly would have no interest in going in and coaching now, the way the game is played these days. Sure it’s a completely different sport to the one I played! With the defensive systems, I wouldn’t have a clue where to start training a team.
I’ve taken a break from the football this year. I was after four years with the Stacks [in which time he won the 2014 county championship], three then with the Legion. My kids are 10, 9 and 7, so I’m having a great year, spending time with them and having the chance to go to games with them.
Life is good, thank God. Actually, [RTÉ’s] Pascal Sheehy was down with my father Mick for a piece this week. In 1959 he and Jack Kissane played for Galway against Kerry in the All Ireland final. After doing his Leaving Cert in The Green [Tralee CBS] he went up to Galway to do his arts degree so played for Galway in those years. After that then he went of teaching in Nigeria until a civil war broke out there and he came back to teach in The Green. Jack sadly passed away last year but thankfully Dad is still with us.
I’m involved with the juveniles in Stacks. I’ve a girl playing U16 football and a lad playing U13s. I helped out one year with the girls and have been involved with the boys since they were U6s. We’ve a good bunch of 47 young lads, mad to play. I don’t think Covid helped. At first a lot of the boys were unfit, because they’d spent so much time indoors, on Playstations. But it’s coming back and you can see the kids who are practising outside of training, being able to kick and pass off their left and right. At their age it’s all about the skills and moving. We recently got a tactics board we’d come across on Twitter and used it to show and try out a press on a kickout but that’s the only tactical stuff we’d do at that age.
The one thing I like about the modern game is the movement of players from one end of the pitch to the other. When I was playing maybe a halfback could attack but not a corner forward. Look at the likes of Tom O’Sullivan and Oisín Mullin now.
In fairness the players today are in some shape. We thought we were nearly semi-professional but the lads now you’d have to say are virtually professional the way they prepare. They’re some athletes. I love how they’re now all able to get up and down the field. But what I don’t like is all the over and back.
Ah, I find the game now frustrating to watch. The overuse of the short kickout; I don’t understand why teams have conceded that. And there’s way too much back and forth across the field. That’s the one thing I coach with the U14s: when you get the ball, take three steps, hop the ball, and take three more and move the ball. None of this just making a shuffle pass around the middle; there’s no skill or taking responsibility in that. Every pass should put the defence that bit more under pressure.
But now there’s almost over-securitisation of possession. Even Kerry-Dublin the other week, there were four or five times where the shot could have been taken but they weren’t in case they missed it and it’d be perceived as a turnover. You nearly have to be guaranteed to score if you’re to shoot. Players are abdicating the responsibility of taking a shot because they’re afraid they’ll miss and it’ll be seen by management as being a low-percentage shot.
At times it can be very hard to be invested as a fan because there’s less cut and thrust. There was a lot of doodling in the Dublin-Cork game, then you looked up at the board and you saw Dublin were ten up and you wondered how did that happen? It was just a death by a hundred cuts. Even the Kerry-Dublin game the last day which was in the melting pot right to the end, it had a different feel to say those Dublin-Mayo games from 2012 to 2017 which were more mano a mano, gladiator contests.
Ah God, some of it is very hard to watch. Especially the lateral play over and back across the field. It could be up to four minutes before anyone takes a shot. Look, maybe I’m old-fashioned but I sat down and tried to watch the Ulster final and it was boring as anything I saw in my life. I mean, I know Derry felt they had to play that kind of game to beat Donegal but as a neutral it was pathetic. Marty [Morrissey] and [Kevin] McStay got stick for their commentary but I felt they were talking for me.
I feel sorry for the young lads coming up now. I really do. These days a manager will register a wide as a mistake. So the less shots on goals, the less mistakes you’ve made in a way. I don’t know where we’re going with football, to be honest. I only know where my team are going with it, though it might mean someone like me being phased out of the game. Our attitude is we’re going to attack and we’re going to keep attacking. Okay, our lads will be asked to track back, but essentially we’re trying to get on the ball. A lot of teams we play might have everyone back but I’d much rather be in our position, being the ones battering down the door than the ones behind the feckin’ door.
I think they have to do something to change it, improve it, it can’t just be left to coaches. You look at the hurling final. It was an incredible spectacle. With the football final you’re hoping it’ll be exciting but you don’t know if it will be. It could be a dour enough affair.
I’m all for a more tactical approach. The kickout strategies and how they’re evolving; I find that all very interesting. But the over-and-back thing has to be addressed. You even had it in the Dublin-Kerry game. At one stage Kerry held the ball for three minutes at a time in the game when they had the momentum. Now, maybe they were taking a breather, and I know they got a [Paudie Clifford] point from it at the end, but I think they let Dublin back in the game playing at that tempo.
The defining moment for me of Kerry this year I felt was when they went back and forth across the pitch for three minutes or so before eventually Paudie Clifford fisted the ball over the bar. The whole passage showed a patience and maturity that wasn’t there last year. They worked the ball until they had a 90 percent chance of scoring when last year they might have rushed it or Paudie would have maybe felt compelled to go for goal.
It’s a balance. Like everyone I much prefer when the ball is moved fat. I like to see a lot of kicking in the game. If I was to give advice to any young player it would be to practise your kicking and move it from one end of the other because that’s what wins the big prize in the end. But for a lot of modern managers, they’re afraid their team will give the ball away, that the most they’ll score is 13 points, so their primary job is to limit the other team to 11 or 12. Again, it’s a balance. Not everything can be structured; it’s better to have certain principles that allow a certain amount of freedom for players to play on instinct rather than everything following a pre-rehearsed move. You see it now with the Irish rugby team. They’re not knocking the instinct out of a player. They’re a joy to watch because that trust and freedom is there.
I love David Clifford because he creates chaos; opponents don’t know what he’s going to do. I enjoyed Armagh this year; the way they could turn a team over and then with one kick create a scoring chance.
I enjoyed watching Armagh this year. I think they play a great brand of football. They’ll feed the long ball into the full-forward line and then have a very good half-forward line coming onto it. As Seán Boylan used to tell us, nothing moves faster than the ball. Dublin went back to more of that kind of football when [Con] O’Callaghan was playing. And Kerry are probably the best footpassers in the game. They must do a lot of practice on that, all the way up. Ógie’s lad, David, is a brilliant passer of the ball for such a huge lump of a man. I think he could have a very good final. The same with your man Shane Walsh. He’s a class act altogether.
We’ve lost three of the ’83 unfortunately; Richie Crean died there last month, meaning we’ve lost him, Kieran Maher and Mick Holden now. Thankfully all the ’95 gang are good. We’ve a fairly active WhatsApp group. Tommy Drumm looks after the ’83 one while [Paul] Clarkey is over the ’95 one. You’d have Dessie and Jim all on it, though some lads would be more active than others.
I heard there wasn’t much of a crowd in their seats for the hurling one last week. The GAA should maybe have had Meath go out at half-time for the Derry-Galway semi-final, us at halftime for the Dublin-Kerry game, and then Kerry for the final itself. But it is what it is and it’ll be good to meet up.
Last year I was brought up on my own to walk across the pitch but in fairness to Alan Milton in Croke Park, he said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have all the teams back next year’ and they’ve been true to their word.
We don’t get really meeting up as a group. I’d see Barry Callaghan alright a good bit while Graham [Geraghty] just lives up the road; he’s in great old form now after that scare a year or two back. He won’t be there on Sunday, he has his holidays booked, but his lad Brandon will be there for him.
When word got out that we’d be heading up sure the WhatsApp group was like a bunch of kids on Christmas Eve. We’ve got the suits ordered from CJ Murtagh’s in Trim. We’ve a bus organised to bring us back into Navan then on Sunday night for a few drinks after the game. Ah sure it’ll be great to see everyone.
We’ve lost Páidí, obviously, so that’s a massive loss. He was gone before the 20th anniversary as well but in 2017 we all met up down in his bar and had a brilliant night. Dáire Ó Cinnéide commissioned a lovely present for Máire. Naturally we’ll be thinking a lot about him over the weekend. We’ve a few things planned. Seamus [Moynihan] got a spot where we’ll be going for a few drinks after the game but I can’t tell you for fear the whole county will descend there! Thankfully all the players are still alive and well but we’re aware as time goes on that won’t always be the case, so we’re going to make the most of it as these things don’t come around too often.
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