Mikey Sheehy: Farewell Micko, the greatest Kerry Gael of them all

To have been in any of those dressing rooms is to have been inspired. We would do quite anything he asked us, knowing he wouldn’t ask to do something he wouldn’t do himself.

MASTER AT WORK: Mick O' Dwyer training the team in 1982. Pic: Don MacMonagle

FOR years, a lingering frustration that grates, like a stone under the back door.

There are folk, and I am amongst their number, who have little doubt Mick O’Dwyer is the most important figure in the history of Gaelic football. As a player, a mentor, coach, manager, a figurehead in many counties, an innovator and an agitator, primarily for his players. It could be that last quality is reason in itself why neither Kerry GAA nor the Association itself moved to create an ambassadorial or emeritus role for Micko when he was done in the dugout. Nor, we should remind ourselves, was he ever invited to manage the International Rules squads that represented the GAA in Australia, which remains, to this day, in the realm of the absurd.