How exactly did Micko get the Kerry job?

Mickey Ned O’Sullivan is keen to address a couple of misconceptions around that time.

Stars on the 1975 Kerry All-Ireland winning team captain Mickey Ned O'Sullivan and Ger Power, with their former manager Mick O'Dwyer at a celebration banquet. Picture by Eamonn Keogh (MacMonagle, Killarney)

When did Mick O’Dwyer take over as Kerry manager? Fifty years on, it’s a question that continues to beguile and bemuse.

His authorised biography suggests he was simply promoted from selector having overseen the U21s in 1974 and oversaw the National League campaign that began in October of that year. It also states county chairman Gerald McKenna “bulldozed” his appointment through the county board.

March 22, 1975, the day before they lost a Division 1 quarter-final to Meath, is the date often referenced. As for the occasion, it is regularly cited as the day after O’Dwyer and Kerry’s captain Mickey Ned O’Sullivan attended Joe Lennon’s two-day training forum in Gormanston College.

He was probably acting as the person-in-charge before he was eventually appointed as Johnny Culloty’s successor having assisted him along with Michael McGrath and Liam Sayers.

Certainly, in January 1975 O’Dwyer’s 14-year odyssey had yet to begin officially. At that month’s annual convention, Culloty, who passed away in February last, two months before O’Dwyer, was being thanked for his services but newspapers speculated the Waterville man would be the next man in. What’s more, at that meeting O’Dwyer along with four others on the football selection committee were being opposed.

He survived that vote and by April he was being referred to as the man who would lead Kerry in the Munster championship. Without the title, O’Dwyer stayed involved for the league games against Roscommon in February and March.

“There was very little training done around that time of the year,” recalls O’Sullivan. “Mick would have been a selector and Johnny Culloty would have retired in ’74 and it was in a limbo.” 

O’Sullivan is keen to address a couple of misconceptions around that time. Sure, 1975 marked Kerry’s first All-Ireland in five years and they had lost three of the four previous Munster finals to Cork, but it was no overnight success, he maintains.

“A team goes through a growth stage, a performance stage, and a decline. The growth stage was between ’71 and ’74. Jackie Lyne had ended up in ’71 then Johnny Culloty took over for three years. There was the decline of the ’69-’71 team but what Johnny did was keep some of them as a backbone as well as bringing in about nine or 10 of the minors and U21s. so much so that nine of the players won three National Leagues by the time of the 1975 All-Ireland. Some of them would have played in the All-Ireland final against Offaly in ‘72.

“National League medals meant nothing in Kerry and being beaten by Cork in three Munster finals put pressure on Johnny, but Johnny had done an enormous amount of work with the young guys.

“You would have learned an awful lot more from losing championship games than winning National Leagues. And when Mick took over, the obvious thing to do was wipe out the older lads who were in decline. He had to go with the young lads. That’s when the performance stage started.

“There’s a myth that the team came overnight and that’s a factor that has never been addressed. Johnny Culloty did a lot of work, and he was probably in a difficult situation because he had lads who were probably too old and too young.

“As well as that, he was managing lads he had played with and they were shoving on, the likes of Mick O’Connell, Mick O’Dwyer, Donie O’Sullivan, Eamonn O’Donoghue were still playing. Juggling all that, the contribution of Johnny Culloty has never been addressed.” 

There was uncertainty following Culloty’s departure. County secretary at the time Andy Molyneaux had approached then 22-year-old O’Sullivan, who was studying PE in London at the time, to train the team but he was more focused on playing.

One day, Molyneaux said to O’Sullivan he had two tickets for the Lennon coaching course in Meath. O’Dwyer refused the second ticket after Lennon previously commented that Kerry were 10 years out of date.

“Eventually, he decided he'd go,” says O’Sullivan. “The deciding factor was that Kevin Heffernan gave an exhibition training session with the whole Dublin squad. And it was at a different level of physical fitness. The level was something new that Gaelic football teams would not have experienced up to then and it gave us a vision of what was required if we had to compete with them.” 

The following Tuesday, O’Dwyer asked O’Sullivan to design the training session. They met in the car park an hour beforehand to go through it. “I hadn't much of an input after that,” laughs O’Sullivan. “He multiplied everything by two.” 

O’Sullivan has asked his Dublin contemporaries if Heffernan ever admitted regret that he gave his would-be nemesis O’Dwyer such insight into his team. “They said that was the worst decision he ever made. It set the yardstick straight away because there was no way we'd have understood the level of what was required.” 

* Mickey Ned O’Sullivan is promoting the celebration of Kerry’s eight All-Ireland winning teams from 1975-86 in INEC, Gleneagles Hotel, Killarney on December 5. Funds from the black tie event raised will go to the expansion of Kerry’s Centre of Excellence. Tables can be booked by contacting Aileen Foley at [e-mail]