Dublin in Whelan's wake

If there was black comedy in the business of his appointment, there was some worrying poignancy in the manner of his departure. Mickey Whelan, shaken and tense from another afternoon of abuse from the most vocally disgruntled section of the Dublin crowd, felt the arm of one of his rehabilitated players on his shoulder. With the other hand the player gave a single-fingered gesture to the crowd. Ten minutes later, Mickey Whelan was no longer in charge of the Dublin footballers.

He told the players first, silencing them amidst the chatter of tongues and the clatter of studs. Then he wheeled out and popped upstairs and said a more brief goodbye to a handful of surprised county board officials. Meanwhile, in a neat pinpointing of where Dublin currently are, Keith Barr told the players downstairs that training for Tuesday was cancelled and that Paul Curran would take charge of the session for Thursday.

The sense of surprise around Parnell Park was almost tangible. Whelan had withstood more intense abuse last spring as his team limped through the national league. He had stood firm and, more than that, having said he would go if Meath beat his team in the first round of the championship, he changed his mind and stayed. He seemed like a man determined to prove a point. Then, last Sunday, after a second winter league defeat, he upped and left. Mickey Whelan, unpredictable as ever.

His words to the county board officials were so rushed and stunning in their impact that he had to be called back. It was felt that it would be politic and wise to keep the news in cold storage until after the board's weekly meeting last Monday night, but by the time Whelan got downstairs again his team had been leaking as fluently off the pitch as they had been on.

The ironies were everywhere, and for journalists their abundance and symmetry were too much to resist. Dublin had just lost stutteringly to the Leinster champions, an Offaly team managed confidently and authoritatively by Tommy Lyons, the man who had once been told that he had Mickey Whelan's job, only to see it snatched away. Indeed, the two visits this season of Offaly teams to Parnell Park had wreaked havoc on the lives of the central figures in that appointments saga. When Offaly's under-21 side played Dublin in the Leinster championship and the game dissolved into a donnybrook for a period in the second half, several people were the victims of a combination of circumstances which saw a slow news weekend fall right into the heart of zero tolerance season in the GAA. David Billings, another who thought that he had Mickey Whelan's job, picked up a year-long suspension on the basis of some rather inconclusive video evidence. As Whelan joked to him at a St Vincent's club function that night, "You'll never get my job now."

Mickey Whelan's job. Whelan's surprisingly truncated term of office has rendered the task of his successor less enviable. There is an argument that perhaps this was unavoidable. The Dublin players who won the All-Ireland in 1995 had - quite remarkably, in retrospect - been toiling away at the highest level for half a decade.

They were a headstrong bunch who needed intense and comprehensive management. It took a four-man team a mountain of man hours every week just to provide the management services necessary to win an All-Ireland. Besides applying science to the business of team preparation, and decades of football knowledge to the business of team selection, Pat O'Neill and his selectors brought sports psychology, dietary advice, physiotherapy, video analysis, sports medicine and an extensive administration operation to the business of managing the team. In the winter of 1995, into that void stepped Mickey Whelan and two old friends, Lorcan Redmond and Christy O'Kane. Their appointment came at the end of yet another farcically mismanaged appointment process, the details of which have been well documented.

In the end, the county board decided on the last of the summer wine policy, and choose a close friend of Kevin Heffernan's to do a job for which Whelan had been mooted several times over the past few decades. Whelan's appointment was widely perceived as in accordance with the wishes of Heffernan himself. His eminence still exercises a hypnotic effect on most people involved in Dublin football. There was never an official announcement as such, but Heffernan, like other deities, moves in mysterious ways.

The pros and the cons were immediately obvious. Whelan inherited the All-Ireland champions, but his arrival created a generation gap. He inherited a well-drilled team, but after several seasons on the go they were burned out. They were used to science; he brought simplicity. They were used to rules; he gave them freedom. Mickey talked about attacking football; the team cried out for a full back.

Mickey Whelan Is a character. Love him or loathe him, you can't ignore him. He brought the sort of swagger to the job which would have served him well if he were managing the New York Yankees, but which would make him a hostage to his own misfortune when the quotes would be read back later.

He spoke of the team being given the chance to play attacking football and express themselves, he sparred early on with the media knownothings about Jason Sherlock, he talked the talk about creating his own team. He tampered with the team's chemistry, bringing back Joe McNally, Eamon Heery and Niall Guiden and ditching Paul Clarke and Ciaran Walsh. His first championship season ended badly. Kevin Heffernan travelled on the team bus to a first round game in Navan, his presence adding fuel to the bonfire of rumours about his influence. The summer came to a close when an evidently under-trained team flopped against the young Meath side they had beaten by 10 points a year earlier.

There was a crisis that autumn when a players' meeting failed to air any of the issues lurking like germs underneath the skin of the team. Relationships between players and county board worsened when John O'Leary was quoted at a county board meeting by the county chairman, John Bailey, as endorsing Mickey Whelan's continued tenure. The entire business left Whelan in an invidious position, not of his making.

Last summer's first round championship exit to Meath was dressed up as a success because the team salvaged a narrow defeat out of what might have been a humiliation. The team still needed a full back, and, while they were better trained for the challenge of the championship, there were problems all the way to Croke Park.

The league campaign, like the previous years, failed to provide the competitive whetstone of play-off action, and in the latter stages Mickey Whelan faced afternoons of torrid abuse from the terraces in Parnell Park. Within the squad, things were changing too. Joe McNally just drifted away after Christmas, after not being invited to a meeting of senior players which was to set the tone for the season.

The generation who came into the county colours under Gerry McCaul's stewardship in the late 1980s began to take a leading role in running the team. John O'Leary, damaged and undermined both by the county board and by Whelan's decision to look around for a new captain, saw his influence diminished. Keith Barr and Paul Curran, captain and vice-captain respectively, took on large amounts of responsibility. The tight clique known generally as the O'Hanlon's Group (for their habit of gathering in the pub of that name) were increasingly influential and vocal.

Charlie Redmond retired briefly during an unhappy training weekend in Cavan. With Redmond back in the fold, the decision was taken to recall Mick Galvin to the colours. From April onwards, the panel had virtually decided that the full forward line against Meath would be that which won the All-Ireland: Redmond, Galvin and Sherlock. The morale among fringe players suffered.

The team still needed a full back.

Whelan surprised many by staying on in charge of the team after the second defeat to Meath. By the end of the summer, the problems facing Dublin were startlingly clear. Since 1995, the county's two greatest rivals, Meath and Kerry, had re-emerged to win All-Irelands. Offaly had won a provincial championship, and previously timid minion counties like Kildare and Laois were sizing up Dublin as a soft touch.

Then they went to Sligo and lost in the league. Whelan suffered badly throughout the Sligo game from the slings and arrows from the loudmouths on the terrace. Sligo rallied late to win and, as Whelan left the field, several cans were thrown at the Dublin manager. Whelan, shell-shocked and reeling coming into the dressing room, was almost speechless. He railed at his players about a stupid late goal which had visited this embarrassment upon them. To complete a perfect day, the train back to Dublin got delayed and it was approaching midnight when the team rolled into the capital. Senior players with the group noted with alarm how casually the younger players were taking this landmark humiliation.

In the following week, the mumblings of discontent started up again in GAA administrative circles in Dublin. Fear of Kevin Heffernan and a desire not to be seen to panic kept the issue off the agenda at the county board, but a highly critical letter from a former All-Ireland panelist was read out to the meeting. No decisions were taken, but various cliques and groupings were whispering ominously about giving the situation a more vigorous review at Christmas.

Unpredictable as ever, Whelan pre-empted all that last Sunday when he stepped down in the immediate aftermath of yet another defeat. He did the right thing for himself and for his team, which looks increasingly lost. The biggest regret which must mark his passing is that a serious GAA man has perhaps been hurt by the loose tongues and hooligan instincts of a small group of fools on the terraces.

Mickey Whelan made his mistakes and he, the team and the county board were adult enough to absorb the implications and to act without the distasteful spectacle of abuse which was introduced into the business.

The future is cloudy. Declan Darcy is a major addition, but the team ails for about three forwards and creaks badly in the full back line. Ian Robertson, the current number three, is a superb footballer but not a full back. Pat O'Neill's interest in managing the under21 side is encouraging. It would be nice if (providing they don't get the senior post) successful under-age managers like Alan Larkin and Brian Talty could be coaxed into looking after the football interests of the county from under-16 level through to minor, picking development squads and working elite players through the system.

As for the senior team, the spine of an AllIreland winning side is there if the right manager becomes available. It will need to be somebody who can put the genie of player power back into the bottle while keeping several great talents happy. Those who have vigorously hurled their hats into the ring are likely to get little except hernias and headlines. Over the next few weeks other names are likely to be canvassed and sounded out. Dublin football is at a crossroads. The appointment of the next senior manager is the most important football-related decision the county board will have taken since it handed the whip back to Kevin Heffernan in 1973. The county, in particular, and the GAA in general can't afford a mistake.