Past kings still retain pride of place

ALL-IRELAND FOOTBALL FINAL: Seán Moran finds that Kerry people, whether involved or not with the GAA, are forever indebted to the forward thinking, planning and accomplishments of Dick Fitzgerald and Dr Eamonn O'Sullivan.

Walk out of Killarney station, past the Great Southern hotel and cross the road to your right. Pass the courthouse on the corner. Cross the road again and keep going until the turn right and head straight.

In a few minutes you're there.

Fitzgerald Stadium is the most beautiful venue in Gaelic games. It's not an architectural opera like Croke Park, but its functional design lies just beneath the Reeks and the panoramic setting lends a Parnassian touch to the view from the press-box side of the ground.

This is a big weekend for the town. Killarney has tended to be overshadowed by Tralee in terms of football. Its two clubs, Dr Crokes and Legion, have waxed and waned, sometimes throwing in their lot with the East Kerry division, sometimes amalgamating to form a Killarney combination, whereas the big Tralee clubs have maintained their own separate identity.

In the past 10 years, however, Crokes since their All-Ireland club victory have grown in strength and tomorrow Eoin Brosnan and Colm Cooper line out in the Kerry attack, giving the town two All-Ireland starters for the first time in decades.

But if Killarney lacks a Street of Champions like Tralee's Rock Street, its influence on local and national GAA history has been immense.

Fitzgerald Stadium's main feature is the O'Sullivan Stand and in those two names is wrapped momentous history for Killarney, Kerry and the GAA.

NEXT Thursday, September 26th, will be the 72nd anniversary. It was a weekend in 1930 not unlike this. Hotly-favoured Kerry were about to play the Ulster champions, Monaghan, in the All-Ireland final.

On the Friday evening, Jerry O'Leary was called to the courthouse to try and talk to his lifelong friend Dick Fitzgerald. They had been born within a year of each other, went to school together and together helped make Kerry a football force.

"Small Jer" O'Leary had played football, would be a Kerry selector for years, helped broker the deal that saw the GAA purchase Croke Park and held court in his antiques shop until the fine age of 89, before passing away in 1974. He would also be a driving influence in the development of Fitzgerald Stadium as a memorial for his close friend.

Fitzgerald was a man of boundless energies. He won five All-Ireland medals, captained Kerry in 1913 and '14 and was a brilliant tactician. He managed the team's transition from 17-a-side to 15-a-side and wrote the first GAA coaching manual How To Play Gaelic Football in 1914.

As a volunteer in the 1916 Rising, he was interned in the Frongoch camp in Wales. There he helped organise a football tournament between representatives of the various counties. Kerry had something of an advantage with Fitzgerald on board and duly beat Louth in the prisoners' All-Ireland.

The contacts made in Frongoch would become a vital future network for the brother of a friend of Fitzgerald who was also interned there. In the turbulent years ahead, Michael Collins ruthlessly used this network and, after the signing of the Treaty, O'Leary's in Killarney was his first port of call when he came south to Kerry.

The other projects in which Fitzgerald involved himself included fund-raising for the Parnell Monument in Dublin, the Croke Cup, which helped finance the acquisition of Croke Park, the GAA's Central Council, on which he was a delegate, and refereeing.

Yet, the GAA was only part of an expression of commitment to the national identity and community development. Margaret O'Leary, daughter of Small Jer, says Fitzgerald was interested in the wider social picture. On his release from Frongoch, he was elected to the Killarney UDC.

By accounts a kind man, he lost his wife at an early age and was a heavy drinker. On that Friday evening in 1930, it was known he had been drinking during the day. Somehow, he managed to climb on to the courthouse roof.

Margaret O'Leary says her father never doubted for an instant that it was an accident. Having known Dick Fitzgerald since boyhood, having been present at the end and having spoken to his friend as he died after falling from the courthouse, Jer O'Leary's view is authoritative.

Word swept the town. Dick Fitzgerald was dead. There was an immense groundswell of sentiment that the All-Ireland had to be postponed. Kerry would not travel on the weekend that "Ireland's Greatest Gael" - to quote the floral tribute from his club Dr Croke's - was being laid to rest.

The Fitzgerald family defused the situation. The funeral would not take place until Monday, after the match. On the morning of the All-Ireland, a memorial Mass was said in the Jesuit church on Gardiner Street.

Even its impressive scale couldn't contain the number of mourners and all along the street outside people knelt on the pavement.

Before the match, the players wore black armbands and the Artane Boys played Chopin's Dead March as the teams marched before the silent attendance.

NO ONE was more closely associated with the development of Fitzgerald Stadium than Dr Eamonn O'Sullivan. The fact that it was named after Dick Fitzgerald meant that he was, according to his son Tony O'Sullivan, "proud to be associated with it".

For all he achieved, there are two outstanding things that need to be known about Dr Eamonn. One, he trained Kerry to eight All-Irelands over five decades and two, that he was instrumental in the building of Fitzgerald Stadium.

In recent years, Mick O'Dwyer established a modern All-Ireland management record of eight All-Irelands in 12 years. Only in Kerry could such an achievement entitle you to just a share of first place.

O'Dwyer's exploits are remarkable in that they took place in such a short space of time. But O'Sullivan's eight titles have the advantage of longevity and were won over five decades: 1924, '26, '37, '46, '53, '55 and '62.

In between, he moved in and out of team management. Cynical interpretation has suggested that he only took on the responsibility when there was a reasonable chance of winning an All-Ireland. But this isn't entirely fair.

Whereas O'Sullivan's record in All-Ireland finals was remarkable, he did take charge of the county in less auspicious years. For instance, in 1957 he was coach to the Kerry team sensationally defeated by Waterford in the Munster championship.

His expertise emphasised collective training, which allowed teams come together for two weeks before an All-Ireland final for full-time preparation.

Eventually, this was abandoned as incipient professionalism by the GAA - in the face of much protest from Kerry who, under O'Sullivan, had elevated this type of training to an unbeatable procedure for All-Ireland finals.

Although he was only in his 20s when his managerial career began, Eamonn O'Sullivan had advantages of breeding. His father, JP O'Sullivan - also known as "The Champ" - had been a champion athlete and had captained the Laune Rangers team that had contested the 1892 All-Ireland championship - the first year that Dublin and Kerry had met in an All-Ireland final.

As a child in St Brendan's College, he remembered the visit of Dick Fitzgerald who had demonstrated to the schoolboys the art of twisting over a ball from near the end line - the screw kick.

His greatest triumph came in 1955 when a Dublin team, as unerring at gathering hype as any that followed, came to be known as "a scientific machine".

In the All-Ireland final - expected to be a clash of old and new - the traditional principles of Dr Eamonn prevailed.

"I think the win over Dublin in 1955 gave him most satisfaction," said his son Tony in an interview with Weeshie Fogarty, the former Kerry footballer and broadcaster who is now working on a book about Dr Eamonn O'Sullivan, on Radio Kerry.

"That Dublin team was regarded as a machine with Kevin Heffernan as a roving full forward. Ned Roche was full back, but wouldn't have been seen as the roving type. The media was very much covering Dublin.

"I remember that, after the semi-final replays, Eamonn Mongey (Mayo footballer) met my father and asked him how he would deal with Heffernan. He just said 'I believe a full back should stay in the square'."

Tom Ashe played in the 1953 final against Armagh. His recollection of collective training is succinct. "Dr Eamonn had a peculiar way of training, concentrating on running and walking and diet. I don't think I ever ate so many tomatoes in all my life."

In the first half against Armagh, corner forward Ashe kicked two points after moving in on the square.

"I went in at half-time delighted with myself," he recalls. "But Dr Eamonn called me over and read me the riot act.

"I said that I had scored two points, but he said that that wasn't the point; I shouldn't have left my corner."

His input to the Fitzgerald Stadium project was unusual. O'Sullivan was RMS of St Finan's Mental Hospital just behind the ground in Killarney. To some local unease, he supplied patients to assist in the building of the new stadium.

But O'Sullivan's attitude was that patients were better off working out of doors than being locked up inside the hospital.

By way of substantiating his views, he wrote a widely acknowledged medical textbook on occupational therapy, based on his experiences on the stadium development.

He also wrote a coaching manual, The Art and Science of Gaelic Football, published in 1958.

WHEN Dr Crokes reached the 1992 All-Ireland club final, eight-year old Colm Cooper was asked if he would like to be the team mascot at Croke Park. Even then, his talents were evident.

This weekend he may become the next big thing in Kerry football. A corner forward with gifts of elusiveness and accuracy.

Dr Crokes club member John Keogh recalls when Cooper was playing under-12 football at the age of eight.

"When the young lads were lining up in the full-back line to decide who they were marking no one would go near him. 'I'm not marking the Gooch,' they were shouting. Myself and a guard were cracking up looking at it."

So his first trip to Croke Park was as mascot in the final against Thomas Davis. Peter O'Brien, the club goalkeeper who had first nicknamed him the Gooch (after "a foxy cartoon character") saw young Cooper joining in the kick-around.

According to Keogh, O'Brien became testy. "He gave out to him because Cooper was undermining his confidence - one shot in the top corner, another in the bottom corner. So he told him to get off the field and stop undermining him. Eventually, the stewards arrived and took him off when he was trying to join the team parade."

Tomorrow, Colm Cooper will be in the parade with no one to prevent him.

SO when you next get a chance, look up from the terrace in front of the wall between Fitzgerald Stadium and St Finan's Hospital. The first thing to notice is either the mist or haze cloaking the mountains. And through that filter the perspective that gazes down on the eternal mythologies of football's Kingdom.