A charismatic one-man show

Tom Humphries talks to Dublin manager Tommy Lyons, whose confidentstyle of management has helped Dublin regain their self-belief

Tommy Lyons is no longer unwell. He's had the engine checked, the hood looked under and oil changed. Apart from a scratch on the hubcap he's never been better thanks. Now he just wants to get back to talking football.

This afternoon he goes back home. Croke Park. A Gaelic football pitch with a game on the line. What he lives for and what he loves.

He's drenched in it of course. He remembers as a kid, the son of a P&T worker in Mayo being brought on Sundays to McHale Park where his father would put in the lines for the Radio Éireann people and young Tommy would sit up behind O'Hehir or Ó Muircheartaigh watching the game below through the prism of their words. The playing from about nine years of age onwards.

Brought to Dublin with his three brothers and three sisters because the P&T had a vacancy and because the Lyons parents fancied all their children would want to go to college. Only one of them took the option.

Tommy hurled for Cuala and as there was no football team there he went down to Kilmacud Crokes for a game. Soon he was a Crokes man, only part of the wave of talent on and off the field that made that club great. He managed them to a club All-Ireland title, one of those epics of the genre winning through with a team that was well balanced and knew what it wanted to do. That's been a hallmark of Lyons' teams. Crokes had it. Offaly had it. Now Dublin.

Dublin could have had it some time ago of course. When Dublin last won an All-Ireland the management retired promptly. It was expected in many quarters that Lyons would be handed the job. It never came his way and there have been more conspiracy theories about that snub than there have been about the Kennedy assassination. He still says bluntly that he would have liked the job back then but the politics of it are forgotten about.

"Listen, if it's for you, well it's for you." This time he kept his name back until 12 or 13 clubs had contacted him. Oh well. What will be, will be.

He put together a rather astonishing ticket of talents to go into the dressing-room behind him. Three men who have managed teams successfully themselves and might reasonably have expected to be in the hot seat themselves - Davy Billings, Paddy Canning and Paul Caffrey.

More surprising is their unity. There is one manager and one voice in the dressing-room. The others sit and listen, make their contributions through Lyons.

The four of them met for the first time in Lyons' house in Stillorgan and laid it all out, what they would each do, what they believed in for the team. They realised that night that you don't get too much out of Tommy Lyons past 10.30 p.m. He's an early riser and when it gets late he flags.

Not long later they sat down with the team in Parnell Park one evening.

"There was a lot of hurt there because of what happened. I knew that, I could see that. They didn't like what happened to Tom Carr but it wasn't my fault. If we were going to go on we had to unite. I don't know what they made of me but I came away with the impression of a bunch of people who were very serious about their football. I liked that. I've always had the highest regard for footballers in Dublin because they play their football in a goldfish bowl, with the national media looking over their shoulders the whole time."

They set about completing the picture they had for themselves with a series of trials. Trials are a useful exercise or a complete waste of time carried out for window-dressing. It depends on your viewpoint.

Lyons insists the trials were invaluable not just in finding players but in bonding the selectors.

"We knew what sort of football we wanted to play and we knew the type of footballers we were looking for. Natural-born footballers really, not made footballers. We wanted confident fellas, not brittle lads. We were going for guys who would grow under pressure instead of breaking."

Lyons would point to a player.

"Who's he?"

"That's (say) David Henry."

"He's a natural talent."

And the little bits of supplementary information would come flying. He was a good minor. People from Offaly. Can play anywhere. And they'd take notes and the next day they would divide up the pitch and each watch different players.

"We got to see a lot of very good footballers when they were unfit. They wouldn't have lasted 20 minutes championship but it was intense and they were going for it. Under those circumstances it was easy to pick out the natural players."

From their first game, an O'Byrne Cup match against Westmeath in Mullingar, two players caught their eye. Barry Cahill and Paul Casey. Lyons put his faith in them. He'd never lost faith in Ray Cosgrove. The difficulty was that Cosgrove had lost faith in Ray Cosgrove.

"He's been great, hasn't he," says Tommy, enthused as ever to be speaking about footballers. "And (John) McNally. He's the find of the lot I think. The amount of ball he wins. People complain about the frees but what about McNally going for a ball, he doesn't see anything else."

He has put together a team which moves the ball speedily from defence and which doesn't encourage its half backs to dally. Pump it into where the pace wins it.

He's not convinced that the All- Ireland can be won this year but he's come to realise that the city is convinced. People have fallen for this team hook, line and sinker. They score goals, they look happy, they're enjoyable to watch.

The new Dublin jersey is outselling the new Manchester United one by a ratio of about six to one somebody has told him. The flags are flying everywhere he goes. Tommy receives post with no proper address on it. Dublin games are big occasions once again.

And he is central to it.

"I'm not into negative motivations," he says. "We go out to win because we want to win, because we want to be the best not because we have anything to prove. You only go so far on negative motivations. They run out very quickly. We want to win because it's fecking great to win."

Despite his panel of selectors Tommy is a one-man show. His charisma is pronounced and timely. Dublin GAA needs a lightning rod, a saviour, a figure who'll confidently stick his head above the parapet.

Almost uniquely in the GAA world he doesn't really care what you think of him. He likes the media being around. He's glad to be playing to houses with more than 70,000 people in them. He's a play, he's theatre. You watch him and wait for what he will come out with next.

He has strong opinions on most things. Today the GAA have dropped the price to get into Croke Park. It costs €20.

Tommy can't think of a better bargain, but the GAA haven't advertised their good news story. And players. He's not in favour of paying them to play but before it becomes a war he thinks somebody should sort out a system of rewarding those who give their guts night after night.

And the GAA in Dublin? It needs a raft of experts running it. Much as he likes and respects John Costello he doesn't believe that Costello should have to work alone. He thinks guys like Dave Billings should be given money to go out and develop a generation.

And that's what excites them. What's coming next. As good and as intoxicating as this summer has been they have more players and better players coming through. The under-21s have thrived. Davy Billings has a list of almost a dozen players he wants them all to look at when the championship is over. There are players like Brian Cullen, David Henry, Mossy Quinn bubbling up.

ON their first match as mentors they brought two young lads with them to Mullingar to play Westmeath.

Two youngsters caught their eye. Barry Cahill and Dave Henry from Raheny. They kept an eye on them through the trials.

In the Blackrock Clinic 13 days ago Tommy Lyons' brother, Richard, was one of those who called in to see him during the drawn game. Richard has little or no interest in football.

"So we chatted away about other things, we talk about everything except football."

"You're saying you hardly watched it?"

"Ah no, I kept up with it but there was nothing I could do to change it anyway."

"I can't believe you were that relaxed."

"Oh well now the old monitors went a bit crazy around the time of Ray Cosgrove's goal. Took them a while to come back down."

He's watched it a couple of times since of course. His diagnosis is that Dublin just didn't get to the pitch of the game. Donegal were more eager and they just moved quicker.

Today will be different he thinks. His team hadn't faced a match like that before. They will have learned.

Today they will meet at Parnell Park in mid afternoon, get all their strappings and lacings and bandages down there and get the bus, with their arrival at Croke Park timed for half an hour before throw-in.

"I hate being at Croke Park just standing around. We like to get in and get out there. We have a few minutes in the dressing-room and then we are gone."

He hasn't figured out yet what accounts for this success he has with teams, why he can manage and get players to sacrifice and to do things for him. He hasn't figured it out and he's not trying.

"I'm sick of telling fellas, there's no science to it. Football is a simple game. You know what you want, you try to put it together that way."

He'll not put it away yet, this simple game. It fascinates him. "It's my hobby I suppose," he says.

And he gets to do it in front of 70,000 spectators.