MALACHY CLERKINon the footballing academy some consider takes itself a little too seriously. But it's hard to argue with DCU's Sigerson Cup record or their stunning array of playing talent
THEY KNOW what you’re thinking. Don’t worry, they hear it all the time. DCU this, DCU that. Some people go trawling the message boards to find out how folk really see them but Niall Moyna and his crew get it old style, said to their faces. The mouthing comes to Mohammad.
A couple of years ago, Moyna’s two lieutenants Mick Bohan and Tony Diamond were sitting down to a pint in the clubhouse in Leixlip less than an hour after DCU had picked up their second Sigerson Cup title, after beating UCC by four points in the final.
“Within five minutes,” says Bohan, “this fella came over and said straight out, ‘You guys have bought a Sigerson’. We were just there looking at each other amazed. All the work that we feel we put in here and there’s this concept out there that we’ve somehow done something wrong. You look back on that Sigerson team from two years ago – there were no All-Ireland winners on it.
“What this person assumed was we brought players here just to play Sigerson. There’s no credence given to the education these fellas are getting. When someone gets successful in Ireland, people want them to fall quickly. Very quickly. There’s certainly that with DCU.”
So yeah, they know you think they’re out there scouring the streets like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, luring the best young footballers in the country to DCU just so they can stockpile trophies and then tell the world how they did it. Last weekend they won their third Sigerson in seven years, completing the O’Byrne Cup-Sigerson double for the second time in three seasons.
They did it with a squad of players plenty of counties would delight in. Three of Dublin’s All Ireland-winning team started the final. Colm Begley was in midfield, with Michael Murphy of Donegal, David Kelly of Sligo and Mayo goalkeeper Robbie Hennelly all coming off the bench in the second half. The 2-17 to 0-7 win over Maynooth made it the biggest winning margin in a Sigerson final in 43 years.
Yet to even mention they had a serious panel beings a tetchy response. “The media picks up on this ‘star-studded DCU team’,” says Bohan. “There’s a lot of fellas in that squad you wouldn’t have known at the start of the year.”
So it bugs them because they know it’s out there, this idea that all you need for success is a good recruitment policy. Ask how they go about finding their players and they swear blind that they don’t actively go looking for anyone. That players come to them, not the other way around.
“There’s a perception that we go recruiting students,” says Moyna. “It’s not true. You look at other colleges and see how they do things. You look at Jordanstown – they run a seven-a-side competition every year where they bring in players from across Ulster to take a look at them. And Queen’s sponsor the MacRory Cup All Stars each year!
“We don’t do any of that sort of stuff. But what we will do is if a student calls us, we will then go and meet the student. But I would say the majority of people we get coming here come because they want to be a part of this. They’ve heard about how we do things and they want in. Maybe three or four years ago we might have recruited but there is absolutely none of it these days. Students are knocking down the door to be part of DCU.”
It wasn’t always the case. Up until seven years ago, DCU was just another college as far as football was concerned. They’d been playing in the Sigerson Cup since 1990 but had never threatened a final, much less ever had a crack at winning one.
From 2005 onwards, however, they decided to focus the majority of their sporting attention and resources on four areas – men’s and women’s athletics, women’s basketball and men’s football. And a key component of their masterplan would be the institution of their Elite Sportsperson Entry Scheme.
“We get a lot of stick about it,” admits Moyna. “But my view on it is this. if you’re an elite sportsperson, we’re prepared to give you maybe a 10 or 20 points reduction on what you need to get into your course here. This is based on the fact that instead of going for grinds to help you with your Leaving Cert, you were out playing sport and dedicating yourself to it.
“That in itself builds certain characteristics and is extremely important for the rest of your life.
“Some of those are in Gaelic games. Last year, we gave out 12 altogether and three of them were in Gaelic games. One of those was to a lad who got 485 points in an attempt to get into a course that was 490. There are people who would argue that guy shouldn’t have got into that course.
“My argument is he was a county minor, a member of the All-Ireland under-21 winning team, he played hurling and football. Imagine the amount of time that guy was taking away from his studies. I think we have to recognise that.”
It hasn’t gone down well. Moyna was once pointedly asked by someone he will only describe as being from “quite an established university in this city” if these players weren’t smart enough did he think it was appropriate they went to college at all.
“This was talking about a fella we’d given a 20-point reduction to,” he says. “What really drives me crackers,” says Diamond, “is this university came up with a model that seems to be successful and you would think other universities would be looking to come along and see what we are doing right and maybe trying to replicate it.
“But instead, the impression I get from meeting people from other universities is they think we’re queering the pitch. That we’re taking advantage of something we’ve come in with ourselves and it should be stopped at all costs.”
As if the barbs from within their own little circle of the GAA world weren’t enough, the constant push-and-pull with the inter-county scene has become an issue as well.
Moyna got a little taste of it back in January when he took a pop at Jimmy McGuinness on RTÉ radio over the use of Martin McIlhinney. By throwing a phrase like “abuse of players” around, he wasn’t likely to get a benign response from the Donegal manager and it’s clear there is some tension there still.
“Michael Murphy arrived back in Dublin at one o’clock this morning,” says Moyna (we’re talking on Wednesday). “I had him for class this morning and he looked wrecked. He left Dublin at four o’clock yesterday afternoon and got back at one o’clock this morning. For the sake of one hour’s training.
“He had to put in a six-hour round trip for one hour’s training. It beggars belief. You think of the pull on his hamstrings after sitting for six hours in a car.”
In truth, his beef isn’t with McGuinness. It’s with an inter-county culture. In DCU, the footballers all live together on campus right beside the high-performance gym. They train in top-class facilities with access to the best sports nutrition, sports science and physio.
“But then they go back home and their inter-county team is running the shit out of them for pre-season training,” he says. “We haven’t done a single physical training session for a year. I tested them before Christmas and they’re in the top 10 percentile in terms of fitness.
“And yet their counties will run the shit out of them. Because there’s a culture of just running them into the ground every January. There’s no need for it.
“There was never a problem with inter-county managers until five or six years ago when the league started to have the pre-eminence that it has now.
“That changed the whole thing. My view on it is their championship is from May to September, mine is in January and February. I keep saying to them, ‘What’s the big deal here?’
“The counties have the players for March, April, May, June, July and August. Is that not enough time? I’m an exercise physiologist and the one thing I know a little bit about is preparing sportspeople. And one thing I can tell you is it does not take five months to prepare a team for championship.
“Why does inter-county get such preference above everything else? It’s a competition for five per cent of the footballers in Ireland. It gets all the attention because it generates the revenue. There’s no revenue being generated from us. We’re a box-ticking exercise. Get the Sigerson played, get it out of the way. The GAA talk about their amateur ethos but whether they like it or not, that’s not what the whole thing is about. It’s about generating revenue and inter-county is the revenue generator.”
Like them or lump them, DCU aren’t going anywhere. It’s easy to bristle at the way they talk themselves up, as if they’re the first people in the country to discover sports science. And granted, they’re probably overly dismissive of an inter-county training scene that is nowhere near as mindless or savage these days as Moyna paints it.
They swear they want to share their methods and insights with anyone who’s interested and that lifting all boats is the ultimate aim. It will be fascinating to watch how it plays out and to see how many people they convince.
Fire-power: Footballing alumni all stars
OVER the course of DCU’s three Sigerson wins, the roll-call of inter-county players who’ve appeared in their gold jerseys has been quite remarkable.
The 2006 team who won the college’s first Sigerson Cup was arguably the best of the lot. Stephen Cluxton was in goal, Kevin Reilly (Meath) and Paul Casey were in the full-back line, and Bryan Cullen and Declan Lally were at half-back behind a midfield of Ross McConnell and Owen Lennon (Monaghan).
In the forwards were Bernard Brogan, Conor Mortimer and Seánie Johnston. And this in a game where they had to do without Shane Ryan, Dessie Dolan, Ross Munnelly and Wexford’s Diarmuid Kinsella through suspension.
The 2008 team was nowhere near as stellar, although it did contain plenty of young players who went on to make names for themselves. Philly McMahon and Kevin Nolan joined Cullen in the backs, alongside Kildare defender Hugh McGrillen. Cathal Cregg (Roscommon) and Sligo corner forward David Kelly were busy in attack, along with Paddy Andrews and Paul Flynn of Dublin.
Indeed, 11 of Dublin’s 2011 All-Ireland-winning team were either past or present DCU students – including James McCarthy and Eoghan O’Gara this time around.
The university also boasts a very successful athletics programme, with three of its students – current student Deirdre Ryan and graduates Fionnuala Britton and Linda Byrne already qualified for the London Olympics.
The Games will likely come too soon for the likes of Brian Gregan, Stephen Culvert, Darren McBrearty and Mark English but all four can expect to be in Rio if they keep up current rates of improvement.
