Nearly 60 years ago a London bus driver knocked Tommy Ó Sé off his bicycle. Little did he realise then that his actions would lead to the reshaping of All-Ireland football history, writes MALACHY CLERKIN
THE LONDON bus driver who knocked Tommy Ó Sé off his bike back in the early 1950s will have lived his whole life never knowing a thing about the domino he rocked and toppled that day. Tommy was a Kerryman swept to England in the hunt for a livelihood in the ’30s and he’d done well for himself by then.
But so lucky was he to escape with his life in the accident that he was able to make peace with the reality that life was going to change after it.
He was injured so badly that he would be no use in the boarding house he ran in Southall along with his wife Beatrice. The couple had two young boys at the time and although they had settled well in London since their marriage in 1938, the future was more uncertain now with Tommy unfit for physical labour. So with the insurance pay-out from the accident behind them, they moved back to Tommy’s home village of Ventry to set up a shop at Ard na Bothair, a crossroads on the trip out from Dingle to Slea Head.
In 1955, Beatrice had a third son who grew up to be the kind of lad who would hop balls with his brothers about being the only one of them born an Irishman. All three brothers played football – Tom won a minor All-Ireland in 1963, Michéal a junior All-Ireland in 1967. And when that third son – whose name was Páidí – was 20 years old, he and a band of young shapers like him surprised everyone by beating Dublin to win a first senior medal.
As they arrived in Croke Park that day in 1975, Kerry were the holders of 22 All-Ireland titles; heading there tomorrow, they have 36. Every one of the 14 titles they’ve mined in the interim has involved at least a son or grandson of Tommy and Beatrice Ó Sé. Michéal’s three sons have 15 All-Ireland medals between them, making them comfortably the most decorated football family in the history of the association and leaving them only three behind Dick, Eddie and Mick Doyle of Kilkenny who have 18 hurling All-Ireland between them. Darragh was the midfielder of his generation, Tomás and Marc are both former footballers of the year.
And yet what leaps to the mind whenever you ask anyone about them? “Rogues,” says Séamus Moynihan. “Oh, pure rogues,” says Eamon Fitzmaurice. The yarns are legion – the one in Jack O’Connor’s book about Tomás and Darragh sneaking off out of a bonding exercise to thumb a lift into Killarney for a pint didn’t even make the manager overly annoyed. It was just the Sés being the Sés.
Tomás lives in Douglas, just outside Cork city. Last year, he felt the need to get in a bit of training on his own outside of regular Kerry hours so he called down to Nemo Rangers and asked if it was alright if he did a bit of running in the afternoons. No fraternising or anything like that – just an hour after school before any of the locals arrived. No problem, they said.
Happy to.
They left him at it and he was doing a few laps in the rain one afternoon when he heard a car horn beeping. He knew well what the kerfuffle was about – the rain was heavy and the pitch could do without him tramping a track into its outsides. Still, Tomás figured that if it was important enough to him, the fella could get out of his car and get some muck on his shoes. “Yer man was telling me to f**k off to the other field,” he remembered later. “And I said I’d have some fun. You need that sometimes.”
Pure rogues. There’s just the two of them left now. Tomás starts his ninth All-Ireland final tomorrow (10th if you count the replay against Galway in 2000). Marc starts his eighth. Moynihan calls them “the two best defenders of the past decade”.
Paul Kerrigan has spent afternoons being played and plagued by both of them at different times and isn’t shy with his verdict either. “Marc is the best pure defender in the game at the minute,” he says.
“Tomás is probably the best half-back of the past 15 years.”
Marc will shake Bernard Brogan’s had before the first whistle tomorrow, the designated shadow for the reigning footballer of the year. Yet if he’s the best pure defender as Kerrigan says he is, it’s not for the want of trying to be something else. When he lines out for An Ghaeltacht, he’s a centre-forward. A ball-player and string-puller. But for Kerry, he goes where he’s sent.
“I remember when I came in as a selector in 2009,” says Fitzmaurice, “we were anxious to try to get Marc moved out to centre-back to give him a chance to express himself out there. But we just found as the year went on that we were having to send him onto different fellas to mark them and you can’t really do that with a centre-back. You’re better off with someone you can leave in that slot without having to move him around to cover what the opposition are doing so we had to abandon the idea after a while.
“He’s got an awful lot of football ability. But the role Kerry need him to play is that of a total defender. I’d say if he was playing in a different county, he’d be allowed play in a role where he’d get to express himself more but it’s very important for Kerry to have a fella who they can trust to go onto a danger man and shut him down.”
It’s not often he gets a run-around but there are plenty who’ll point out that Andy Moran spent the semi-final strengthening his claim on an All Star.
Moynihan was a full back in his day in similar circumstances – made rather than born, handed the role because it was too important to leave in less steady hands – and not surprisingly, he has a certain sympathy.
“There were probably question marks over Marc’s performance against Mayo but you certainly wouldn’t judge a guy on one day in the office. And of you were really looking at that game from a defensive point of view, I would have been more critical of the other players in the backline exposing him to the point where there was probably 60 yards either side of him and in front of him against a player who was completely on top of his game. I thought Marc did okay in the circumstances. Any other player would have conceded two goals but Marc reduced Moran to popping points.”
Kerrigan says: “As a man-marker Marc is the toughest one I’ve come across. He’s just tight to you all the time and he’ll always have a block or a tackle. He’s very sticky. You think you’re away from him and then he gets you at the last second because he has that burst of acceleration to get back.
“Tomás is very cute, you can see how experienced he is when you play against him. He might not get forward as much as he used to but he still makes sure to do it two or three times in a game. And when he goes forward, he generally makes it count. When he goes, he goes and he’s hard to catch. He does it with a purpose. He takes the risk and makes sure that he either scores or sets up a point.”
Indeed, Tomás’s scoring record – in All-Ireland finals especially – sings out for that of a defender.
He’s made his way onto the scoresheet in four of the last five finals he’s played in, from his goal in the ’05 decider to his brace of points against Cork two years ago. How he fares on his sorties forward tomorrow will decide a lot – if Dublin drop Bryan Cullen back as they have been doing, Tomás will have acres to run into. In his 14th season as an intercounty player, he still attacks those runs with gusto.
“Tomás is a ferocious trainer by nature,” says Fitzmaurice. “I think he enjoys the process of getting himself fit and training hard. The kind of game he plays involves huge energy levels because he sees it as his responsibility to get forward for a score or two in every game. I think a big part of his longevity is just the competitive nature of the man. He is still on the team and as long as you’re making the team, the incentive is there to keep pushing.
“I’d say if he was on and off the team, maybe sitting on the bench for a few games, that motivation might not be as strong. He’s a quiet individual, he’d be very much a man who does it on the field more so than anywhere else. In team meetings, he wouldn’t pipe up too often but when he does he usually has something very valuable to say.”
Tomás turned 33 just before the Munster final this year; Marc was 31 in April. Neither have made any suggestion that the end of the road is anywhere close. Tomás has said that living in Cork will probably add a year or two to his career, just because he can live out his summers away from the halogen glare. And as Moynihan points out, Marc has always been the most natural athlete among them anyway. So chances are we have a few more years of roguery ahead of us yet. Nobody in Kerry would have it any other way.
“I’d be close to the three brothers,” says Fitzmaurice, “and they’re great fun and great company. The rogue thing is just who they are. It would be part of their make-up, just as it’s part of Páidí’s make-up. Darragh is the biggest rogue, no question. But Marc would run him close. Tomás is a rogue in a quieter way – he wouldn’t be as extrovert as the other pair. But then, there’s plenty of them in the panel. The Ó Sés probably have the biggest name for it but they have plenty of help, don’t worry about that. There’s plenty on that panel who are thankful that it’s the Ó Sés get called it and not them.”
Thankful for that and for plenty more besides. Maybe even thankful for a London bus driver who felled an Irishman and his bicycle in the street nearly 60 years ago. History is tipped on such teetering things.
MARC O SE: THE FACTS
Club: An Ghaeltacht
All-Ireland SFC: 2004, '06, '07, '09
NFL: 2004, '06, '09
All Star: 2006, '07
Footballer of the Year: 2007
TOMAS O SE: THE FACTS
Club: An Ghaeltacht
All-Ireland SFC: 2000, '04, '06, '07, '09
NFL: 2004, '06, '09
All Star: 2004, '05, '07, '08, '09.
Footballer of the Year: 2004
