Old dog nears end of hard but glorious road

GAELIC GAMES:Mick O'Dwyer's career as a player and manager spans an amazing 55 years. SEAN MORANhas a look at some of the most memorable days and wonders if Wicklow will indeed be his swan song

WHEN SOMEONE’S senior inter-county football career spans 55 years, calling time on it isn’t easy but the odds are stacked against Wicklow surviving this evening’s round two All-Ireland qualifier in Armagh. The county’s exit from this year’s championship will trigger the end of Mick O’Dwyer’s five-year tenure as manager.

As he said himself at the start of this year’s championship: “I said at the end of last year that I’d stay one more year. I was planning to get out last year but came under a lot of pressure to stay so I gave in. I’m glad I did but there will be no going back this time. Hopefully, we’ll have a long championship campaign but I’ll be leaving Wicklow after that”.

So Armagh are set to join Mayo, Kerry, Dublin and Cork as the counties who have brought down the curtain on O’Dwyer’s management over the years. He will leave Wicklow, as he left Laois, Kildare and Kerry: with a greatly enhanced memory of good days.

One of only two counties (Fermanagh is the other) not to have won a senior provincial title, Wicklow nonetheless racked up under the legendary south Kerry coach their first championship win in Croke Park, an All-Ireland B title and the county’s longest summer run, which fell just short of that year’s All-Ireland quarter-final.

If the story of his management career is one of diminishing horizons from unprecedented All-Ireland success (Kerry) to reaching an All-Ireland final for the first time in 63 years (Kildare) to bridging a similar-sized gap by winning a provincial title (Laois) to the listed achievements of the past five years, none of the counties he has left have so far come close to emulating what O’Dwyer achieved.

This month two years ago he landed a most satisfying result with the defeat of Down, the county that defeated O’Dwyer’s All-Ireland ambitions as a player three times in the 1960s and they weren’t adversaries he remembered fondly – telling the Kerry Yearbook in 1976: “I think Down did a lot of damage to Gaelic football. They broke the ball a lot and they played it very close and marked tightly. They weren’t playing the ball that much but they played the man quite a lot.

“I suppose it paid dividends for them. They fouled men in the centre of the field – and won All-Irelands with it. But it was not a good thing for the game.”

In his recent autobiography (Blessed and Obsessed, 2007) he repeated the charges in less vehement terms. The Ulster question would arise again during his later managerial career with rise of Armagh and Tyrone. In a 2004 documentary made by RTÉ’s Tommie Gorman, O’Dwyer – having taken Laois to a first Leinster title since 1946 – was unfazed by the rising tide.

“I’m not going to even think about the northern systems or what way they prepare their teams,” he said. “I have no intention of doing that good, bad or indifferent. I’m going to prepare a team my way and I’m not too worried about their systems in the north at all, I can assure you.”

The words sounded hollow in the years to come, with Laois going out of the following two championships on the back of heavy beatings from Tyrone and Armagh. But in 2006 O’Dwyer had a perfect opportunity to set the record straight.

After the beating by Armagh in ’05, players in Laois had pushed for “more modern preparation” and O’Dwyer had reluctantly agreed to cede control over some of the physical training. It all looked like ending in tears with a hammering by Dublin and a qualifier draw against champions Tyrone.

O’Dwyer resumed full control in the lead-up, putting the players through variations on the old school training theme, and on a wet day in Portlaoise they deposed the champions. Afterwards O’Dwyer regaled the media with how he had decided to intervene directly in training.

“We were terrible that day against Dublin. It was one of those days and leaving the dressingroom that day a few of the fellas that are in there for years said to me: ‘Well Mick I suppose we won’t see you any more’.

“So by Jaysus I’m back again. You never know when you’re going to be back.”

It was the high point of his final season with the county, although Laois had the chance to reach an All-Ireland semi-final but lost a replayed quarter-final to Mayo and just missed out on a re-match with Dublin.

It was never entirely clear if O’Dwyer intended or hoped to do better in the league with Wicklow. He had used the competition as a launching pad in both Kildare and Laois in his first season in charge but failed to reach the knock-out stages in the past five years.

There was, however, no ambiguity about his reaction to losing an O’Byrne Cup match in Drogheda last January. “There’s only the one competition that matters in the GAA and I don’t have to tell you what it is. It’s the championship, and if you don’t perform in the championship, what difference does it make if you are first, second, third or fourth division? How you perform in the championship is how you are judged.”

And it has been in the championship that he has made most impact with teams since taking over a demoralised – seriously – Kerry in the autumn of 1975. But there has also been a profound feel-good factor in those counties to whom he came as a kind of football missionary.

In Wicklow, he used his considerable charm and enthusiasm to motivate under-age coaches in the county, attending presentations and emphasising the importance of games development.

The question of whether Wicklow will be his swan song is probably unanswerable but the range of likely additions to a remarkable CV is limited now for the man described all of 50 years ago in this newspaper as one of Kerry’s “old stalwarts”.

When it’s over it’s over but “the end” has been a moveable concept for O’Dwyer over the years. After “retiring” from football at the age of 29 for two years he returned in time to double his All-Ireland medals tally in 1969 and ’70 and add a Footballer of the Year award.

Asked would defeat for Laois in 2006 be the end of his career in the county, he was definitive. After a fashion.

“I won’t be around. You can be damn sure. Down in Derrynane they’ve had a boat ready for me the last four Mondays. But I haven’t got into it yet.”

Mick O'Dwyer

Born: June 9th, 1936.

Club: Waterville, Kerry.

Honours won as player – Kerry (1957-'73): 4 All-Ireland SFC titles, 12 Munster SFC titles, 8 NFL titles, 1 Railway Cup.

Honours won as manager – Kerry (1975-'86): 8 All-Ireland SFC titles, 11 Munster SFC titles, 3 NFL titles, 3 All-Ireland under-21 titles; Kildare (1991-'94, '98-2002): 2 Leinster SFC titles, 1 Leinster under-21 title; Laois (2003-'06): 1 Leinster SFC title. Also: 6 Railway Cups and 3 Kerry SFC titles with Waterville as player-coach.