O'Dwyer's Kingdom
It is a wet and windy September evening in an almost deserted Fitzgerald Stadium, Killarney. In the centre of the pitch twenty players stand in a circle around one man. That man is Mick O'Dwyer, arguably the most successful GAA team,trainer ever, and the players gathered around him are the Kerry football team, four times All Ireland Champions and arguably the best football team in GAA history.
There are five days to go to the All Ireland and this is the-first time O'Dwyer has seen his squad since the revised team selections have been made. Two players who played in the semi-final against Offaly, Ger O'Keefe and Mick Spillane, have surprisingly been dropped. John Denihan and Paudie Lynch have been recalled. O'Dwyer begins his team talk straight away touching on this subject. A team, he assures his players, is based on its squad strength. Every member of' the squad has a part to play in the winning of a championship. (By the end of this Final week those same words were going to look prophetic.) Changes have been made, of which he does not necessarily approve, but it is his belief that, no matter which members of the squad are playing Kerry can and will still win.
(In fact O'Dwyer had not been at all happy with the changes. He felt that if changes had to be made then they should have been made before the semi-final and not on the eve of the final. However as the week progressed, it was obvious that with Eoin Liston out and with Ger Power uncertain, changes would have been made anyway.)
The success of many of the great teams of the past and, even more, of the present has nearly always been closely linked with the skill and ability of its trainer/coach/manager. Clough and Forest, Menotti and Argentina, Carwyn James and the '71 Lions are but obvious examples from other sports. O'Dwyer's influence on the success of this present Kerry team is considerable, for in the six years during which he has had charge they have won four All Ireland Championships and been beaten in the final and semi-final by Dublin in the other two years.
It was in April of 1975, after the Kerry senior side had lost by 13 points to Meath in the National League Quarter Final, that O'Dwyer was asked to take over the team. He had already been highly successful with the Kerry Under 21 team, winning an All Ireland with them in 1974. Yet it was more in hope than belief that he took over the team, promising to himself and the County Board that he would do the job for one year only. Like many other successful managers, O'Dwyer's first pre-occupation with the team was basic - get the players fit and build on that fitness.
O'Dwyer insisted that during the months of May, June, July and August his side should accept that they would be expected to train six nights a week. Considering that many of the players have to make a round trip of well over 100 miles to do this, the commitment which was; and still is, asked of them was considerable. For genuine amateurs it means simply that when the summer championship training is on, there is little life outside work and football?
After the debacle against Meath, there was only one way the team could go - up. Everyone needs luck and Kerry had their share in their opening championship game of 1975. Against Tipperary, they were two points down with less than ten minutes to go and the side's inexperience looked like losing them the match when their superior fitness told to such effect in the dying minutes of the match that they won by six points. In the following match, that year's Munster Final against Cork, Kerry against them, for the match was played in Killarney. The value of home advantage to an inexperienced side helped them to a very hard fought win. (Kerry 1-14 to Cork 0-7). The semifinal draw against Sligo was easy and so it was that a side with an average age of 21 arrived in Croke Park as outsiders to beat a more experienced, more settled Dublin team. (Kerry 2-12 to Dublin 0-11).
The unexpected win in the 1975 Final saw Kerry heralded as the team for the next five years, yet a year later they were beaten in the final by that same Dublin side. In retrospect, Mick O'Dwyer feels that the '75 win perhaps went to a few young heads to the extent that there was not the same level of dedication in the preparations for the '76 championships. There were also several injury problems for that year's final - on the Monday before the match seven players were not fit enough to train and of these three played in the final without being fully fit.
More significant perhaps were the midfield problems suffered by the '76 side. Pat McCarthy, who in some senses had been Kerry's match winner in '75, was no longer the same player. Based in Kildare, it was difficult for McCarthy to make the training sessions and he never again achieved his '75 level of fitness. Otherwise, a fit McCarthy would still be a contender for a Kerry team place.
If the 1976 defeat (Dublin 3-8 to Kerry 0-10) had been comprehensive, then 1977 was surely a close run thing. With five minutes to go in that historic semi-final against Dublin, Kerry were leading by two points when a defensive error allowed Dublin in for a goal which swung the match to them. For Dublin it had been no walkover. (Dublin 3-12 to Kerry 1-13).
There was at this time a certain amount of pressure from within the Kerry camp, the County Board, the press and Kerry supporters for O'Dwyer to offer his resignation. O'Dwyer did indeed seriously consider quitting the job. Given his business interests in his home town of Waterville (in a sense O'Dwyer is Waterville since he owns a pub, hotel and garage in the small seaside town) and the fact that at this time he was also in charge of the Kerry Under 21 team, it would not have been astonishing if O'Dwyer had resigned. Yet encouraged by the then County Board chairman and secretary, he decided to give it one more go. If he lost in '78, he would definitely quit. .
By 1978, the nucleus of this Kerry team had well established itself. In goal there was a choice between two fine keepers in Charlie Nelligan and Paudie O'Mahony. There has never been that much between the two players and if Nelligan has consistently got the vote over O'Mahony, it is not by much. The defence had begun to stabilize itself around the dominant figure of John O'Keefe, the full back. O'Keefe had played well in midfield, but when the need for a steady full back suggested the move, he quickly established himself as one of the best men ever to play in the position. Alongside O'Keefe in defence was Paudie Lynch a versatile player whose natural footballing talents such that he has been able to play in attack, in midfield and in defence for the team. A true ball player, Lynch has the priceless asset for a defender of being able to release he ball intelligently and not just hit a panic-stricken relieving root upfield.
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The third of the five central figures in the back six was half-back Ogie Moran, another player of finesse and versatility, who when the need arises can easily move forward to operate as an attacker. Although not a big player, Moran is such a skilful player that he easily compensates with foot. balling craft for any lack of brute force.
Tim Kennelly, Kerry's centre half-back, is in many ways the antithesis of Ogie Moran. Big, strong and sometimes ill at ease when faced with a small player, Kennelly's consistency and ball winning abilities were forgotten by many until the demands of a very hard 1980 Final forced recognition of his talent. All defences have their hard men, and Paudie O'Shea is Kerry's version of a bigger, Celtic Nobby Stiles.
The midfield had finally sorted itself out in 1978 with the arrival of Jack O'Shea and Sean Walsh as the two first choices. Walsh, a converted full forward, and O'Shea, a catcher and kicker who can take points when and where required made a particularly complimentary combination. With men of the pace, sharp shooting, and turning and match winning abilities of Ger Power, Pat Spillane, John Egan and Mickey Sheehy amongst the forwards it would seem that there was little lacking in the side.
Yet one final element was missing before this side could be' considered complete - a big target man amongst the forwards. When Eoin Liston arrived in early 1978, a whole range of different options was added to the Kerry attack. The high ball driven into the square for the tall Liston to catch or flick into the path of an in-full-flight colleague has become an, at times, irresistible ploy. At those times when it is countered then the huge amount of skill around Liston allows for a variety of less direct attacking options.
Still smarting from the defeat of 1977, it was then a different Kerry who faced Dublin in the 1978 final. Along with the introduction of Liston, Kerry sprang another surprise on Dublin. Judging the Dublin back line of O'Driscoll, Doherty and Kelleher to be lacking in pace, O'Dwyer decided to pull back his half-forward line to near the halfway line, thus leaving room for the full forwards to drop back deep as well. The Dublin back line obviously had to follow the forwards out from the goal area and thus a space was left between them and the Dublin goalkeeper Paddy Cullen. The chip into this space thus set up the situation where the pace of Egan, Sheehy and Power could be used to win the ball in a sprint. Time and again, the Kerry forwards got damagingly behind the Dublin defence - the most lethal example being John Egan's first goal which shook the Dublin side irreparably.
There is also the consideration that that particular Dublin team, which was of course attempting its own three in a row in 1978, did not help itself by a chronic inability to take points from a long way out. O'Dwyer certainly feels that the importance of the ability to take the traditional long point is vital, despite all the sophistication of those close passing patterns of the modem game. Every Kerry training session begins with about twenty minutes when all
the forwards practice knocking over points from forty, fifty and sixty yards.
Since that unexpected win of 1978, the pressure has been largely off Kerry. Until they met Roscommon in this year's final, they had not been really stretched in the Championship. It was the prevailing wind conditions, more than any blocking ploy by the Roscommon defence which,prevented Kerry from winning the coveted three-in-a-row with more aplomb. On a blustery, wet day, the fast moving, close-linking skills of the Kerry forwards could never be consistently used. It was not a day for accurate football, rather it was a day when Kerry looked to the work if their strong men, Kennelly, O'Shea, John and Ger O'Keefe to win the game for them.
This year's final may not have been the greatest exhibition of football in recent years, but it proved the strength of the Kerry side who without Liston and Power (for all but the first twenty minutes) and faced by an organized Roscommon defence which intended to contain, by means rough or smooth, still managed to win in an uncharacteristic manner.
What then is the future for this side? Astonishingly, although this was the fifth All Ireland final for the majority of the side, there is still no one in the team who is over 30. Amongst the squad, there is a sense of unity which is not surprising when you reflect that many of these player have been together as minors or seniors for eight or nine seasons. This is something which had made possible O'Dwyer's task of creating a team and not just a collection of talented individuals. Much has been said about how this Kerry team and the Dublin team of the 1970s evolved the game. In that context much has been made of the role of the handpass. For Mick O'Dwyer that emphasis is all wrong.
"You do not have to teach natural footballers like these I (the Kerry forwards) how to use the hand pass. That comes
of itself. But what I always wanted to do was to create a side which could play as a unit, where players would work for the team and not for themselves."
After the win of 1978, 'O'Dwyer promised to stay with the team until they were beaten in the championship. There was never any possibility that that defeat would come simply because some side were able to outplay Kerry, in terms of pure footballing skill. If this team were to be beaten then it would only be by a side who used a lot of catch and kick and a lot of defensive brawn. Roscommon were such a side and yet Kerry won. It would seem that only loss of interest or overconfidence will defeat Kerry in the next two championships.
With the strength of the county's footballing resources underlined by yet another All Ireland Minor win for Kerry and with Mick O'Dwyer still in charge of the senior team, that defeat is difficult to imagine. Mick O'Dwyer may find that he has a job with the Kerry team for a few years yet.