Legendary manager Mick O'Dwyer set Kerry on course for their greatest era 50 years ago
In his playing days, Mick O'Dwyer would share a car to training with Mick O’Connell, Johnny Culloty and their legendary coach Dr Eamonn O’Sullivan,. O’Sullivan would insist that they recite the Rosary together to shorten the journey. That’s the era t
The noise was deafening and the stands were shaking.
Even in the rabbit-warren of corridors around Croke Park, there was no escape. Little wonder that the place was in tumult as, just minutes earlier, Laois had become Leinster champions for the first time in 57 years.
It was July 20, 2003 and, on that Croker Sunday, there was no shortage of drama. Three players were sent off, and there were plenty of scores - with Laois beating Kildare by 2-13 to 1-13.
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Yet the abiding memory is of something unexpected shortly after Laois captain Ian Fitzgerald raised the Delaney Cup to the sky. Mick O'Dwyer had master-minded Laois's success and reporters sought him out for his reaction.
It was the time before organised and sanitised press conferences, so various corridors were wandered down in search of the Kerryman. Eventually, this reporter opened a door and found him.
O'Dwyer sat in a tiny cubby-hole, sipping a cup of tea and munching on a Kit-Kat.
Outside was bedlam, with grown men crying salty tears after one of the longest football famines of all had come to an end. But O'Dwyer wanted a quiet moment to savour what had happened for himself.
You'll hear a lot about O'Dwyer this year as it will be half-a-century since his young tyros of 1975 exploded on to the scene, winning the first of eight All-Irelands in 12 years for Kerry.
Until Jim Gavin's Dubs came along, they were regarded as the greatest football team of all time.
But it's hard to believe that Kerry were seen as floundering when O'Dwyer took charge. Back then, three League games were played before Christmas, and Kerry hadn't pulled up any trees, losing to Offaly, drawing with Dublin and beating Cork.
They did scrape into the knock-out stages but were heavily beaten by Meath in the League quarter-finals.
Cork had won the All-Ireland in 1973, and had hammered Kerry by double scores in the 1974 Munster final.
Mick O'Connell, who turned 88 on Saturday, was regarded as their greatest ever footballer, and he walked off into the sunset after that defeat in '74.
O'Dwyer, a year older, had soldiered alongside O'Connell for 16 years. He'd retired in '73.
There wasn't a long queue for the Kerry job when it became available. O'Dwyer was waved through.
Nobody anticipated what was coming. The talk was of the future belonging to Cork and Dublin. The Dubs did well, of course, but the O'Dwyer revolution was the bigger story.
O'Dwyer is only 18 months away from his 90th birthday now, and is the most decorated and celebrated figure in the history of the GAA.
He was always a man for familiar rituals. During his days managing Kerry, Kildare, Laois and Wicklow, he’d get his match programme and roll it into a tight cylinder and then wait like a coiled spring for the moment that the ball is thrown in so that he could set his stopwatch.
Then the pacing would start. Up and down, down and up, barking orders, shouting encouragement, sometimes scratching his head in bemusement at borderline decisions.
He lived every game from first whistle to last.
You could see that in his body language, the way he’d tense his torso when players collide, the way he’d lengthen his stride when his team hit the front.
In his playing days, he’d share a car to training with Mick O’Connell, Johnny Culloty and their legendary coach Dr Eamonn O’Sullivan,.
O’Sullivan would insist that they recite the Rosary together to shorten the journey.
That’s the era that O’Dwyer comes from.The Ireland of Eamonn De Valera, Corpus Christi processions and fish on Fridays.
It is no secret that he doesn’t have much time for the notion of “science’’ in Gaelic football.
O’Dwyer still favoured hard running in training over sophisticated drills and was dubious over the merits of pasta ahead of steak as sustenance for players.
The Waterville man would do anything to give his team an edge. Before one Munster final with Cork, he invited the match referee to training under the pretext of explaining a new handpass rule.
But O'Dwyer's motive was to ingratiate his players with the whistler. By the end of the training game, they were on first name terms.
"Lads, we'll get away with anything,'' was O'Dwyer's message to the players back in the dressing-room.
There are a plethora of younger managers on the inter-county scene but this is far from a new phenomenon.
Look back at the history of Gaelic football and rookie bosses in their later 30s and early 40s have always made a big impact.
When O’Dwyer won his first All-Ireland as a manager with Kerry in 1975, he was 39.
Brian McEniff masterminded Donegal’s first Ulster triumph in 1972 when he was just 29.
Mickey Harte led Tyrone to their first All-Ireland in 2003 when he was 41.
But what sets O’Dwyer apart is his longevity as much as his track record.
O’Dwyer managed in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, the noughties and the 2010s.
And he was still capable of working the oracle up until the end.
Back in 2009, Wicklow went on a memorable run through the qualifiers, ending Down’s interest in the Championship along the way.
Most of that Down team went on to play in the following year’s All-Ireland final.
In an interview before the 2010 Championship, O’Dwyer gave a revealing insight into his thinking on the game.
"In Kerry, we played in zones. You'd try to beat your man for the ball and if you won it, you let it go, generally at distance, high into the air, and wherever that ball was dropping, it was up to the forward then to be good enough to win it in his zone.
“You see wing-backs attack now to beat the band. I was mad to attack but Dr Eamonn wouldn't allow you attack. The moment you got it, you had to move it on swiftly.
"Now, there was some merit in that. Today young fellas are being coached to hop the ball when they get it. Dr Eamonn would blow you if you hopped the ball. And to this day I'll blow you up for it too. I ref all our games in training.
"You can have all the videos in the world and show them to fellas and they'll talk about it and then you move onto the next thing and it's all forgotten.
“But if you stop a fella on the pitch doing something he's not supposed to do, he's less likely to do it next time.
“You'll say, 'Listen, I understand you've been doing it for eight years but you must try and break away from it – move it on quicker' and it's amazing, players will change."
O’Dwyer himself was always more open to change than many like to admit and the GAA world is a brighter place for still having him around.
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