Welcome to the second part of our three instalments of Declan Bogue’s Gaelic Football evolution series.
Yesterday’s opener on the early days of codifying the games and the figures who pushed teams to success can be found here.
In this piece, we take up the story at the point of the arrival of a fresh new crew from the north, their magnetic county secretary, and the era of ‘The Manager’ as Gaelic football moved away from unwieldy selection committees and towards the charismatic figureheads that shaped the game for the next 40 years.
***
THE 60S ARRIVED with a swagger and when the world turned to full, glorious Technicolour, a brand-new gang from the north ushered Gaelic football into the modern world.
The Down project was a few years in the making, and while it involved several leaps of faith, one of the key moments came in 1959 when then-county secretary Maurice Hayes convinced the county board to move away from a committee of selectors and instead make Barney Carr the manager and Danny Flynn the trainer.
Carr and Flynn were given two years to ‘prove themselves’. By September 1960, they had beaten Kerry in the All-Ireland final and became the first of the six counties to win Sam Maguire.
Off the pitch, they were responsible for many innovations, but some were borne out of necessity, mistaken for ingenuity. In 2017, Hayes gave an interview to the Belfast Telegraph when he was asked about becoming the first team to wear tracksuits.
“At that time, the subs tended to tog out and then put their trousers on again and sit on the sideline,” Hayes said.
That would have been at the time of the drainpipe trousers! And you would be trying to get a sub out and they wouldn’t be able to get their trousers off quickly.
“Eventually, they had to take their boots off so that they could get their trousers off, that sort of thing. I thought we can’t have that any more.”
Down also became the first team to wear black shorts later in the ’60s, which added to their lustre and glamour, but was merely a logical thought someone felt would help the players pick each other out.
On the pitch, they broke all convention. Players would stray far from their posting, working back to fill gaps and pick up possession.
The key to it all was a half-forward line like no other. Sean O’Neill was a cerebral figure who would figure it all out in real time. Paddy Doherty was an instinctive talent, having left behind a professional soccer career with Lincoln, while James McCartan Snr in the middle led by deeds.
From one player in Kevin Heffernan wandering around the pitch to pick up possession, now Down had a team that would stray everywhere. Total Football had been invented.
They grew very comfortable with their reputation as innovators and Joe Lennon – who changed midfield play to prizing anticipation rather than a catching contest – was sufficiently emboldened to publish a book in 1964, Coaching Gaelic Football for Champions, prior to hosting coaching conferences at Gormanstown College.
With the arrival of the ‘60s, and of Down, the age of science in the GAA was ushered in.
*****
There is no doubt, though, that in a tactical sense, progress would stall. For decades, the game itself would stagnate when looked at through the prism of tactical shape.
Advertisement
That’s not to say it didn’t change. The next few decades would usher in the era of The Manager.
How did it come about? Well, consider where we were. Barney Carr was the manager of the Down team of the ‘60s, and yet the most popular reference point for those teams was Maurice Hayes as previously mentioned.
Dr Maurice Hayes. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Hayes got much of the sort of credit that wouldn’t have been associated with an administrator, but having been reared in a Downpatrick hotel, had emotional intelligence and an ability to relate to everybody on their level.
That helped him secure improved conditions for the footballers of Down. That included proper healthcare, better equipment and facilities, and he made sure they were fed like kings.
A cultural shift can be traced back to when Match of the Day first started broadcasting in 1964.
It introduced the Irish sporting public to the concept of ‘The Manager’. To take an example, the Galway team that won three consecutive All-Ireland titles from 1964 to 1966 had the gruff figure of John ‘Tull’ Dunne as manager, but at one point, the same team had up to 11 selectors. Teams were selected by committee, which could be a tortuous process as some selectors would blatantly push for players from their own club.
Fans of sport would tune into Match of the Day and admire a cast of colourful characters such as Bill Shankly, Matt Busby, Joe Mercer, Don Revie, Bertie Mee, Bill Nicholson and Harry Catterick.
Bill Shankly leads Liverpool out for the 1974 Charity Shield, with Brian Clough and Leeds United in the background. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
This was alien to the GAA culture of the time, but some forward thinkers were taking note. At just 25, Jimmy Gray had been a founding member of Na Fianna in Dublin while playing football and hurling for his county.
By 1970, he was the chairman of the county board. He convinced enough people around him that what Dublin needed was a charismatic, singular figure with broad enough shoulders to take sole responsibility for the running of team affairs.
It was his belief that Kevin Heffernan was that man.
Something had to change. Dublin hadn’t won an All-Ireland title since 1963, and had only won a single Leinster title since then as Meath and Offaly established themselves as the premier sides in the province.
Heffernan was a man who broke convention and rules, even within his own family. His own father, John, was a Garda who preferred to spend his leisure time shooting and hunting. His mother, Mary, was a Burke from Kilkenny.
The family’s move to Marino would transform the GAA in Dublin and, inarguably, the GAA itself as he attended Scoil Mhuire in Marino and then later, St Joseph’s CBS in Fairview, bringing him into the St Vincent’s fold.
When St Vincent’s adopted an exclusionist policy to country-born players and began fielding teams made up just of those from the locale, they began dominating the Dublin championship.
The Dublin county team soon followed suit, within reason. And while we have noted Heffernan’s impact as a player in the previous piece, he also operated during that time as a de facto player-manager.
This was, after all, the man who attended Trinity College in the ‘50s, despite the ban on Catholics attending the University. He then went on to form the Trinity GAA club, becoming the first to win a College ‘Pink’, awarded for athletic excellence, for Gaelic football.
Such was his standing from a young age within the GAA, he was considered as a suitable candidate for the role of general secretary when it came up in 1964.
Installed as manager, he took ultimate control and brought a sophistication to the team preparations in tactics, physical fitness and concentrating on improving individual skills.
In his first championship, they had a sticky moment against Offaly in the Leinster quarter-final, but had no such issues in beating Kildare and Meath on the way to the Leinster title, Cork in the semi-final, and then the dying embers of Dunne’s Galway in the All-Ireland final.
*****
Watching all this unfold was Mick O’Dwyer. He had once retired as a Kerry footballer, feeling his pace was gone – but then returned a couple of years later as a forward and kept going until he was 38.
Even in his final season, O’Dwyer couldn’t just walk away until it became absolutely apparent he wasn’t up to the mark. In the 1973-74 league season, he made just one appearance, coming against Cork.
One evening, they had a challenge game against Sligo as they zoned in on the championship, but he walked away that night.
By then, he was already in charge of the county U21s. Football was his drug of choice, and he was a hopeless addict.
Kerry were in need of a fix. They hadn’t won an All-Ireland since 1970, which wasn’t unheard of but far from desirable. They had become, in O’Dwyer’s words, “league specialists”, which is the most damning of faint praise in GAA circles.
In the 1974 championship, they had little to cheer about. They had a facile 29-point win over Waterford in the Munster semi-final at Fitzgerald Stadium, but lost the final to Cork by seven points.
Mick O'Dwyer. INPHO
INPHO
‘Cork ran out the easiest of winners in what was Mick O’Connell’s last game for Kerry,’ recalled O’Dwyer in his autobiography, Blessed and Obsessed, adding, ‘To put it bluntly, Kerry were a shambles.’
At that point, Johnny Culloty had been the team trainer with the obligatory selection panel. There was no mad queue of those who wanted the job.
O’Dwyer wanted it, but on his own terms. When county chairman Ger McKenna came calling, O’Dwyer would bring the bulk of the 1973 All-Ireland winning U21 team in, including (deep breath here): Ger O’Keefe, Jimmy Deenihan, Tim Kennelly, Ogie Moran, Páidí Ó Sé, Mikey Sheehy, John Egan, Sean Walsh, Paudie Lynch, Mickey Ned O’Sullivan, and more.
The reason for such an influx was the chief evolution of the game from this point, to the turn of the century: the volume of training went through the roof. Younger bodies and minds could withstand these demands.
In 15 years as manager of Kerry, O’Dwyer brought them to 10 finals, winning eight of them. The losses came against Dublin in 1976 and Offaly in 1982, which denied the five-in-a-row.
That level of success required penance. Older players would not have withstood it, and in O’Dwyer’s words in Blessed and Obsessed, they might have revolted against him.
In his first year, Kerry were level with Tipperary at half-time of the Munster semi-final before burning them off in the second.
Unhappy with that, O’Dwyer targeted the five-week lead-in to the final when the Kerry team trained for 27 consecutive nights.
In the Munster final, they met Cork again, with the result from the year before being thrown at them. They won 1-14 to 0-7.
It’s unthinkable now, but back then, the whole country could simply walk in to watch the Kerry team train in Fitzgerald Stadium. Dozens around the country would book their summer holidays around the height of the summer and spend evenings watching the likes of Eoin ‘Bomber’ Liston being tortured in the multiple piggybacks and wire-to-wire runs.
In such an open environment, Kerry’s methods were open to all. And managers thereafter followed suit, adding more layers of control.
Related Reads
The dreamers, schemers, thinkers and doers who brought tactics and design to Gaelic football
Eugene McGee started his management career with UCD and would gather his players before 7am on December mornings to train for the Sigerson Cup.
When he later became Offaly manager and derailed Kerry’s five in a row attempt in 1982, Offaly trained 19 out of 21 nights before the All-Ireland final.
Come 1993, Derry won their only All-Ireland, but it came after manager Eamonn Coleman banned his players from playing in club league games.
That winter, Down manager Pete McGrath hosted training for five nights a week until they delivered Sam Maguire the following September.
The trend continued. Before Cork met Clare in the 1997 Munster championship, they trained 185 times in the previous 270 days. They lost that game to a last-minute goal. It was their only championship match that season.
*****
As the decades rolled on, recalling the cast of managers provokes a strain of nostalgia.
The shaman-like quality of Seán Boylan that lifted Meath up again. The sheer Corkness of the flinty Billy Morgan.
Cork manager Billy Morgan (left) with his Meath counterpart Sean Boylan. Billy Stickland / INPHO
Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO
From Donegal – or perhaps an Ian Fleming novel – came the suave hotelier Brian McEniff, who had a couple of goes at the Donegal job and came back a third time to win the 1992 All-Ireland.
That act was followed by Eamonn Coleman, an unpretentious brickie from south Derry who knocked down all internal barriers in the county, and had the talents of Mickey Moran as coach as they won all a year later.
Their triumphs were sandwiched by Down and the studious, measured Pete McGrath.
John O’Mahony was nothing short of a miracle-worker for what he had brought to Mayo, as well as his Connacht title with Leitrim in 1994 before capturing two All-Irelands with Galway, while Páidí Ó Sé re-emerged as an opera on the sidelines.
For evermore, managers were expected to have some level of charisma. Outwardly, it meant they could handle situations with charm and tact while also selling a vision to their panels of players.
But we were on the cusp of the most radical reinvention of Gaelic football’s long history.
*****
In our final part of the Gaelic Football Evolution series tomorrow, we trace how the dawn of the 21st century brought an explosion of experimentation and tactical sophistication that can be traced back to an act of parliament in the 1940s, leading to a new wave of coaching and tactics that changed the face of the game.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Close
Comments
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic.
Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy
here
before taking part.
The cult of the manager: Heffernan and O'Dwyer herald long era of charismatic leadership
Welcome to the second part of our three instalments of Declan Bogue’s Gaelic Football evolution series.
Yesterday’s opener on the early days of codifying the games and the figures who pushed teams to success can be found here.
In this piece, we take up the story at the point of the arrival of a fresh new crew from the north, their magnetic county secretary, and the era of ‘The Manager’ as Gaelic football moved away from unwieldy selection committees and towards the charismatic figureheads that shaped the game for the next 40 years.
***
THE 60S ARRIVED with a swagger and when the world turned to full, glorious Technicolour, a brand-new gang from the north ushered Gaelic football into the modern world.
The Down project was a few years in the making, and while it involved several leaps of faith, one of the key moments came in 1959 when then-county secretary Maurice Hayes convinced the county board to move away from a committee of selectors and instead make Barney Carr the manager and Danny Flynn the trainer.
Carr and Flynn were given two years to ‘prove themselves’. By September 1960, they had beaten Kerry in the All-Ireland final and became the first of the six counties to win Sam Maguire.
Off the pitch, they were responsible for many innovations, but some were borne out of necessity, mistaken for ingenuity. In 2017, Hayes gave an interview to the Belfast Telegraph when he was asked about becoming the first team to wear tracksuits.
“At that time, the subs tended to tog out and then put their trousers on again and sit on the sideline,” Hayes said.
“Eventually, they had to take their boots off so that they could get their trousers off, that sort of thing. I thought we can’t have that any more.”
Down also became the first team to wear black shorts later in the ’60s, which added to their lustre and glamour, but was merely a logical thought someone felt would help the players pick each other out.
On the pitch, they broke all convention. Players would stray far from their posting, working back to fill gaps and pick up possession.
The key to it all was a half-forward line like no other. Sean O’Neill was a cerebral figure who would figure it all out in real time. Paddy Doherty was an instinctive talent, having left behind a professional soccer career with Lincoln, while James McCartan Snr in the middle led by deeds.
From one player in Kevin Heffernan wandering around the pitch to pick up possession, now Down had a team that would stray everywhere. Total Football had been invented.
They grew very comfortable with their reputation as innovators and Joe Lennon – who changed midfield play to prizing anticipation rather than a catching contest – was sufficiently emboldened to publish a book in 1964, Coaching Gaelic Football for Champions, prior to hosting coaching conferences at Gormanstown College.
With the arrival of the ‘60s, and of Down, the age of science in the GAA was ushered in.
*****
There is no doubt, though, that in a tactical sense, progress would stall. For decades, the game itself would stagnate when looked at through the prism of tactical shape.
That’s not to say it didn’t change. The next few decades would usher in the era of The Manager.
How did it come about? Well, consider where we were. Barney Carr was the manager of the Down team of the ‘60s, and yet the most popular reference point for those teams was Maurice Hayes as previously mentioned.
Hayes got much of the sort of credit that wouldn’t have been associated with an administrator, but having been reared in a Downpatrick hotel, had emotional intelligence and an ability to relate to everybody on their level.
That helped him secure improved conditions for the footballers of Down. That included proper healthcare, better equipment and facilities, and he made sure they were fed like kings.
A cultural shift can be traced back to when Match of the Day first started broadcasting in 1964.
It introduced the Irish sporting public to the concept of ‘The Manager’. To take an example, the Galway team that won three consecutive All-Ireland titles from 1964 to 1966 had the gruff figure of John ‘Tull’ Dunne as manager, but at one point, the same team had up to 11 selectors. Teams were selected by committee, which could be a tortuous process as some selectors would blatantly push for players from their own club.
Fans of sport would tune into Match of the Day and admire a cast of colourful characters such as Bill Shankly, Matt Busby, Joe Mercer, Don Revie, Bertie Mee, Bill Nicholson and Harry Catterick.
This was alien to the GAA culture of the time, but some forward thinkers were taking note. At just 25, Jimmy Gray had been a founding member of Na Fianna in Dublin while playing football and hurling for his county.
By 1970, he was the chairman of the county board. He convinced enough people around him that what Dublin needed was a charismatic, singular figure with broad enough shoulders to take sole responsibility for the running of team affairs.
It was his belief that Kevin Heffernan was that man.
Something had to change. Dublin hadn’t won an All-Ireland title since 1963, and had only won a single Leinster title since then as Meath and Offaly established themselves as the premier sides in the province.
Heffernan was a man who broke convention and rules, even within his own family. His own father, John, was a Garda who preferred to spend his leisure time shooting and hunting. His mother, Mary, was a Burke from Kilkenny.
The family’s move to Marino would transform the GAA in Dublin and, inarguably, the GAA itself as he attended Scoil Mhuire in Marino and then later, St Joseph’s CBS in Fairview, bringing him into the St Vincent’s fold.
When St Vincent’s adopted an exclusionist policy to country-born players and began fielding teams made up just of those from the locale, they began dominating the Dublin championship.
The Dublin county team soon followed suit, within reason. And while we have noted Heffernan’s impact as a player in the previous piece, he also operated during that time as a de facto player-manager.
This was, after all, the man who attended Trinity College in the ‘50s, despite the ban on Catholics attending the University. He then went on to form the Trinity GAA club, becoming the first to win a College ‘Pink’, awarded for athletic excellence, for Gaelic football.
Such was his standing from a young age within the GAA, he was considered as a suitable candidate for the role of general secretary when it came up in 1964.
Installed as manager, he took ultimate control and brought a sophistication to the team preparations in tactics, physical fitness and concentrating on improving individual skills.
In his first championship, they had a sticky moment against Offaly in the Leinster quarter-final, but had no such issues in beating Kildare and Meath on the way to the Leinster title, Cork in the semi-final, and then the dying embers of Dunne’s Galway in the All-Ireland final.
*****
Watching all this unfold was Mick O’Dwyer. He had once retired as a Kerry footballer, feeling his pace was gone – but then returned a couple of years later as a forward and kept going until he was 38.
Even in his final season, O’Dwyer couldn’t just walk away until it became absolutely apparent he wasn’t up to the mark. In the 1973-74 league season, he made just one appearance, coming against Cork.
One evening, they had a challenge game against Sligo as they zoned in on the championship, but he walked away that night.
By then, he was already in charge of the county U21s. Football was his drug of choice, and he was a hopeless addict.
Kerry were in need of a fix. They hadn’t won an All-Ireland since 1970, which wasn’t unheard of but far from desirable. They had become, in O’Dwyer’s words, “league specialists”, which is the most damning of faint praise in GAA circles.
In the 1974 championship, they had little to cheer about. They had a facile 29-point win over Waterford in the Munster semi-final at Fitzgerald Stadium, but lost the final to Cork by seven points.
‘Cork ran out the easiest of winners in what was Mick O’Connell’s last game for Kerry,’ recalled O’Dwyer in his autobiography, Blessed and Obsessed, adding, ‘To put it bluntly, Kerry were a shambles.’
At that point, Johnny Culloty had been the team trainer with the obligatory selection panel. There was no mad queue of those who wanted the job.
O’Dwyer wanted it, but on his own terms. When county chairman Ger McKenna came calling, O’Dwyer would bring the bulk of the 1973 All-Ireland winning U21 team in, including (deep breath here): Ger O’Keefe, Jimmy Deenihan, Tim Kennelly, Ogie Moran, Páidí Ó Sé, Mikey Sheehy, John Egan, Sean Walsh, Paudie Lynch, Mickey Ned O’Sullivan, and more.
The reason for such an influx was the chief evolution of the game from this point, to the turn of the century: the volume of training went through the roof. Younger bodies and minds could withstand these demands.
In 15 years as manager of Kerry, O’Dwyer brought them to 10 finals, winning eight of them. The losses came against Dublin in 1976 and Offaly in 1982, which denied the five-in-a-row.
That level of success required penance. Older players would not have withstood it, and in O’Dwyer’s words in Blessed and Obsessed, they might have revolted against him.
In his first year, Kerry were level with Tipperary at half-time of the Munster semi-final before burning them off in the second.
Unhappy with that, O’Dwyer targeted the five-week lead-in to the final when the Kerry team trained for 27 consecutive nights.
In the Munster final, they met Cork again, with the result from the year before being thrown at them. They won 1-14 to 0-7.
It’s unthinkable now, but back then, the whole country could simply walk in to watch the Kerry team train in Fitzgerald Stadium. Dozens around the country would book their summer holidays around the height of the summer and spend evenings watching the likes of Eoin ‘Bomber’ Liston being tortured in the multiple piggybacks and wire-to-wire runs.
In such an open environment, Kerry’s methods were open to all. And managers thereafter followed suit, adding more layers of control.
Eugene McGee started his management career with UCD and would gather his players before 7am on December mornings to train for the Sigerson Cup.
When he later became Offaly manager and derailed Kerry’s five in a row attempt in 1982, Offaly trained 19 out of 21 nights before the All-Ireland final.
Come 1993, Derry won their only All-Ireland, but it came after manager Eamonn Coleman banned his players from playing in club league games.
That winter, Down manager Pete McGrath hosted training for five nights a week until they delivered Sam Maguire the following September.
The trend continued. Before Cork met Clare in the 1997 Munster championship, they trained 185 times in the previous 270 days. They lost that game to a last-minute goal. It was their only championship match that season.
*****
As the decades rolled on, recalling the cast of managers provokes a strain of nostalgia.
The shaman-like quality of Seán Boylan that lifted Meath up again. The sheer Corkness of the flinty Billy Morgan.
From Donegal – or perhaps an Ian Fleming novel – came the suave hotelier Brian McEniff, who had a couple of goes at the Donegal job and came back a third time to win the 1992 All-Ireland.
That act was followed by Eamonn Coleman, an unpretentious brickie from south Derry who knocked down all internal barriers in the county, and had the talents of Mickey Moran as coach as they won all a year later.
Their triumphs were sandwiched by Down and the studious, measured Pete McGrath.
John O’Mahony was nothing short of a miracle-worker for what he had brought to Mayo, as well as his Connacht title with Leitrim in 1994 before capturing two All-Irelands with Galway, while Páidí Ó Sé re-emerged as an opera on the sidelines.
For evermore, managers were expected to have some level of charisma. Outwardly, it meant they could handle situations with charm and tact while also selling a vision to their panels of players.
But we were on the cusp of the most radical reinvention of Gaelic football’s long history.
*****
In our final part of the Gaelic Football Evolution series tomorrow, we trace how the dawn of the 21st century brought an explosion of experimentation and tactical sophistication that can be traced back to an act of parliament in the 1940s, leading to a new wave of coaching and tactics that changed the face of the game.
Check out the latest episode of The42′s GAA Weekly podcast here
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
GAA Gaelic Football The managers thought leaders