WERE PHILLY MCMAHON ever to follow Rory O’Carroll’s lead and jet-off on his travels, he’d be leaving plenty behind.
A successful entrepreneur, he runs three gyms in Dublin, BeDo7 Fitness Clubs, and a healthy meal delivery service called FitFood Ireland. Last week he launched The Half-Time Talk, a charity that targets youths at high risk in troubled communities, areas like the one he grew up in Ballymun.
But above all that, he’d be missing out on football. As he explains: “If I left the Dublin panel and the team won an All-Ireland then that’s one All-Ireland I missed out on, isn’t it?
It’s each to their own, I suppose. I wouldn’t for one minute think about missing a year of football. I missed a year of football already from being dropped. It was out of my hands, but I’ve experienced not playing a year of football. It’s probably the worst feeling in the world when you get that phone call to say ‘you are not in the plans this year.’”
There was a time not so long ago when stepping away from the Dublin panel didn’t mean you were missing out on All-Ireland medals. So natural does Dublin’s dominance seem these days, that it can be easily forgotten how they were once deemed too arrogant to ever win an All-Ireland.
But Pat Gilroy started the transformation and Jim Gavin eventually completed it, turning the Sky Blues into grounded, humble winners. They haven’t been beaten in league or championship for 18 months. Don’t blink or the three-in-a-row talk will start.
“[Back then] when we won a game in Leinster we were probably celebrating the same [as we would] for an All-Ireland quarter or semi-final now. That’s completely changed. Nowadays because we’ve been successful it takes a lot more for us to kind of go ‘we need to celebrate.’ The success factors have changed.”
McMahon has surmounted plenty of challenges too. An eye-gouge controversy in last year’s final took some of the gloss off what was a remarkable year for the Ballymun defender.
This year he’s managed to avoid making the news for the wrong reasons. He begins to emphasise his point by name-checking the players he’s marked this year in the championship: Donie Kingston, John Heslin, Michael Newman, Michael Murphy, Kieran Donaghy and Aidan O’Shea.
“If you were to say to me at the start of the year, ‘You’re going to mark [those players] and you’re not going to be in the headlines for whatever reason’, you’d probably laugh at that. So, yeah it’s nice not to have any of that. I don’t really let it affect me but at the same time it’s all about football, isn’t it?”
For that reason, it’s probably no coincidence that he says this year’s All-Ireland win “feels a bit better for some reason.” Less signs of frustration on the field paved the way for McMahon to enjoy his football more.
He didn’t manage to get on the score sheet as often in 2016, but he puts that down to the opposition being more aware of his runs forward. Even then, the team ethic Gavin has instilled is clear to see.
“I’m being marked a little bit tighter going up the pitch this year,” says McMahon.
That’s what other teams were seeing worked against me. When I was coming out the pitch, the man I was marking didn’t follow me back.
“They had a player taking me as I came out the pitch. That fell into our hands as well because it meant that player up the pitch wasn’t marking one of our players.”
The 29-year-old’s attitude mirrors that of his teammates. Dublin are the ultimate thinking team. They prod and poke at their opponents, testing for any signs of weakness.
They’re comfortable playing back and forth across a defensive blanket, before their fluid offensive system finally prizes open a gap. For all the psychology jargon Jim Gavin puts out in interviews, there’s meaning behind his words.
‘Trust’ is a word that often crops up in Gavin-speak. Last month, prior to the drawn final, the Dublin boss stated: “There’s also a great trust there amongst the group. And between the player group and the management group. There’s a very strong trust there.”
Empowering his players to make tactical tweaks as they see fit during a game has helped Dublin avoid a collapse since the quarter-final loss to Donegal in 2014.
“I think we’ve become much more smarter footballers,” McMahon continues. “And are able to adapt on the pitch a bit better. We don’t have to wait for the management to make a decision for us.
That was definitely something we lacked in 2014 when Donegal came up with a tactic that we hadn’t seen, that we didn’t adapt to on the pitch. I think this year we came up against all the eventualities and we were able to deal with them.
“That’s because we’ve become smarter footballers because we understand our sport a little bit better. I suppose we’ve had the management team drilling every possibility, all the possibilities into us, and that’s credit to them.”
He has some interesting views on the changing dynamics of the game too.
“If you look back before I started my career with Dublin, the main players were the corner forwards. They were the top players in the country. And because of that, everything has changed now. So you’ve the hybrid defence now because the players need that protection.
“It’s much more likely for a defender to get a black card, yellow card, red card. You’ve got less protection as a defender. So basically that’s why these mass defences have developed.
“If you’ve got really good defenders you probably don’t need that mass defence. And it also depends on how good your forwards are, because if your forwards are good then they need to have players back there to support their defence, which means you have spare men in your own defence.”
Has he placed any time-frame on his playing days?
Jesus, I’m only 29! I’m lucky I don’t really get much injuries. I look after myself. I don’t drink. So I’m hoping that will be a massive benefit to prolong my career. I want to play as long as I can.”
And what about talk of three-in-a-row?
He laughs. “Is two in a row not enough?”
“Again, when I first got on the Dublin team I didn’t think about winning four All-Irelands, never mind winning three-in-a-row.
“So, we’re not going out not to win an All-Ireland next year. We’re going to go out with the same mindset of trying to enjoy every minute we can, and not thinking about the long-term goal of winning the All-Ireland.”
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Dublin star and fitness entrepreneur Philly McMahon was on hand to launch the Ireland Active Conference and While Flag Awards. These awards are the national quality standard for leisure and fitness facilities and are taking place on 11th November at the Hodson Bay Hotel in Athlone at which Philly is a keynote speaker.
