Few figures in the 119-year history of the GAA have come close to matching Mick O’Dwyer either for staying power, breadth of achievement, or sheer iconic status. Following an exalted 18-year playing career with Kerry (O’Dwyer ended his involvement in senior inter-county football aged 38, though he continued to play with his club team in Waterville for a full decade afterwards), South Kerry’s most famous resident accepted the offer of then Kerry County Board chairman, Gerald McKenna, to move into management.

Taking control of the Kerry senior team in 1975, over the next 12 years O’Dwyer and his players embarked on what former Meath captain and journalist Liam Hayes has described as, “the greatest sports story ever told on this island.” And it’s true, this was one of the most spectacularly gifted outfits in the history of Irish sport. Four members of the forward line – Spillane, Sheehy, Liston and Egan – could quite comfortably stake their claim for inclusion on any all-time best fifteen, whilst players such as Paidi O’Se, John O’Keefe, Jack O’Shea and Sean Walsh became household names throughout the country.

By the time O’Dwyer retired as Kerry manager in 1989, his side had amassed 11 Munster championships, 2 National Leagues and a most likely never-to-be equalled 8 All Ireland titles. They missed out on a record breaking fifth consecutive All Ireland win in 1982 by a single point.

Utterly unexpectedly, in October of 1990 the Kildare County Board announced that O’Dwyer was to take control of the county’s senior football team. Then languishing in the lower divisions of the National League and having recently suffered the ignominy of defeat by Kilkenny – who to this day remain the only county not to field a team in the senior football championship – many felt this was a bridge too far even for the legendary O’Dwyer. Incredibly, in what remains arguably the manager’s greatest achievement, he completely transformed the county’s footballing fortunes, winning a brace of provincial titles and reaching an All Ireland final in 1998.

Most recently, O’Dwyer quietly took control of Laois, another county long since dismissed as a football backwater. Once again displaying the Midas touch, in his first season in charge O’Dwyer not only masterminded a successful league campaign, but also saw his side defeat Dublin and, ironically, Kildare on the way to claiming the county’s first Leinster championship in 57 years.

Of course, such a brief synopsis of O’Dwyer’s career barely skims the surface of his life story. An unapologetic advocate of progression within the GAA – his outspoken views on, among other subjects, soccer, professionalism, sponsorship and treatment of players have, by his own admission, somewhat alienated him from the game’s administrators within Croke Park. Then there are also the not inconsiderable matters of living through several decades of upheaval within Irish society, traversing the globe in pursuit of excellence, and giving a leg-up to a pre-fame Louis Walsh.

All of the above and more were on the agenda when I met up with O’Dwyer recently following Laois’ Leinster final win over Kildare.

PAUL NOLAN: As we speak, Laois have just claimed a place in the All Ireland quarter-finals. Was winning a Leinster title something you expected to achieve during your first year in charge?

MICK O’DWYER: No I didn’t to be honest. When I first arrived in Laois, it was very much first things first, which in this case meant getting together 30 players who would be prepared to give the necessary commitment. Once we had that framework in place, we could build from there. Originally I thought that would take 2-3 years, but as it happens, things have come together particularly well for us in the first twelve months.

PN: Any mixed feelings about beating Kildare?

MO'D: Oh there certainly is, of course. I never thought we’d have Laois and Kildare in the final, and neither did anyone else in the country! I’d say if you went back twelve months you’d probably get odds of 100/1 or maybe even 200/1 on that happening. But I mean, just as an example, the six forwards who lined out with Kildare were all players who trained with me, so of course you’re going to have mixed feelings when you’re competing with people you’re very close to. But that’s just part of management, it comes with the territory.

PN: It was a position you found yourself in before, ironically when you were manager of Kildare. Having won the Leinster title in ‘98, the team progressed to an All Ireland semi-final against Kerry. In Owen McCrohan’s biography, you commented that “emotionally the whole day took a heavy toll on me. I knew there were people who would be happy to say that I was a traitor to my native county.”

MO'D: Well, it certainly doesn’t make it easy when you come up against teams that you’ve been involved with for so long. But I never thought when I was involved with Kildare that we’d end up playing Kerry in a championship game, either. I suppose if I could have chosen to play any other team, I would have. In the end, though, on the day of the game that kind of thing very much gets put to one side. I doubt it enters the players’ heads at all once the ball is thrown in. I mean, it’s the thirty players on the field who ultimately decide it, it’s not me who decides it as you know!

PN: In (Kerry manager) Paidi O’Se’s autobiography, he asserted that despite your protestations to the contrary, you were in fact secretly delighted to have beaten Kerry.

MO'D: Ah, that wouldn’t be right at all. I got satisfaction out of winning, certainly, but I definitely didn’t take any pleasure in defeating Kerry. I mean, you take on the job and hope something like that doesn’t happen, but if it does you prepare the team like you would for any other game. Sending the Kildare team out to beat my native county was something I didn’t especially enjoy doing, but that’s part and parcel of sport.

PN: In an interview with The Sunday Independent’s Kevin Kimmage earlier this year, O’Se infamously described the Kerry supporters as “the roughest type of fucking animals you could ever deal with.” Was the ensuing storm a textbook example of why GAA managers are so notoriously reluctant to open up to the media?

MO'D: (Laughs knowingly) No comment.

PN: But is it true that Kerry supporters are a particularly difficult audience to please?

MO'D: All supporters are difficult to please! I can’t say it’s any more difficult in Kerry than anywhere else. You saw how the Dublin supporters reacted after being beaten by Laois, and then beaten again by Armagh. I mean, show me supporters who are actually happy after a defeat, y’know? There’s no problem picking teams and finding out faults after the game is over. Everybody’s a selector! But to perfectly honest, that’s just one more aspect of management you have to deal with, I can’t say it’s something that keeps me awake at night. Also, when people are paying good money to travel the length and breadth of the country to follow the team, they’re probably quite entitled to have a go if results aren’t up to scratch.

PN: When you yourself took over as Kerry manager in 1975, did you have a feeling that this was an exceptionally gifted group of players?

MO'D: No, I didn’t. They found it very hard to take over the team in Kerry in 1975. I just took a gamble actually, taking over as the Kerry manager in ’75 – I started completely from scratch and bought in a whole group of very young, inexperienced players. And we got so lucky, it was unbelievable, we beat Cork in my first year in charge and I don’t think they expected it - maybe they were coming in that little bit over confident. I think that defeat upset Cork quite a bit, and subsequently they started chopping and changing their team, which I don’t think they should have. Anyway, after that we won Munster for a ridiculous amount of time – something like seven or eight years in a row – which freed us up to compete in the All Irelands.
We actually went to win that All Ireland in ’75, and after that it was amazing, we had two bad years, but we came back in 1978 with Eoin ‘The Bomber’ Liston on board, and I think he was the missing part of the jigsaw puzzle in many respects. We won four All Irelands in a row from ’78, and of course Offaly just pipped us for the five-in-a-row in 1982. But that first win in ’75 was incredible just because everybody was so young. The average age of the team was something like 22.

PN: “A team of bachelors” is the phrase Micheal O’Hehir used, I believe.

MO'D: That’s right. No one was married in those days. (Laughs)

PN: You missed out on that record breaking five-in-a-row against Offaly in 1982, thanks to a famous last minute goal by Seamus Darby. You once said that you were “inconsolable for months and months” after that game. Does that still rank as your greatest disappointment in football?

MO'D: Not anymore. You know, Matt Connor (legendary Offaly forward who played against Kerry in the 1982 final – P.N.) got badly injured in a car accident shortly after that game, and he’s paralysed from the hips down now. And I mean, Matt Connor was one of the greatest Gaelic footballers that I ever saw, so it was only fitting that he won an All Ireland medal. When you sit down and consider something like that, you do ask yourself, ‘What do five All Irelands in a row really mean in that context?’ And of course, they don’t mean a thing. It definitely helps give you perspective, that’s for sure.

PN: You did also say in Owen McCrohan’s book that it was “best for some of the Kerry players who were drinking too much that we didn’t break any more records”.

MO'D: I think that was a slight misquote by Owen McCrohan, actually. If you look at most of those Kerry players today, they’re all solid, sensible guys. They had a few drinks by all means, but they certainly didn’t go overboard with it. I mean if they went that bad, we wouldn’t have subsequently come back to win three All Irelands.

PN: Do you think that there’s a drink culture within the GAA generally though?

MO'D: No, there’s a drink culture within Ireland generally. I mean if you go into any rugby or soccer club, what do think they drink in there – water?! I’ll tell you why young people are drinking more today than ever before – because they have the money to do it. There’s good sides and bad sides to that. I mean, maybe if we’d had the money in our time we would have been just as bad!

PN: Do you agree with Guinness’ sponsorship of the hurling championship?

MO'D: Of course. Why wouldn’t I agree with it?

PN: Some people – including Minister Micheal Martin – have suggested that the idea of a drinks company sponsoring sport is actually a morally quite dubious concept.

MO'D: Well, to be honest, I’m a non-drinker, I’m a non-smoker and have been all my life. I don’t think advertising has anything whatsoever to do with what’s going on at the present time. If people want to drink, they’ll drink, and if people want to smoke, they’ll smoke. All the advertising in the world is going to make no difference. I mean, if you look at what’s happened since cigarette advertisements have been banned, you’ll find that there’s actually more young people smoking now than ever before. So I think all the focus on advertising is completely misplaced, and as far as I’m concerned the GAA are quite entitled to take money from any firm that’s willing to give it. All that advertising was around me in my time and I never paid any attention to it at all.

PN: Any particular reason why you became a teetotaller?

MO'D: Not really, to be honest. I suppose I was so keen on sport and I became so tied up in it that I was never particularly interested. I mean, I’ve certainly travelled around the world and attended functions that have gone on until the early hours of the morning, but I never was really even tempted to take a drink. I could go and drink pints of water with ice and lime, I’d drink a glass of orange, and I’d still enjoy myself every bit as much as the guy who was on Guinness or lager or whatever the hell. And I’ll tell you one thing – I never had a sore head in the morning.

PN: What’s your stance on the GAA and professionalism?

MO'D: Well, I’ve always supported the idea of a semi-professional game. If players get injured then they should remunerated, they should be paid per-week whatever wages they’re losing as a result of being out of work. And if they want to do some advertising with companies, I wouldn’t have any objection to that either. But I wouldn’t like to see the game becoming a full-time professional sport, we simply wouldn’t be able to sustain it, for a start.

PN: Although the GAA has at this point allowed everything from American football to rock concerts to be staged at Croke Park, it remains unwilling to let soccer be played at the venue. Would you be in favour of Croke Park hosting Irish home internationals?

MO'D: I would allow anything that would generate money for the association into Croke Park, irrespective of whether it was soccer, rugby, American football, Australian Rules, whatever. Anything that would generate cash for our own organisation, I would have no objection to whatsoever.

PN: The association still seems particularly hung up on the whole soccer issue though, doesn’t it?

MO'D: Well, that whole issue goes back a long time, as you know. But without a doubt, that day is over and done with. All those barriers should have been broken down long ago. Our games can stand up alongside any other games in the country, we have no problems there at all.

PN: It’s amazing though, isn’t it? So many of the problems with sports administration in this country seem to stem from the fact that the FAI can’t get its act together.

MO'D: I suppose with all the money they generated over the past 15 years or so – and particularly during the Jack Charlton era – you would have expected them to have something to show for it. But for one reason or another their plans for various stadia fell through, and the money was spent otherwise. That’s an issue for them, though.

PN: Do you think the current government has handled sport particularly well?

MO'D: Well, I have been advocating for years that the whole educational system should be examined. We have a situation in this country at primary school level where there is no such thing as physical education; nobody is encouraged to do exercise of any sort, good, bad or indifferent. That is a total disgrace. I mean, if they could encourage people to do just a little exercise early on in life, they’d have less problem looking for beds in hospitals further down the line.

But the point to get kids into exercising is between the ages of 4-8 - you always start at primary school level. That’s where all our problems are coming from, and it’s about time that we sat down and did something about it. And if that means we have to pay teachers to stay on for an extra hour every evening, then so be it. I think every class should have one hour everyday of physical education. And it certainly doesn’t have to be gaelic football or hurling, or even rugby or soccer. It can be whatever the kids enjoy themselves. I mean what’s the most important thing in life? Health. It’s certainly great to have a good job in life, but if your health’s going to fail you it’s not really much use.

PN: Several years ago, you commented that you were “completely disillusioned with party politics as they operate in this country”. Do you think things have improved under the Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrat coalition?

MO'D: Well, the health service is in bad shape and there’s been a lot of money mis-spent… but I don’t what to dwell on that to be honest. That’s not part of my job!

PN: What do you make of Bertie Ahern being booed at recent sporting events?

MO'D: I think it’s wrong. We can’t disrespect our leaders in any walk of life, they’re there because we put them there, do you know what I mean? There’s a time and a place to express disagreement with the government, the general election being the most obvious, I suppose. Also, it’s just a matter of courtesy – I don’t think it’s right for people to boo when a guy’s taking frees on the football pitch, either. But with regard to politicians, they all have a job to do and I don’t doubt for a second that they do their best. It’s just that maybe at times their best may not be good enough!

PN: In many ways you pioneered the idea of corporate sponsorship for GAA teams, though inevitably you encountered some stiff resistance along the way. For instance, when a group of Kerry players appeared in a printed advertisement for Bendix washing machines following the All Ireland final in 1985, the sizeable traditionalist contingent within the association were completely incensed.

MO'D: Those were the good old days alright. We broke the mould to a certain extent; first of all we wore Adidas gear and there was war over that, then we did the advertisement for Bendix and that caused absolute uproar as well. Maybe we were ahead of our time, but of course it’s now come to pass that we were 100% right in what we were doing. We started our own supporters’ club in Kerry at the time, headed by a big businessman in the South West, Tom McCarthy. I actually think we should have more business people involved in the organisation – they’re the people who can move it on, there’s no doubt about that.

PN: Your own outspoken views on the GAA would appear to have alienated you somewhat from the upper echelons of the association. This has resulted in some blatant snubs – the fact that you’ve never been asked to coach Ireland in the International Rules series with Australia, for example. Is that something that rankles with you?

MO'D: I don’t know, I suppose some of the people in Croke Park haven’t appreciated my forthright comments over the years. There was undoubtedly a period when I was involved with Kerry when I simply wouldn’t have had the time to coach the Ireland team, but I certainly was never asked to do it, and that’s the most relevant point. So there must be some of fear of me in there somewhere along the line. But coaching the International Rules side has never been particularly high up on the agenda for me to be honest, I’m more than happy to do my own thing with Kildare or Laois or whoever I happen to be coaching at the time.

PN: Have you been at all surprised at the way in which Pat Spillane has emerged as such a prominent media figure following the dissolution of the Kerry team? He’s become quite a divisive commentator – almost like the Eamon Dunphy of the GAA world.

MO'D: I think Pat Spillane is great. Maybe part of the reason that people are so wary of him is to do with the fact that we’re not used to people speaking their minds in this country. That would have been the culture in Ireland for a long time – you’d always say what people wanted you to say, and I suppose that stems from being governed by other nations for so many years. But I mean, I admire Pat Spillane, I think we need more people like him. And as for him being the new Dunphy, well, I’ve been an admirer of Dunphy for many years. I remember seeing him when he first arrived on television and thinking that he was a breath of fresh of air. (Laughs) I enjoy guys like Dunphy.

PN: Spillane has never hesitated to put the boot into your own teams.

MO'D: Well, maybe at times I should get the boot as much as anybody else. If Pat does have a comment to make about one of my decisions, I usually know exactly where he’s coming from. I mean, let’s be fair – so long as the criticism is not damaging to the individual in question, it’s perfectly legitimate. Constructive criticism is welcome at any time, as far I’m concerned.

PN: Do you think that Gaelic football has become a rougher sport over the years?

MO'D: Not at all. In my opinion, the game has actually cleaned up in a big way. (Reacting to interviewer’s growing incredulity) For God’s sake, in my time this is what used to happen – the ball would be dropping high into the square, right? The goalkeeper would shout, ‘TAKE THE MAN!’ The third man tackle was on you see, so it was within the rules to play your opponent and not the ball. But I mean, if you look at the level of fitness that’s there today, and the speed at which the game is played, I think it’s a fantastic spectacle. Maybe our refereeing standards need to improve, but beyond that I think our game is okay.

PN: Have you ever lost the head in the dressing-room? There’s a story that you once became so animated during a half-time speech your false teeth actually fell out.

MO'D: That’s true, it happened during an All Ireland final in Croke Park. But the amazing thing was that nobody actually noticed it! (Laughs) That just shows you how focused the players were. It didn’t get mentioned ‘til afterwards, and of course we got a great kick out of it. But I always try to remain calm and level-headed when I’m giving team talks. It’s important to remember that no player goes out deliberately to have an off-day, doubly so when they’re amateurs and the sacrifices they make to be involved are so huge. So I don’t really understand these people who go around shouting and roaring. If anything, you’re liable to make things worse.

PN: You’ve had an interesting perspective on the changing face of Irish society. Is it a better place to live now than it was 30 years ago?

MO'D: There’s no doubt that it’s changed for the better, but those changes bring their own set of problems. For instance, I find when I look at the news these days I actually hear the word murder quite a lot, and if you go back 30 years ago was there even one murder a year? There must be something radically wrong with society when that’s happening so often. It’s about time we examined why this is happening in our inner cities, and I’m talking about really fundamental things. If there are kids in there who don’t have enough to eat, we should be able to provide a breakfast and at least a good lunch when they go to school. I mean, it’s really simple, but it’s a start. Until people have the basic essentials in life, there’s no basis on which to go forward.

PN: Finally, the million-euro question: what keeps you coming back to management year after year?

MO'D: I’ll tell you one thing, I’m getting unbelievable enjoyment out of my involvement. When I’m standing in Croke Park, I love every moment of it, and the day the kick goes out of that, I’ll pack up and leave. When that will happen, I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I’m still as keen and anxious for success today as I was when I started.

Un-Laoised

The trio of free-scoring attackers spearheading the O’Moore county’s quest for All Ireland honours.

BRIAN McDONALD
Cited by many commentators as the finest corner-forward to emerge since Kerry’s Mike Frank Russell came burning out of the Kingdom several seasons ago, ‘Beano’ was perhaps the most prodigious member of the all-conquering Laois underage side which won back-to-back minor All Irelands in ‘96-’97, the U-21 championship in 1998, and now forms the spine of the senior team. McDonald deployed his natural scoring talent to devastating effect against Kildare, where he coolly slotted away Laois’ first goal, before going on to set-up Ross Munnelly for the decisive second.

IAN FITZGERALD
Like McDonald, a graduate of the star-studded ’96-’97 minor team. Utilised in a variety of different positions during the 2003 championship, the inspirational Laois captain most recently popped up at full-forward against Kildare, where he kicked four mighty points from play.

DAMIEN DELANEY
The third member of the holy trinity, and another product of the remarkably fecund Laois underage system. Out of sorts for a couple seasons after initially exploding onto the senior ranks, the Stradbally native has come into his own under O’Dwyer’s tutelage. A freetaker of some note, Delaney has displayed ice-cool nerve in the white-hot cauldron of Croke Park on more than one occasion this season.

High, dropping calls
How Micko fielded Louis Walsh

“Well, I ran a music venue in Waterville for years and years. We used to run the gig listings in Hot Press! Brush Shiels would come and play, and Christy Moore too – I’ve been always been a huge fan of his. It’s an interesting time to look back on, we had a big live scene going there for a while, and I’d book all the bands myself. Louis Walsh was a man I booked an amount of different acts from, believe it or not. I remember Louis used to be on to me every week, ‘Do you need a band for next Sunday?’ and so forth. Was he a nice guy to deal with? Of course!”