Kerry football legend Mick O’Dwyer dies at the age of 88

The death of Mick O’Dwyer at the age of 88, which has taken place in his native Kerry, marks the passing of one of the most influential football personalities in the GAA’s history.

A successful player, with four All-Irelands, he went on to manage what many believe was the best football team of all time – certainly up until that point – winning eight All-Irelands in 12 years.

After stepping down in Kerry, O’Dwyer went on to reinvigorate other counties, bringing Kildare in 1998 to a first Leinster title in 42 years and a first All-Ireland final since 1935.

[ Mick O’Dwyer, in his own words: ‘I’m addicted, totally addicted to the game’Opens in new window ]

He would later take the reins in Laois and in 2003 guide them to provincial success for the first time in 57 years before leading Wicklow to the 2007 Tommy Murphy Cup. He also served for a year as Clare’s manager.

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All the while he also built a successful business career in Waterville including amongst other interests, as a hotelier.

He had peers in the game but nobody impacted as widely and over as lengthy a period. His great Dublin antagonist Kevin Heffernan was the key influence in the revival of the games in the capital but never undertook the same transformative work in other counties.

Dr Eamonn O’Sullivan managed Kerry to the same number of All-Irelands over a greater number of years but didn’t create as dominant a team during those decades from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Mick O'Dwyer made his senior debut for Kerry against Waterford in 1954. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho

Born in Waterville in 1936, Mick O’Dwyer played for the local club and his intercounty career ran for 20 years from making his debut against Waterford in 1954 to a final match for the seniors in May 1974.

As a senior Kerry footballer, he was immensely influential, playing both at wing back in the beginning and later in his career in the forwards, subsequently recallingthat the experience of each position had been invaluable in his formation as a manager.

In Kings of September, his award-winning book about the famous 1982 final in which Offaly prevented Kerry from winning five-in-a-row, Michael Foley summarised a remarkable football career.

“He almost lost an eye in a football game. He once kicked frees with a broken toe. In a county championship match against Kerins O’Rahilly’s from Tralee, he took a punch that knocked four of his front teeth out, but he never retaliated. In the mid-sixties, two bad ankle injuries forced him to retire, but when Kerry asked him to return in 1968, he won another All-Ireland medal in 1969 and was named Footballer of the Year.”

A year later, at 33, he won a fourth All-Ireland. While still playing, he trained the team and by the time his playing career ended, he was an obvious choice to take over as manager for 1975.

Kerry manager Mick O'Dwyer celebrates with midfielder Jack O'Shea after the 1984 All-Ireland final. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho

O’Dwyer’s playing days coincided with a barren spell for Kerry and from his senior debut against Carlow in the NFL in October 1956, he managed to win just two All-Irelands in the 13 seasons that followed – a meagre enough return by the county’s standards although two more followed towards the end of his time as a Kerry player.

The county found itself on the receiving end of the outstanding teams of the era, Down and Galway, both of whom defeated Kerry in two All-Ireland finals. In all, he lost 10 senior finals.

He wasn’t a fan of Down’s revolutionary approach to football, playing around centrefield and emphasising fitness in the pursuit of loose ball. In an unusually blunt assessment in the 1976 Kerry GAA Yearbook, well after the events of the 1960s, Mick O’Dwyer, then himself revolutionising football, remembered with little fondness the Ulster disruption to his playing career.

“I think Down did a lot of damage to Gaelic football. They broke the ball a lot and they played it very close and marked tightly. They weren’t playing the ball that much but they played the man quite a lot. I suppose it paid dividends for them. They fouled men in the centre of the field – and won All-Irelands with it. But it was not a good thing for the game.”

The 1960s had seen a broadening interest in the coaching of football. O’Dwyer had his own views on the subject but among the attendance at the new coaching conferences, organised in Gormanston College where Down footballer Joe Lennon was a teacher, were future adversaries Eugene McGee and Kevin Heffernan.

Kerry captain Páidí Ó Sé is congratulated by manager Mick O'Dwyer after the 1985 All-Ireland final. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho

It was after such a conference in 1974 that Mickey Ned O’Sullivan, a young enthusiastic PE graduate who would captain the 1975 All-Ireland winners, persuaded a reluctant Mick O’Dwyer to become manager of the county on the journey home. Before there was any chance to reconsider, county chair Ger McKenna headed straight to Waterville to confirm the appointment.

McKenna, impressed by how the new manager had led Waterville to three successive county finals – he also won three county titles with the divisional side, South Kerry – would be his greatest ally in the political thickets of county politics and particularly when the team hit a speed bump in 1976-77.

O’Dwyer was interested in how other sports functioned and approached legendary Manchester United scout Billy Behan with a view to visiting Old Trafford and talking to the coaching staff.

Kerry was well supplied with blossoming football talents. Players who would become legends of the game were just starting their careers and a production line that carried off four under-21 All-Irelands in five years was already in full flow.

Having observed Dublin emerging from virtually nowhere to win the 1974 All-Ireland, O’Dwyer noted the new champions’ fitness levels and set out to match them. They did with an exuberant performance to dethrone the Dubs in the 1975 final after which the manager laid out what now seems a cautious manifesto.

Kerry manager Mick O'Dwyer on the side line during the final minutes of the 1985 All-Ireland final against Dublin. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho

“That early goal was just what we needed to settle us. Once it was scored, I knew that we would outlast and outpace them. It was a really great team victory. The age and the quality of the team should see them take at least two more All-Irelands.”

McKenna acknowledged the coup. “The victory was the result of a process begun last October. Since then, I have never seen a team train so hard or so intelligently for a game and their performance justified the efforts that went into it.”

The unexpected victory revived a great rivalry, largely moribund for 20 years and the next 10 years would be seen as the age of Dublin and Kerry with its distillation of the country versus city dynamic.

Dublin hit back and for two years, re-asserted themselves, including in the epic 1977 All-Ireland semi-final. In Kerry, pressure mounted and it was a close-run thing when both the manager and the chair were challenged but they survived.

What followed became the stuff of legend. Dublin were a considerably older team and faded after a graphic hiding in 1978, which was the first of Kerry’s four All-Irelands in a row – emulating their predecessors of 1929-32 and the Wexford footballers on 1915-18.

These were records that wouldn’t be challenged until Dublin’s more recent domination.

Mick O'Dwyer on the sideline for Kerry during the 1983 Munster football final. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho

They also set up a shot at five-in-a-row, for which Kerry were hot favourites in 1982 but they came up short after Séamus Darby fired in a late goal for Offaly, the significance of which wasn’t lost on goalkeeper Charlie Nelligan, who later recalled feeling the rush of air above his glove as the ball passed him and seeing raindrops shaken loose from the net.

It was a huge blow to a team that had looked certain to make history but any assessment of the team’s status and their manager’s greatness always emphasises that after the setback, they returned to win a further three-in-a-row from 1984 to ‘86: seven in nine years, eight in 12.

The approach to players was austere, built on gruelling sessions and an intolerance for injuries. If special attention was needed, it was provided. Eoin Liston recalled how as a young teacher, he miraculously ended up in a school in Waterville under the constant supervision of his manager.

In Dublin v Kerry, Tom Humphries’s account of the rivalry, Liston recalled: “I played football, soccer, badminton, squash, handball, everything down there with him. He was like a brother to me. I’d finish school at twenty to four and he’d be waiting over at the golf course for me to finish. Four-ball for nine holes. Eat. Out for a few kicks. Then in for a game of badminton.”

The team enjoyed the fruits of success. Extensive holidays were organised and fund-raised – not without controversy, as in 1985 when a poster advertisement of Kerry players beside a branded washing machine created frissons in the GAA. They were navigated.

Managers Mick O'Dwyer and Páidí Ó Sé after the 2002 SFC qualifier between Kildare and Kerry. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho

A personal disappointment for the manager came when he was overlooked for the national position when Ireland played Australia in the international rules series. The GAA explanation was that they didn’t want to appoint a current inter-county manager.

The situation further chafed with the appointment of old rival Kevin Heffernan.

After stepping down in 1989 – in the wake of a third defeat by Cork in a Munster final – it appeared as if his managerial days were over but a year later, Kildare came calling and he was persuaded to return to the sideline.

The new project was a lengthy one. A good start, reaching the 1991 league final against Dublin, managed by one of his 1970s opponents, Paddy Cullen, was followed by a reminder that Leinster was not a straightforward championship: defeat by Louth.

Mick O’Dwyer actually moved on in 1994 for a couple of years, returning for 1997, a spell which saw him take Kildare to two provincial titles and an All-Ireland final, reached by defeating then champions Kerry although they ultimately lost to Galway.

Symmetrically, Kerry brought down the curtain on his time with Kildare in the 2002 championship.

Laois was next and again a cohort of previously successful minors were graduated onto a provincial winning team in 2003. He also led the county to defeat then All-Ireland champions Tyrone in 2006 but at the end of that season, he wrapped it up after four years in charge.

Mick O'Dwyer shares a joke with the audience during his induction into the GAA Museum Hall of Fame. Photograph: Cathal Noonan/Inpho

Of the remaining appointments, in Wicklow and Clare, the former was significant in the sense that as well as winning the Murphy Cup, a short-lived graded championship, he brought the team on its deepest run into the All-Ireland qualifiers, along the way beating Down his old nemesis and a county yet to defeated by Kerry in the championship.

The enthusiasm endured and was represented in the abiding image of Mick O’Dwyer, a match programme rolled up tightly in his hand, prowling the sideline, scanning the field for problems and opportunities.

In 2014 the GAA Museum inducted him into its Hall of Fame.

In Blessed and Obsessed, his memoir, written with Martin Breheny, he had this to say about his life in the game.

“Yes, I’m obsessed with football but I’m also blessed in many other ways. Blessed that I had a talent which was encouraged; blessed that I was from Kerry where I could indulge it at the highest level as a player; blessed that when I took over as Kerry manager, the greatest collection of Gaelic footballers in the game’s history were maturing; blessed that I got so much fun out of managing Kerry, Kildare, Laois and now Wicklow; blessed that I had the good health to pursue my dreams and ambitions.”

Of course, they and all of football were blessed to have him.

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