SILKY SKILLS MARRIED TO AN IRON WILL

Gooch could make the ball sing but he also knew how to look after himself

THERE was a time when Dessie Mone was handpicked as Monaghan’s dog of war. Detailed to do a man-marking job on the opposition’s best finisher. Heading in to the 2007 All-Ireland quarter-final against Kerry at Croke Park, manager Séamus McEnaney outlined his brief in two words: Colm Cooper.

Given a target and asked to do his background, Mone could have been forgiven for hearing the theme tune to Mission: Impossible rattling around his head.

The problem with the Gooch? The file on the Kerry player, who was already on his way to his fourth of eight All-Stars, was bulging.

‘In fairness, the Monaghan set-up was coming good,’ he recalls. ‘It was the start of the professional feel to it. Banty would have given me a breakdown of clips of him. So you would have been looking at clips. The problem was, there was probably too many clips to look at!

‘It was hard to figure out where his weak points were. He was a fantastic forward. One of the toughest forwards that I’ve marked.’

One of those rare players where video analysis only threatens to put demons in a defender’s head.

It’s not known whether Cooper was given the file on Mone by Kerry manager Pat O’Shea, parts of it likely reading like a CIA file with various sections redacted.

At the time, Monaghan revelled in being football’s equivalent of a psychological evaluation. It wasn’t just about being physically able, the likes of Mone would provide a stress test. A lesson in how to react under pressure. That day, they pushed Kerry to the very brink. Mone emerged with a burnished reputation, too.

‘His movement was the big thing. He could kick off both feet. He would have been playing off Kieran Donaghy at the time. His movement was what separated him. I noticed one of the goals he scored against Dublin, he comes out to the edge of the D, then steps back inside to take the pass and creates the goal opportunity.

‘A player like that does his talking on the ball. I heard talk of his physique the last couple of days. He was tough.’

What they didn’t do was swap snappy one-liners. Mone was a hands-on defender but Cooper wasn’t one to engage. ‘Honestly, it was his movement. There’s no big stories about anything off the ball. You could do all the tussling you want but when the ball came, you had to be prepared for his movement. ‘A lot of attention would have been paid to him. But he had the Kerry lads like Marc Ó Sé marking him in training every week – they weren’t too innocent either. I’d say he was well schooled in his training sessions for meeting the likes of us over those few years.’

Only four times in 85 Championship appearances did Cooper not register a score.

His debut year in 2002 and only his second start in the Munster semifinal against Cork when Anthony Lynch had his number in the rain. The 2004 Munster final replay against Limerick when Mark O’Riordan was detailed on him. The 2015 All-Ireland final when he was outscored by Dublin’s Philly McMahon who jinked him to score. And the 2016 Munster final against Tipperary which hardly counts given the injury after just 20 minutes which forced his substitution.

It’s hardly a stretch to say Dublin influenced his decision to call time on a glittering career in which bare numbers don’t begin to do justice to the artistry on the ball. Four All-Irelands. Three National Leagues. Nine Munster Championships. A total of 23 goals and 283 points scored in the championship.

To match the team Kerry face this afternoon in the League final – chasing a fifth National League in a row and a hat-trick of All-Irelands – it’s all about pace in the team. Being able to shadow the likes of McMahon who is going to bomb forward the length of the field when the opportunity presents.

Éamonn Fitzmaurice understands that the road to the Sam Maguire Cup will likely involve the champions. Cooper would surely have added to his attacking arsenal, but it is not to be.

The player’s sense of timing, mind, has always been impeccable. Walking away after quarter-backing Dr Crokes’ All-Ireland club triumph on St Patrick’s Day – tucking away the momentum-changing goal for good measure – preserves his legacy.

Current Tipperary manager Liam Kearns is a Kerry native. He has spent much of the last decade and more watching or planning for Cooper. It was his Limerick team that pushed Kerry to the brink in 2004, Mark O’Riordan joining the select few not taken for a score by one of the greatest.

How you plan for Cooper? ‘Keep his back to goal – and then doubleteam him,’ says Kearns. ‘So one can cover his right, one can cover his left. And you don’t let the Gooch on the end of the move – that’s what I always said to my players. In other words, force him to pass it to somebody else and you’ve a chance that they will miss it or get it wrong. If he’s on the end of the move, you can take it that 99 per cent of the time it’s going to be finished.

‘But it was very difficult because he could catch his own ball, win his own ball, he had the dummies which were a huge thing. A nightmare to mark. We usually had an extra man back there as well.

‘Never give him time on the ball because if you do, he’ll crucify you. At club level, he really shows his array of talent because he gets more time on the ball and he can really punish, run the show.

‘They were talking about the Dublin game, the semi-final [2013]. He was given time on the ball and he very nearly destroyed them. He was marking Ger Brennan. It was amazing that they put him on him, and then that they left him on him the whole half. They put Cian O’Sullivan on him the second half and that was a different story because Cian O’Sullivan had the pace to get close to him. If you didn’t get close to him, he’d crucify you. He’d kill you. ‘Mentally he was very tough. ‘The truth was that he could make the ball sing. Once he gets the ball into his hands, he was just going to make something happen. An outstanding talent. The kind of guy that you’d pay to go and see playing football.’

The spike in YouTube clips watched of Cooper this week showcase his vast repertoire, like the one-man band who can stretch from drums to harmonica – the scores, the set-ups, the dummy solos, the hops, the

He was willing to pass and bring other players into the game

feints and shimmies. His footballing brain operating in the manner of a super computer processing far faster than anyone else.

He could be cranky too, on occasion. Sent off on double yellow in the 2013 Munster club final against Cratloe, Cork’s Anthony Lynch also felt the full force of an elbow during their series of duels that framed Cork’s rivalry with Kerry during the noughties.

Upon his own retirement, Lynch was not about to lead the gushing tributes, though a clear respect shone through. ‘More unpredictable than any other player I ever faced,’ is how he described Cooper.

‘The biggest difference I found right away with him was that he was more willing to pass the ball and bring other players into the game. Most marquee forwards would just take it on themselves but he had such fantastic vision and two great feet and hands, he could just lay it off to someone just like that. I did think though that he got frees easy.’

Paul Galvin recently described the unique experience of rooming with Cooper ahead of the 2007 All-Ireland final against Munster rivals Cork.

‘I came back to the room around one o’clock. Gooch had disappeared.

‘The game was at 3.30pm and this was about 1.15pm. So he would have been up for breakfast, physio, lunch and then he disappeared.

‘We had about an hour to kill so I headed back to the room and I see this little tuft of red hair under the duvet, and there’s not a stir out of him. ‘So I go “It’s time to go. We have to get on the bus and we have a team meeting.”

‘I was getting the bag ready and there’s still no life out of Gooch. Next thing, I pick up my bag and drop it. He grunts... “What time is it?” ‘It’s quarter past one Gooch. ‘“Oh Jaysus... I’m going to stay in bed.”

‘I said, “We’ve a game there about 3:30, if you wouldn’t mind joining us.” Gooch just stretches. “Ah, we’ve a few minutes yet.”

‘It was like he hit the snooze button. Back asleep for five minutes. Rolled out of bed. Hit 1-5 that day.’