SUFFERING THE BLUES
Kerry legend Dara Ó Cinnéide on how Dublin’s dominance breaks his heart
ACONVERSATION with Dara Ó Cinnéide is like taking a journey from his local Dingle out through west Kerry and Páidí Ó Sé country and encompassing the rugged, unspoilt surrounds of his club An Ghaeltacht. It’s a tour that carries such a sense of place and has a bit of everything, one that can quickly veer from tourist hotspot to untamed outpost. The interaction is about club and community and county, about culture and football and craic.
Oh, and a bit of French classic cinema. It’s like heading off on a day trip where you end up booking in for the week.
To anyone who doesn’t know the 45-year-old, he’s Kerry’s 2004 AllIreland winning captain – a threetime medal winner.
He’s a broadcaster and cultural commentator with TG4 and Raidió na Gaeltachta and sharp-eyed columnist and analyst, who always broke with convention, right down to his eclectic film tastes. His favourite movie is the French epic Les Enfants du Paradis, set in Paris. The problem is, it’s not even fully appreciated in his own house.
‘I can’t get my kids into it. Because it’s in black and white and doesn’t blink in 40 different colours… it’s the story, it’s the romance. I’m a romantic.’
Ó Cinnéide recently decided to take on the chairmanship of the Irish-speaking club on the Dingle peninsula and doesn’t see it as a burden during the pandemic but rather ‘an honour and a privilege’.
He is old and wise enough to happily exist in his own time and space in Covid, and declares himself no social animal, but yet is dreaming about the end of lockdown: ‘I just want to have a pint on the pier in Murphy’s in Brandon. That’s what I’m looking forward to, a good pint of Guinness.’
A figurehead son of Kerry who was born in Tallaght (who knew?) perhaps it’s his father’s six years in the capital that allows him to appreciate what Dublin have done on the field. Even if every record set along the way ‘breaks my heart’. Club, county, community – he makes for a fascinating listen.
First then, why take on the role of club chairman, particularly during a pandemic which is putting pressure on every aspect of the game?
‘Why does anybody get involved in the GAA? Because somebody did it before you, for you.
‘No more than in any other club, I’d done PRO, I’d done secretary, insurance officer – all the other things. Our chairman had his five years done and I said now is as good a time as any. It’s not as if the club needed any direction – we’re a wellrun club. We’re not at a crossroads in any sense like that. We’re challenged no more than any rural club in Kerry with numbers. It should be my generation picking up the baton now.’
Given his club role and with his wife a frontline worker, he is well positioned to assess the impact of Covid and the role the GAA plays.
‘I think we got an insight into last year.
It’s absolutely crucial.
It’s your sanity. It’s everything. What else would you expect from a GAA person only to say that but it really is. We saw it this time last year when the pandemic first landed, how GAA clubs rallied for that first month or two where they were helping their neighbours. The GAA clubs are still there for them.
‘Apart from that, the games are so important.’
So how does the GAA straddle those ideals with the reality on the ground, often the financial reality. Sports Direct and Amazon are two company names that have stoked much controversy and debate in GAA circles of late. Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct, and a case history of zero hour contracts, has been paired with Cork, who are trying to find a commercial way to meet massive financial debt. And then Croke Park stadium director Peter McKenna lobbed Amazon Prime into the broadcasting mix for the next GAA rights deal. If the idea of Jeff Bezos presenting the Man of the Match award for the Munster football final is a bit away yet, how then to match idealism with reality and those ruthless commercial concerns?
‘I’m not foolish enough to think you get off the highway. The GAA is on a superhighway at the moment. The aim is to improve. Look at the Dublin team that won the most recent All-Ireland. They are infinitely a better team than the Dublin team that started off on the six in a row in 2015. The game is evolving and getting better all the time, despite what old veterans might
say and tell you. I look at old games through my fingers now because the mistakes being made would not be made today. The standards are being driven all the time.
‘But you also have to step back. Okay, so you say we’re on this highway, there is no reverse gear on this thing. You don’t go back and say, “Wasn’t it great the days before we had sponsors’ names on jerseys.” It’s not going to happen. Let’s be realistic. We’re not that naive. But it’s not too late for the GAA to row back a small bit and say, like Michael Duignan famously asked on TV a couple of years ago, “How much money is enough?”
‘Obviously money is a burning issue at the moment because the pandemic has ravaged the tills. There is nothing there. But we’ll recover. We’ll be fine. We’ll get through it. Just have enough. At a club level, at a micro level, we’re not about developing big pitches or huge stands and press boxes. It’s more important to have the players on the field.
‘Look at Dublin again, I don’t think they have the best training set-up in the country in terms of capital infrastructure. What they have is the best culture in the country.
‘What strikes me about Dublin and what’s not debated an awful lot, is something I see with Kerry people in Dublin whose kids now play for Dublin. That generation (who moved to Dublin from other counties) who are in their 60s, who have kids, grown-up adult kids.
‘Michael Darragh Macauley’s father – Donegal. Brogan’s mother is Listowel, the Brogans are Mayo going back. Cian O’Sullivan’s father is a Kerryman; Brian Fenton’s father is a Kerryman. That generation were unbelievably proud of their roots. For them to impose their identity in a metropolitan setting like Dublin back in the ’70s and ’80s meant going down to the local GAA club and giving time. Being more zealous in a way than their brother down in Killarney or Listowel at home. Because Kerry don’t have anything other than football to do. And now we’re seeing the fruits of that. And of course we’re seeing the fruits of the investment. But that’s totally overlooked, not pride in the county but pride in the GAA as an identifier.
‘It’s no surprise to me that their backgrounds are steeped in GAA. A dad really wants his kid to be involved, play football. He’s from the Spa in Killarney and he really loves the game so he brings his kid down to play at eight or nine and all of a sudden you have a Brian Fenton. All of that is so important culturally.
‘The money is a factor – but it’s not the defining factor. I really think the identity one has been overlooked.’
And the games development funding issue?
‘It’s not out of control. It’s not too late either for things to be changed, for a few tweaks to be made financially. Seán Kelly [former GAA president who hails from Kerry] is on record as saying that: “It’s not required any more – turn off the tap”. But you still have a need to cater for the coaching needs of all these kids inside in clubs in Dublin. You can’t ignore that. You’d be reneging on your duties as a GAA person if you didn’t give them the best at eight, nine and 10 years of age as well.
‘In Kerry, most of the voices are saying, “We just want to bring down Dublin”. How we’re going to do that… We want to be the ones to bring them down. That’s the scalp. That’s the prize.’
So how does he feel when he hears
‘DEFEAT BY CORK WAS HUMILIATING, A LINE MUST BE DRAWN AND LESSONS LEARNED’
Brian Fenton mention that he got a text from Jack O’Shea – a four-time Footballer of the Year winner – after being honoured a second time himself last Saturday night.
Or when he sees Dublin obliterating the history books with six in a row, gaining ground on Kerry in the roll of honour, equalising the eight medal record of Kerry’s Famous Five. Often the most admiring voices of Dublin are from Kerry, Ó Cinnéide included, but does that stick in the craw?
‘It does of course. It bugs me. It breaks my heart. It really does. The only people that can do anything about that now are the lads wearing green and gold. It broke my heart that Garry McMahon’s record in an All-Ireland final was broken last year – Dean Rock gets the fastest goal. Every one of the records we had are falling one by one. We have to accept that, suck it up, and try and change that.
‘I totally feel for the likes of John Connellan of Westmeath, who is very articulate and eloquent in expressing the funding arguments. Yes, he’s right but down in Kerry, we can’t have that opinion. There was a time when we were that team to be knocked. We felt that resentment. And that’s not nice. Because you can’t begrudge excellence.
‘I’m sure the Kilkenny boys felt it when they were winning all round them. When I was a kid, there was a golden era in Kerry. When I was a player you could say there was a golden era in Kerry. And we felt that begrudgery – and it’s not nice. We always felt that we were putting in as much or more than anyone else. If you think you are doing 100 press-ups, by God we’re going to do 150. We’ve always found a way. It hurts... hurts like hell that we haven’t won an All-Ireland since 2014.’
Can he see it happening for Kerry with such emerging talent as Seán O’Shea and David Clifford? Is it within reach?
‘Kerry at the moment, I don’t think it was necessarily a good thing that we won five minors in a row. Because there is no pent-up hurt there. You’ve a satisfied customer. You want angry customers. You want bile in the stomach to drive on to All-Irelands.’
Which leads to the winter Championship knock-out defeat by Cork.
Why it happened? ‘One hundred different things. I was at the game in a working capacity. The week or two before Kerry won the league, Cork had their homework done. It was a masterclass by Cork in terms of tactics. They stopped the guys at root between their own 21 and 45, John O’Rourke and these lads.
‘The Cork game was humiliating last year for anyone on that field. I’m sure if I was on that field – and I’ve had plenty of bad performances – when you get humiliated like that, there has to be a reaction. A line drawn in the sand. There has to be stuff learned. And there has to be a kick.
‘I trust these lads. You have the best 30 lads involved. The best management that’s available.
‘When you finish playing, it’s very important, not that you become a cheerleader for the Kerry team but that you become a supporter, and you try and do something to help. Whether that’s the small thing of helping out at club level, everything going in the same direction.’
So he’s doing his bit. And looking forward to the games returning and watching a pint of Guinness poured in Murphy’s on the pier in Brandon.