Kingdom slayer, genius and quick with the quips
McGee took on football’s finest minds and changed game forever
TRIBUTES last night poured in for former Offaly GAA manager Eugene McGee, who led the county to their historic 1982 All-Ireland football win against red-hot favourites Kerry.
Offaly’s against-the-odds triumph prevented the Kindom county from winning five in a row and sealed his place in Gaelic games folklore.
Longford-born McGee had previously led the faithful county to three consecutive Leinster titles. He was also a hugely admired and successful journalist and editor.
He is undoubtedly best-known for the epic 1982 victory against Kerry – and the extraordinary celebrations after sub Séamus Darby’s last-gasp goal.
Before the game, McGee motivated his players by informing them that the Kerry GAA were discussing where to bring the Sam Maguire when they had the match won.
Broadcaster Des Cahill, paying tribute yesterday, recounted another anecdote from the final: ‘On the morning of the ’82 All-Ireland a journalist asked Eugene how badly Offaly wanted to win. He replied: “There’s men in that dressing room who haven’t had a pint since last Wednesday night!”’
Former Kerry manager Mick O’Dwyer hailed his former footballing foe as ‘one of the great characters in sport’, while GAA president John Horan said ‘Eugene McGee was a giant of Gaelic football’, adding that he was ‘a straight-talking man of great integrity’.
Offaly GAA said: ‘The untimely death of Eugene McGee has robbed us of one of the most celebrated GAA managers of all time.’
IN THIS year of all years, in this month of all months, Eugene McGee slipped away. The football Championship, f or al l of its problems and despite the weariness of its critics, remains the competition that excites Irish sports fans more than any other.
And on the day the 2019 edition started, news of the death of Eugene McGee broke l i ke thunder over Ireland.
He was the man responsible for the most dramatic football Championship win of them all. And the year 2019 resounds with the significance of 1982, when McGee inspired Offaly to stop Kerry’s seemingly irresistible march to five All-Ireland titles in a row.
Who are the Offaly of today? Names will be suggested, like those of Kerry or Mayo.
But to the question, who is the Eugene McGee of today, there is no possible answer. There was only one. His family, his sport, his profession and the country have lost a singular man.
The i mprobability of Offaly stopping Kerry in 1982 is what makes their story so remarkable. Kerry were the greatest team the sport had seen, perhaps has seen
yet. Offaly were a small county of decidedly f i nite r esources, nourishing excellence in both hurling and football.
This was a talented group that included a few survivors from the wins of 1971 and 1972 but team captain Richie Connor suggested yesterday there was a ‘fair chance’ they would not have beaten Kerry were it not for McGee.
There is an excellent chance, in fact, that there would not have been an Offaly team near Croke Park at all if it weren’t for the legendary manager.
They got to the All- Ireland semi-finals after winning Leinster, the third year in a row they took the provincial crown.
That staggering success came after years of tireless preparation. He had, after all, been appointed to the job in 1976, in the midst of Dublin’s supremacy under Kevin Heffernan.
Dublin won All-Irelands in 1974, 1976 and 1977, but also won six consecutive Leinster Championships, between 1974 and 1979.
Their dominance is assumed now, but 40 years ago Eugene McGee, still in his 30s when he got the job, went about putting together an Offaly team that would get the better of not only Heffernan, but Mick O’Dwyer, too. McGee was the man that confounded the two mighty minds that revolutionised football management.
And that is why he, too, must be considered vital to the transformation wrought in the game in the 1970s and 1980s, when managers and tactics and the art of actually managing people changed Gaelic football forever.
His talent was proven at UCD earlier in the 1970s when, with admittedly rich playing resources, he won successive All-Ireland club titles, in 1974 and 1975.
It was 1982 and the decision to plunge the veteran Séamus Derby into the match as a late substitute that burnished his legend.
And then there was his second line of service to the sport, through his work as a journalist.
As editor of the Longford Leader, he was masterful at the detail of journalism: he understood what concerned people, what moved them, irritated them and elevated them.
That aptitude was reflected in his work as a GAA columnist with other titles.
The seating arrangements at provincial grounds and in Croke Park sometimes placed the reporter alongside him.
He might be in the mood for a chat, or he could, instead, happily sit following the action, sharing the occasional grumble or aside.
Soft talk didn’t seem to interest him much. That was true of his columns, too, which were sharp and well argued.
Gumption is a word that seems well-suited to a consideration of the man. Gumption was central to the work he did in making Offaly succeed. He found a way to make them win, after first having the guts to try.
Do not underestimate that in a sport, in a time, when dreaming big is sneered at, when counties and teams are expected to know their place and to adjust their ambitions accordingly.
McGee had big plans for Offaly and a brilliant generation helped him follow them through.
Gumption distinguished his journalism and his work on the Football Review Committee as well. He understood rural Ireland, the place of the GAA within it, but also its wider needs and wants.
He was an occasional contributor to the Sunday morning panel shows on radio that too often sound like official Ireland at a dinner party.
McGee brought a perspective not often heard, one shaped by a lifetime of devotion to addressing the concerns of communities that often go unheard and unheeded.
One of his favourite devices was the use of Larry McGann in his columns. The fictional Larry, from the equally fictional GAA club Knocknavanna, would ‘visit’ the columnist and expound at length about the problems he saw afflicting his club. In one of his last outings, Larry fretted about the damage neglecting clubs would do to his beloved GAA.
‘Mark my words, the GAA will pay a high price for that neglect of club games if they don’t change their ways,’ he said.
That piece was written in December 2013, five and a half years ago and long before the establishment of the Club Players’ Association.
Eugene McGee understood the GAA because it ran through him to the bone.
In a notebook somewhere, there was a plan scribbled down to speak with him before the Championship built up too much steam, to try and tease out his views on 1982 and if he thought Dublin’s own march on five could be disturbed. That conversation won’t happen now.
The news that emerged yesterday is heart- breaking for his family, and their loss is immense.
His sport and his country should mourn his departure, too. Few people were made of the stuff that made him.
‘His family, his sport and the country have lost a singular man’