MICKO’S LAST
Cathal keeping O’Dwyer influence going strong
A FASCINATING statistic emerged recently on Matt Busby and Alex Ferguson that set the mind racing in a GAA context.
Richard Jolly, the senior soccer correspondent for the Independent in England pointed out this summer that, following Gianluigi Buffon’s retirement, it’d be the first season since 1930-31 that none of Stanley Matthews, Peter Shilton or Buffon would make a first team appearance.
Then last week he tweeted that “when Jonny Evans makes his second Man Utd debut, it will mean that in every season from 1935-36 onwards they have fielded someone who has played or would play for either Sir Matt Busby or Sir Alex Ferguson”.
Evans duly appeared against Arsenal last Sunday to add another link to the chain.
When considering such longevity from a GAA perspective, it starts with Mick O’Dwyer.
O’Dwyer’s first senior appearance for Kerry came in October 1956 and his last in November 1973, before he retired the following May.
His senior inter-county managerial career started only a few months later when he was handed the Kerry job and it (right) spanned almost four decades until his last game in charge of the Clare footballers, a qualifier defeat to Laois, one of the five counties that he managed, in July 2013.
That’s quite the cross section of footballers that O’Dwyer played with and managed.
He made his Championship debut in 1957 against Waterford, a game that produced one of the greatest shocks in GAA history as Kerry suffered a onepoint defeat.
Appeared
John Dowling and Paudie Sheehy were the longest-serving Kerry players on duty that day, having first appeared for the county senior team in 1951, but by 1959 Moyvane’s Jim Brosnan, who made his debut in the 1949 Munster Championship defeat to Clare, had come back into the team.
It means that, from that year on, every Championship season has featured at least one player who played with, would go on to play with or has been managed by Mick O’Dwyer.
Wicklow’s Dean Healy made his League debut under him in 2011 and was part of the side that won promotion from Division Four this year, but his Championship bow didn’t come until 2012, by which time
Harry Murphy was in charge.
And so the last man standing is Cathal O’Connor, the last surviving Clare player from the 2013 season and the only one which the Kerryman spent with the Banner.
Whenever O’Connor calls time on his Clare career, the subsequent Championship campaign will be the first since 1948 that no footballer that played with or under O’Dwyer will feature.
“It’s an amazing statistic alright,” says O’Connor. “It’s incredible, to be honest, that someone has that much of an impact on the game.” O’Connor had been part of Clare panels under Frank Doherty and Micheal McDermott though sat out the 2012 season after work took him to
Edinburgh.
Commuted
But when O’Dwyer phoned him at the end of the year, he was swiftly back on board and commuted from the Scottish capital over the next two years to play for Clare.
“When Micko rang I said I’d jump at the opportunity to get back in with Clare again.
“Clare got to the Munster final in 2012 and I missed that and they appointed Micko when Micheal left after that year. “When I got a call from him I wasn’t really going to turn it down, especially when I thought Clare looked like they were on the up.” O’Connor was born a few months after O’Dwyer’s Kerry reign wound down in 1989 but the following year he landed in Kildare, where he had two spells, winning two Leinster titles in the second.
He won another provincial crown in Laois and then lifted Wicklow from their perennial status of Championship alsorans with a number of landmark wins, though his spell in Clare was less notable as they failed to get out of Division Four and made a swift Championship exit, after which O’Dwyer’s career at the highest level finally wound down at 77.
O’Connor got no inkling that he was phoning it in that year, however.
“One thing that really struck me was how driven he was, even at that stage of his career. When we were getting ready for games he was well able to speak, well able to give motivation.”
The Coolmeen man turns 34 in November and is still mulling over his future with Clare, who remain managerless.
“I’ll probably wait until after the club Championship and see whether I’ll go back or not.
“It’s probably 50-50, it’s up in the air so I don’t know, you could potentially have someone playing Championship next year.”