The latest juncture of Dessie Farrell’s sporting life crossing paths with Kieran McGeeney will take place at Croke Park on Sunday, but it first started more than two decades ago in a haunt where many meaningful and complex GAA relationships begin. It started in Coppers.
In the aftermath of losing the 1998 Dublin SFC final, several Na Fianna players sought sanctuary in the dark and loud and smoky clutches of Copper Face Jacks, the long-standing nightclub on Dublin’s Harcourt Street.
As Farrell and his team-mates were trying to numb the pain, McGeeney and his Armagh colleague Diarmaid Marsden passed by and respectful nods were exchanged.
Farrell had played against McGeeney previously but, though he recognised him that night as a fellow county player, initially the Dubliner was flummoxed.
“My memory blanked,” Farrell would confess seven years later in his enthralling autobiography, Tangled Up in Blue. “Then McGeeney approached me and, mercifully, just as he extended his hand, his name popped into my head.”
The conversation that followed was the beginning of a mutually beneficial and enduring friendship – they would go on to share a dressingroom, win three county titles as Na Fianna team-mates and on the day the Gaelic Players Association was officially launched in Belfast the pair travelled together from Dublin to the event.
The exact details of that nightclub conversation in the small hours of the morning 27 years ago might forever be hazy but at some point the chat moved towards McGeeney considering a move to play his club football in the capital. He was working in Dublin with the Irish Sports Council at the time. St Vincent’s had already been in touch. Farrell made his play.
“Having at least signalled our ambition by reaching the county final, I suggested, very politely, that he might consider coming up to Mobhi Road for a look and gave him my phone number,” he recalled. “A couple of weeks later, McGeeney rang and said he and his Armagh colleague Des Mackin would be interested in talking to the club.”
Farrell, Mick Galvin (current Dublin selector) and then Na Fianna manager Paul “Pillar” Caffrey met the duo and convinced them to pull on the blue and yellow.
Having only previously won two Dublin senior football titles (1969 and 1979), Na Fianna achieved a famous three in-a-row in 1999-2001. They also contested an All-Ireland club final in 2000 – a particularly compelling fixture for McGeeney and Mackin as Na Fianna’s opponents that day were the pair’s south Armagh neighbours, Crossmaglen Rangers.
“There’s no question, I don’t think that success would have happened without Dessie and Kieran,” says Karl Donnelly, who played in all four of those Dublin SFC finals between 1998 and 2001.
Donnelly was also an Ireland basketball international at the time.
“Kieran set his standards by his actions more than anything in the early days, the level of intensity he would have brought to training would have been up significantly from what we would have been used to at the time.
“I’d have known it a little bit from the level I was playing at in basketball so I would have embraced that when he arrived. Personally, I really enjoyed that seriousness, preparation and the intensity he brought.
“Every training session was an opportunity for us to develop and get better. He would have brought that intensity and it deterred lads from going half-arsed in drills.”
Farrell would later write that McGeeney’s arrival helped him personally in achieving his goals with Na Fianna.
“For years, my clubmates had to listen to me constantly droning on about raising standards, about the importance of greater sacrifice, of greater application, of discipline,” said Farrell.
“At times I wouldn’t have been the most popular for it; I never shied away from telling a lad to his face that he wasn’t focused, that he was an underachiever. Now, there was someone even more zealous than me, a man who believed in realising his ambition.”
John Horan, who would become president of the GAA from 2018-21, had spent years toiling away with teams in Na Fianna. He had either coached many of the players with the club or taught them in St Vincent’s secondary school, Glasnevin.
“The leadership was always there with Dessie but when you got another strong leader in the room like Kieran, it certainly made a huge difference. Between the two of them, they drove it on,” recalls Horan.
McGeeney’s arrival was the missing link but Farrell had spent years laying down the foundations.
“Dessie was the architect of putting in all that infrastructure in terms of wanting to improve the standards,” adds Donnelly, who was a late convert to Gaelic football, having focused mostly on basketball and soccer until then.
“I would have heard stories subsequently that he was instrumental in bringing the Na Fianna seniors out of a kind of malaise of being also-rans.”
Success followed success. On the back of all the club titles, in 2002 McGeeney captained Armagh to their maiden All-Ireland SFC triumph.
In the semi-final they overcame Dublin, a game in which Farrell was deployed at centre forward to mark McGeeney in a deliberate ploy by the Dubs to try to curtail the Armagh captain’s influence on the game.
Armagh beat Dublin in a qualifier in 2003 – also a game in which both McGeeney and Farrell played – but by the time the counties next met in the championship, in 2010, both had retired.
McGeeney was managing the Kildare senior footballers at that stage while in 2011 Farrell would manage the Dublin minors to an All-Ireland minor final appearance.
Sunday’s All-Ireland round-robin game is the first championship meeting between the counties in 15 years and only the sixth in history.
On the road to this point, both men have endured difficult days on the sideline but ultimately they have each managed their county to All-Ireland titles. Farrell won the minors in 2012, the under-21s in 2014 and 2017 and claimed the senior title in 2020 and 2023, and McGeeney led the seniors to glory in 2024.
Their relationship has transcended football pitches and sidelines – evolving from the dressingroom to the boardroom. Both were founding members of the GPA at the Wellington Park Hotel in Belfast in September 1999.
Farrell was one of only two non-Ulster players present, Galway’s Ja Fallon the other. On finishing work at St Brendan’s Hospital in Grangegorman earlier that day, Farrell was picked up by McGeeney and they travelled together to Belfast.
“On the road we spoke about player welfare issues, the first proper conversation I’d ever had on the subject,” recalled Farrell in his book. “I was taken aback by Kieran’s perspective. I found the conversation illuminating.”
That car trip would be the start of another journey for Farrell – he later served as chief executive of the GPA between 2003-2016. McGeeney had a stint as GPA secretary.
In the days following Armagh’s victory over Galway in last July’s All-Ireland final, Donnelly sent McGeeney a congratulatory text. It certainly wasn’t the only message McGeeney received from his old comrades in Mobhi Road.
“The friendships and the experiences and the craic that we had around that team, while all that stuff was happening on the pitch there was also the social aspect to it where connections and bonds were created that you probably cherish for life more than any of the medals,” adds Donnelly.
Na Fianna have yet to add another Dublin SFC but they have come close in recent years – losing a final in 2022.
“Those teams with Dessie and Kieran, they upped standards and gave everybody involved with the club an understanding of what was required in the context of effort and commitment to become successful,” adds Horan.
Given both Dublin and Armagh chalked up wins in their opening group games of this year’s All-Ireland series, the jeopardy at Croke Park this Sunday is not what it might have been had results turned out otherwise.
Still, it’s the 2024 Sam Maguire winners against the 2023 Sam Maguire winners, Armagh against Dublin, McGeeney against Farrell.
“They are two very good leaders in the context both have gone on to manage their county to All-Ireland wins,” says Horan. “To have had two future All-Ireland-winning managers playing on the one team, very few club teams could claim that. They were the difference.”
