A lifetime dedicated to nurturing young talent

ATHLETICS:A record to be proud of - Eddie McDonagh's coaching role in almost 300 national champions during a 30-year reign

I CALLED UP Eddie McDonagh during the week to get a piece on the European cross country and he started out by saying he got the biggest kick of his entire coaching career out of Alan McCormack winning the National Intercounties title. To anyone who knows Eddie - and that must be a sizeable chunk of the entire athletics fraternity of Ireland - this was no ordinary statement.

It was difficult to know was he serious or was he just getting more sentimental given he's been at the game so long.

McCormack had certainly looked good that cold November day in Tramore racecourse a few weeks back, thus earning the right to lead the Irish team at tomorrow's European cross country in Brussels, but truth is Eddie has played a coaching role in almost 300 national champions during his now 30-year reign over Dundrum South Dublin athletic club. And obviously some of those were national champions more than once.

Although he admits to keeping only a rough count, Eddie reckons he's about a dozen short of the 300 mark - all champions across a range of distances and events, and most of whom were born a short distance from his home in Ballinteer Crescent. Not that he even begins to take all the credit for this. He has always paid tribute to the array of coaches in Dundrum over those years, starting with his most enduring assistant, and wife, Liz.

It was Liz, after all, who first suggested he start an athletics club. That was in 1978, when the new Dundrum Family Recreation Centre opened up and offered a range of activities, including swimming. But there was no running. Eddie was fanatical about the sport, a middle distance athlete of some acclaim and constantly trying to better his knowledge of what it took to succeed. And he'd already made a career out of physical activity, studying at the Army School of PE in Aldershot, and after returning home, becoming a juvenile liaison officer with the gardai, based in nearby Stepaside.

The suggestion of actually coaching runners didn't require much consideration. "That was it," he says. "Sure we were fanatics. We were and still are addicted to running. Liz had that love of coaching from the very beginning and so did I. And once I got into it then that became my passion, to coach. But we've been very lucky as well because I honestly believe there is something about the area of Dundrum which produces talented athletes. I don't know what it is but they just seem to come out, every year."

Within a few months the new Dundrum athletic club was showing its promise. Two of Eddie's early recruits were the young sprinter Derek O'Connor and young distance runner Carol Meagan, who promptly set a series of national records in their age group.

Although still a largely junior club, Dundrum was soon helping to produce senior champions, becoming a sort of conveyor belt of talent in rolling out the likes of Dave Taylor, Carey May and Patricia Walsh.

When in the late 1980s Dundrum merged with South Dublin running club, thus becoming DSD, it turned into a full-blown senior force, and caused "a major sensation", as Eddie himself puts it, by winning the coveted senior men's national cross country team title for the first time in 1990.

Over the years both the list and quality of champions continued to expand, and seven of them went on to compete in the Olympics. Distance running was always the bedrock of the club, with the likes of Noel Berkeley and Peter Mathews among the multiple national champions, but DSD also took a grip on the field events through the likes of Victor Costello and Nicky Sweeney.

At one point the club boasted eight national senior record holders at the same time, and more recently, DSD unearthed the two-time European Indoor 400 metre champion David Gillick.

But what was special about McCormack's win, I soon realised, what that it epitomised the very essence of Eddie's coaching philosophy: take a kid who likes to run; foster that enjoyment over the years, gradually press it, and if the devotion and commitment becomes evident then so does the potential to become a champion.

McCormack was special not because he was the first champion Eddie coached nor likely the last but because since the age of 12 he had put his trust and faith in Eddie, and vice versa, and winning the National Intercounties, 12 years on, was the crowning moment, a sort of justification for everything Eddie believes in. He wasn't an exceptionally talented athlete; he wasn't born in the mountains and he didn't run to school; but Eddie carefully plotted his progress over those 12 years and here was the result - a product of Dundrum's environment, a champion of the country. Of course Eddie was going to get a big kick out of that.

There is no doubt that Eddie is at his best when nurturing junior talent. He could count on one hand the number of times he's missed the daily training sessions in Marley Park or Belfield over the past 30 years, and he always arrives fired up with enthusiasm, frequently running on the spot while delivering instructions for the session at hand. Rain or shine, he'll stick around until the end and even if the session was a stinker he'll find something positive to say about it.

When it comes to driving athletes to races around the country there is always room in his navy Volkswagen van and he'll never ask for a penny in petrol money. He'll always stop off for chips on the way home and even if Dundrum came away empty-handed he's in good form. No young athlete wants to let Eddie down. I know all this because for several years I was one of them.

Inevitably, their two daughters got into running, and inevitably, won national titles. Since retiring five years ago Eddie has been coaching full-time and at least now gets some recompense for going into schools but if he had decided to pay himself for his coaching hours from the beginning then he'd be a very wealthy man. Instead, Eddie has an incredibly wealthy array of friends and acquaintances, the countless club athletes of past and present who shared in his love of athletics. He was in the Dundrum Town Centre recently when a famous Hollywood producer came up to him to reminisce about "the good old days at DSD".

There are hopes the long-awaited clubhouse can finally materialise in the planned Marley Park Centre and with 390 members they do badly need it. The standard continues to rise, and along with McCormack, seven other club athletes made the Irish team for tomorrow's European cross country - including Eddie's latest underage prospects, Charlotte and Rebecca Ffrench O'Carroll.

Although recently turning 60 he has no intention of retiring any time soon, and if I look half as young at that age as he does then neither would I. The hope now is that he's around for another 30 years because it's not simply Athletics Ireland or the Sports Council or Government money that's keeping the sport alive in Ireland, but people like Eddie McDonagh.