There is a famous picture of the Kerry subs bench for the 1988 Munster final that suggested an ending was near.
Sitting in their Adidas tracksuits were the celebrated holders of 30 All-Ireland medals: Páidí Ó Sé, Ger Power, Eoin ‘Bomber’ Liston and Denis ‘Ogie’ Moran. Liston was young enough to continue for another while, but for the rest of them it was their last day in the jersey.
Mick O’Dwyer was in his 14th season as Kerry manager and after a one-point defeat to Cork he was emboldened to carry on. There was no long-term plan.
When Kerry lost to Cork in the 1989 Munster final, for the third year in a row, they were buttressed by familiar names from Kerry’s Age of Empire: Jack O’Shea, Liston, the three Spillane brothers, Tommy Doyle, Charlie Nelligan, Ambrose O’Donovan, only one of whom was under 30.
Cork beat them by three points, a flattering outcome for Kerry that, according to Paddy Downey on these pages, “was a freakish reflection of the overall trend of play”.
In O’Dwyer’s authorised biography, Owen McCrohan described it as a “poverty-stricken performance that brought Kerry football to the lowest depths it had reached in several decades”.
For O’Dwyer, the epiphany had come too late.
“I realised how foolish I was to have stayed on so long,” he told McCrohan for his book. “If I had pulled out after winning in ‘86 it would have saved me those three awful years. Now, I was leaving when nobody wanted me to stay a moment longer.”
A year later, without O’Dwyer, Kerry lost to Cork by 15 points.
Sport is full of forecasts. All of us dabble in fortunetelling. On the inside, every player and manager must convince themselves that there are better days ahead and, in that frame of mind, it is far easier to entertain beginnings than endings. On the outside, we are not bound by those delusions and yet our foresight is clouded too.
After O’Dwyer’s last All-Ireland as Kerry manager in 1986, they waited 11 years for their next, the longest hiatus in Kerry’s history.
After Kilkenny’s last All-Ireland under Brian Cody in 2015, they have endured nine seasons without a title, equalling the longest drought in their history. In both cases, the greatest team and manager they had ever produced was followed by a period of spiralling despair.
In Dublin and Limerick, that medium-term prospect must have occurred to somebody. Just like Kerry under O’Dwyer, and Kilkenny under Cody, Dublin and Limerick have just witnessed the greatest team to ever wear their colours. So, what happens next? How much futureproofing can they do? Are they bound to suffer?
In Dublin’s case, the retirements of James McCarthy and Brian Fenton are expected to trigger a series of copycat announcements. By the time next year’s championship comes around it is not inconceivable that a handful or more of the players who took the field in the 2023 All-Ireland will no longer be available.
They have no like-for-like replacements for Fenton or McCarthy or Stephen Cluxton or Mick Fitzsimons or Paul Mannion or Jack McCaffrey. The very notion is risible.
At the height of Dublin’s dominance over the last decade the hard consensus was that the football championship would be skewed indefinitely by demographics. Gaelic football in the city was thriving and Dublin was continuing to swell. It was a numbers game.
The counter argument was that an extraordinary crop of Hall of Fame players had simply come along together and that, this too, will pass. Until recently, that view struggled for traction.
Dublin haven’t won a minor All-Ireland since 2012 and haven’t won an U-21/20 title in seven years. The last exceptional player to break through was Con O’Callaghan, eight years ago. A lot of good players have emerged since, but they are no better than their peers in eight or 10 other elite counties.
Limerick are in a different place in the curve, though Nickie Quaid’s ACL injury queers the pitch significantly. His importance to their success over the last seven seasons is on a par with Cluxton. In hurling he has been the supreme game manager. Without him for most, or all, of next year it will be fascinating to see how they adjust.
With Limerick, though, there is every chance that they will win another couple of All-Irelands on their way down the mountain, just as Kilkenny did in 2014 and 2015 and Dublin did in 2023.
All along, one of their great strengths has been stability, but at some point that becomes a weakness. Since 2018, Cathal O’Neill is the only young player to have broken into the team. Shane O’Brien and Adam English gained more exposure to big games last year and can expect more starts in the season to come, but nobody has broken into their defence since Barry Nash.
Here’s the thing: how do you balance the present that you think you know with an uncertain future?
With the players they have now, and the chance to win All-Irelands now, why would they make changes now? The average age of their outfield players in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final was about 29. John Kiely and Paul Kinnerk have committed for two more seasons. How much is left in Limerick’s sweet spot? Two or three seasons. And then what?
After his reappointment, Kiely spoke about succession planning. It is a smart business concept that is extremely hard to pull off in sport. Right now, Limerick have eight or maybe 10 players that, when the time comes, will be replaced at a loss. Replacing Kiely and Kinnerk will not be a zero-sum transaction either.
For Dublin, that process has accelerated. In Kilkenny, there are just two players left from the team that started the 2015 All-Ireland final: TJ Reid, who is 37 and Eoin Murphy, who is 34. Other irreplaceable players have gone.
After the 2015 All-Ireland final, Croke Park flushed itself quickly. The Kilkenny players completed their lap of honour and lingered for a while in front of the Hogan Stand. Just a couple of hundred Kilkenny supporters waited near the players’ tunnel. It was their 11th All-Ireland since the turn of the century.
None of them thought that it was the beginning of the end. After the Age of Empire, there are no happy endings.
