Paddy Tally could be forgiven if, during these early weeks of the new season, he felt the urge to search the Derry dressingroom to make sure Michael Aspel wasn’t preparing to pop out from behind an old white board or a stack of training cones.
Because Tally’s opening three fixtures as Derry manager certainly have a fair whiff of This Is Your Life about them. Tyrone, Kerry, Galway – Tally’s GAA family of old friends, profound relationships and unforgettable memories.
The fixture makers and script writers have dovetailed just lovely on this one.
Tally’s first competitive outing as Derry manager was against his native Tyrone last week, the league encounter taking place in Omagh, just a little over 20 miles from his home, in Galbally.
In 2003, Tally trained the Tyrone footballers under Mickey Harte when they made history by winning the county’s breakthrough All-Ireland. But that success was to be only the prologue of a very singular coaching story.
He has now been to All-Ireland finals with three different counties: Tyrone, Down, Kerry.
The Kerry chapter came to a sharp, unexpected end late last year. Tally was involved with the Kingdom from 2022-24. And when Jack O’Connor announced his management team for 2025, Tally was again included. But in mid-November he was unveiled as the new Derry manager. Inevitably, Tally’s second game-day task as Oak-leaf boss is to welcome O’Connor and Kerry to Celtic Park this Sunday.
After he negotiates that tricky test, his third league fixture will be against Galway, where Tally coached in 2018.
“It has been no surprise that Paddy has moved around over the years – a man of his intelligence and adaptability to the modern way of playing, he’s always keen to learn and improve,” says Danny Hughes, who played under Tally during his time in Down.
Despite him being a Tyrone man, Tally’s appointment in Derry didn’t generate the same ferocious pitchfork-wielding backlash directed towards Mickey Harte just over 12 months earlier.
There are several reasons for that. Firstly, Harte is such an iconic figure in Tyrone GAA. For some who had steadfastly followed and supported his teams for almost 20 years, it felt like a form of betrayal for Harte, of all people, to be hopping across the fence to help out the noisy neighbours.
Secondly, Tally – despite his link to that 2003 Tyrone team – has tended to be viewed more as a coaching evangelist; his philosophy has been cultivated and developed in Killarney and Newry as much as it has been in Galbally.
Thirdly, he also previously coached the Derry footballers during Brian McIver’s spell as manager between 2013 and 2015.
But when Tally’s CV is cited, his first spell with Down is often the detail most overlooked. In 2010, the unfancied Mourne Men burst from the pack to contest that year’s All-Ireland final.
“The one thing that really sets Paddy apart and what allows him to be a brilliant coach is the absence of ego,” adds 2010 All-Star Hughes.
“He’s very personable and doesn’t think he is better or worse than anybody else. He gets on with people – that’s a great starting point for any coach. He was huge for us that year in getting to the final.
“Often when managers and coaches come in, on some occasions they bring with them a reputation from their playing days, but management and coaching are very different. That ability of arriving to a dressingroom with no ego, I think that really stands to Paddy.”
That’s not to say Tally wasn’t a decent player himself. He played for Galbally Pearses in the 1997 county senior football final while he was also part of the Tyrone senior football panel when they contested the 1995 All-Ireland decider.
He attended St Mary’s where he trained to become a teacher and later completed a master’s in sports science. Tally was just 29 when he was invited by Harte to join the Tyrone management team.
Those famous passages of play from the 2003 All-Ireland semi-final when the Tyrone footballers swarmed Kerry players like frenzied bees descending upon an open jar of honey – that was Tally’s work, honed in small-sided training games. It is now a part of GAA folklore.
But Tally’s relationship with Harte became strained the following season and in September 2004 it was announced that the young coach would not be involved with Tyrone in 2005.
When Tally next emerged on the national stage it was with the Down footballers during that 2010 season.
He later spent three years with Derry while at the time lecturing in St Mary’s University Belfast and training the college’s football teams. In 2017, his coaching work with The Ranch reached its apex. St Mary’s games development officer Gavin McGilly was part of Tally’s back room team that year when they caused a shock by winning the Sigerson Cup.
“Paddy knows what it takes to win,” says McGilly, who is also the current St Mary’s Sigerson manager.
“It was something Paddy would have aspired to and I suppose that was nearly 20 years in the making, so it was great to see him get his just rewards for all that hard work. We have very fond memories of that year.”
McGilly has not been surprised to see Tally become one of the most sought-after coaches in the game.
“It comes so naturally to Paddy, he’s a brilliant man manager and players want to play for him,” he adds. “He’s at the cutting edge of coaching and at the very highest level he has proved himself – from 2003 with Tyrone to most recently his time with Kerry, he knows what it takes to get teams up the steps of the Hogan Stand.”
That 2017 Sigerson success put Tally back on the intercounty radar. Kevin Walsh persuaded him to link up with Galway for 2018 – a season during which they won the Connacht title and contested the league final.
Later that same year Hughes was part of the committee tasked with finding a new Down manager in advance of the 2019 season. Hughes believed the right man was from Galbally. They appointed Tally for three years.
He remained at the helm for that period but Covid proved a difficult time and despite being offered an extra season, Tally opted to step down in July 2021.
But just as one door closes ...
A series of events conspired to facilitate Tally’s most high profile, if unlikely, coaching role. Just two months after Tally’s Down departure, Jack O’Connor left Kildare. Peter Keane was the Kerry manager at the time, but the screw was starting to turn in the Kingdom and O’Connor’s sudden availability changed everything.
Before September was out, O’Connor was back as Kerry boss for a third time. In the background, he had been arranging his poker hand – but confirmation Tally was to be part of the Kerry management team wasn’t seen by all as a royal flush. It wasn’t the first time an outsider had been drafted in – Cian O’Neill had coached Kerry under Eamonn Fitzmaurice – but bringing Tally down weighed heavily on some traditionalists in Kerry.
And the undertone to much of the criticism was that Kerry didn’t need or want an Ulster coach, a Tyrone coach. There were some who would rather lose football matches the Kerry way than win them on the back of some guidance from elsewhere.
[ Joy unconfined as Kerry faithful welcome home Sam MaguireOpens in new window ]
Tally arrived with his defensive coaching credentials widely praised, and the numbers indicated the Kingdom needed some repair work at the back. In 2022, they proved to be a far more resolute group. Sam Maguire was won, all was forgiven – or perhaps just ignored. Winning has that tendency to make folk forget the other stuff. O’Connor’s gamble had worked.
Players who have worked with Tally say the pigeonholing of him as a defensive coach is unfair. Brendan Rogers made his Derry debut during Tally’s time as a coach there in 2015 and is pleased to see him return.
“Paddy gets probably lauded for his defensive credibility, and rightly so, but nobody gives him credit for how to get out of a defensive system,” said Rogers before the start of the league. “What he could actually do is help make us a better transitioning team. I’m excited to see what he has learned from the last time he was with us.”
And yet the Derry job radiated like a double-edged sword last winter – at once both attractive and hazardous.
“I think it was well known Rory Gallagher wanted it and some of the players seemed to want that as well,” says Hughes. “So, it is a difficult one, but if anybody can manage it and convince the players, then it’s Paddy Tally.”
And a victory against some old friends this weekend certainly wouldn’t hurt.
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