Mick O’Dwyer had a way of talking to you. I never played under him and I would never claim to have been in his inner circle. I’d be good friends with his sons and I was around them a fair bit over the weekend. It was a hard station for them – it’s not easy letting go of your dad when the whole country wants in on it.
So I’d be slow enough to be making out that I have some sort of special insight into Micko. The lads themselves are the only ones who’d properly know. They knew by the way he threw his bag down after coming in the door from training whether the form was good or bad.
But in a way, the fact that everyone thought they knew him was the beauty of the man. Whenever you came into contact with him, you went away full sure that the only two people in the world who mattered now were you and Micko. He’d make you think you were in an exclusive little club together and that became something you treated as sacred.
Early in my career, I was playing midfield for Kerry and though I thought I was doing okay, really I was being conservative. I was doing enough to hold my position and not make any mistakes. I wasn’t taking any risks. Maurice Fitzgerald said it to me one night: “You’re too predictable. You need to mix your game up a bit”.
He was right. In the next few games, I took more chances and got up the pitch a bit more. Soon after, I ran into Micko somewhere and he commented on it.
“I spotted you there getting up,” he said. “That’ll make all the difference to you.”
And whatever way he said it, it felt as if it was nearly a secret pact that he and I had together now. I never told anybody about it, I never went to management and said I was doing this now. But in my head, Mick O’Dwyer had seen this in me and told me it was working and to keep at it so that was all that mattered. And I’m sure he never gave it another thought!
At the funeral last Saturday, it was great to see Mick O’Connell and to shake his hand. In south Kerry, he and Micko were two kings and though they had their highs and lows together over the years, the respect between them was eternal. I know it meant a huge amount to the three lads to see him there.
Micko had this aura and he knew it. Páidí Ó Sé told me one time about the build-up to the 1985 final. There was a huge hunt for tickets because it was against the Dubs again so he as captain and Micko as manager went in to see the county secretary and ask for more tickets for the players.
It was getting hot and heavy – the secretary wasn’t for moving. But at one stage in the proceedings they were left alone in the room and there was a bundle of tickets left on the desk. So Micko and Páidí grabbed a heap of them each and pocketed them. When the secretary came back in, he had a couple of tickets each for them as a way of getting them out the door.
Micko said: “Look, I’ll get a handle on the players. You’re under pressure there so we’ll leave you at it”.
Then they went up to training and Micko got all the players in a circle and abused them from a height.
“Enough about tickets lads, your heads are all over the place. It would be more in your line to be thinking about the Dubs now so I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
Páidí told me he went away from the whole thing thinking that however much of a cowboy he was, Micko was 10 times worse. Now, the fact that Páidí told the story doesn’t necessarily make it true. And neither does the fact that Micko verified it!
Those kind of stories about Micko were flying all the time over the weekend. He didn’t mind telling stories against himself. When he was managing Kildare, he always knew that there was a good share of people back in Kerry who followed him and who hitched their wagon to Kildare because of him. And also, that there were plenty back home who didn’t like it one bit.
After they beat us in the All-Ireland semi-final in 1998, he landed back down to Killorglin on the Tuesday. It was during Puck Fair and the town was hopping. He pulled in and got talking to an old friend called Christy Kissane and started raving about the reception the Kildare players had got the night before at the homecoming.
“You should have seen it Christy,” he said. “There were 15,000 people on the streets in Newbridge to see us home. You never saw the likes of it.”
Christy gave it to him between the eyes.
“I wouldn’t be getting too carried away Micko – we had 15,000 here last night looking up at a goat!”
Micko told that yarn plenty of times, laughing at himself. He knew who he was and what people thought of him. He knew well that people changed when they saw him coming. They made allowances for him that they wouldn’t for ordinary mortals.
About 10 years ago, he was on one leg after hurting his ankle. There was a funeral to go to above in Roscommon and a few of us were going so I said I’d drive. On the way up, he was thanking us for the spin and the company and he said, “Now, I’ll look after ye food-wise, lads”. John, his son, was in the car and I saw him rolling his eyes, as if to say, “Right, let’s see how he goes about this now”.
We went into a pub near the church and everything was laid out for the funeral. We were a couple of hours early so all the tinfoil was on the sandwiches. But sure as soon as the ladies there saw it was Mick O’Dwyer, they went off and got tea and lifted the tinfoil and said, “Lads, will ye have a sandwich there?”.
We were a bit slow to go for it but Micko dove straight in and lifted a pile of them out of the middle of the tray. And so we went at it too and soon enough we had our fill. Micko went up to the bar and said, “What’s going to you?” making out he was trying to pay for the sandwiches.
But sure he knew well they wouldn’t hear of taking a cent off him. All they wanted was a few photos. We went out and got into the car and the first words out of his mouth were: “Didn’t I say I’d sort ye?”
He was one of a kind. Ar dheis dé go raibh a n-anam dílis.
