Nemo’s ‘outliers’ showing the way to Croke Park

It takes a lot of nerve for a Kerry man and a Cavan man to walk into a Cork dressingroom and start showing them the way to Croke Park. Especially when only one of them knows the way, and they’re both well into retirement age.

So when Barry O’Driscoll complains about the two “outliers” who skew the age and tradition of the Nemo Rangers football team it is entirely in jest: especially given two central players on their road to Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day have been Tomás Ó Sé and Paddy Gumley.

They do, given their backgrounds, also skew a little of the Cork club’s tradition – one the still famous Kerry footballer, the other a little more forgotten from Cavan. That won’t in any way lessen the occasion if they do help Nemo overcome Connacht champions Corofin on Saturday.

For Ó Sé, it also presents the opportunity to land the one prize he missed out on during his those long and prolific years across the Kerry border: the AIB All-Ireland club football title.

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The five-time All-Ireland winner with Kerry, five-time All Star, with the joint all-time record of championship appearances for the county (along with his brother Marc), lost his only other appearance in Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day with his previous club, An Ghaeltacht, back in 2004.

His journey back has been both surprising and deserving. Everything about Ó Sé’s performance in last month’s semi-final win over Ulster champions Slaughtneil underlined his importance to Nemo.

Trailing by four points early in the second half, Ó Sé turned on his old familiar style to inspire a blitzkrieg of scoring, an unanswered 1-5, including his own second point from play. Slaughtneil fought back to force extra-time before Ó Sé helped rally the troops again – and the rest could be history.

Now three months shy of those 40th birthday cards, this may well be Ó Sé’s last chance to land that elusive prize with his adopted club. After retiring in 2013, and by then based in Cork, living just outside the city and teaching in Fermoy, he transferred to Nemo in 2014, and the following season helped them win their first Cork title in five years.

O’Driscoll, at 28 one of Nemo’s central forwards, has talked about Ó Sé’s role within the team since that first day he walked into the club dressing room.

“He fit in straight away, is actually a very personable guy, brilliant to have around. He knows, been there, done that. Like he knows what he’s doing around the pitch, when to slow it down, when to speed it up. His decision making is brilliant.

Success rate 

Ó Sé’s Cork-Nemo connection began before that, when in 2013 he agreed to coach the UCC Fresher team, and with that got to know Nemo veteran Billy Morgan. Around then the club was seeking some fresh impetus, having last won a Munster title in 2010: their seven All-Ireland titles is still a record (one more than Crossmaglen), although Nemo last claimed that honour back in 2003.

Saturday’s showdown against Corofin qualifies as a sort of clash of club football giants, honours-wise anyway. Corofin have two All-Irelands, the last won in 2015, plus eight Connacht titles, and 19 Galway titles. There’s not much history shared between the clubs beyond their long success rate.

For Gumley, getting to Croke Park with any team had always seemed a bridge too far – and even more so than Ó Sé he could never have imagined it would have come with a Cork club. Now aged 35, and having twice given up football already – the first time through a lack of interest, later due to a heart scare – he’s now on the verge of winning his first championship title of any sort.

Gumley had repeatedly thanked his own lucky stars in getting this far, but you know what they say about luck. He is nursing a calf injury since the Slaughneil game, but like Ó Sé is central to the team, scoring three points in the Munster final and bouncing off the likes of Luke Connolly in the forwards.

He started out with the Redhills club in Cavan, then lost interest in football from the age of 15 to 21, before reviving it again and later being called into the Cavan squad, in 2009.

Not long after that he was diagnosed with Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), an enlarging of the heart muscle, and was told to retire. Doctors differ and patients sometimes die, but Gumley got a second opinion, and was told as long as he kept his fitness and training in check he’d be okay to play again.

Then, after moving to Cork for work purposes in 2015, he went along to Nemo purely to keep that fitness in check. He started out with the fifth-tier team, the Junior Cs, worked his way up through the Bs and As, before Nemo senior manager Larry Kavanagh called him in at the start of this season – and, again, the rest could be history.