The first modern manager of the GAA, Mick O'Dwyer changed everything

LAST UPDATE | 21 hrs ago

Declan Bogue

WHEN MUHAMMAD ALI passed away, one well-aired anecdote above all else framed the tributes.

It centred around the young man, called then Cassius Clay, who had a $60 red Schwinn bike stolen after he parked it up at a fair in his home town of Louisville. Enraged, he vocally vowed to give the thief a ‘whooping.’

Standing close by was local police officer, Joe Martin. Joe was impressed. Joe ran a boxing club. He invited the young man to come down and channel his anger.

That chance encounter became known as the ‘Red Bike Moment.’

When Mick O’Dwyer was growing up in Waterville, you couldn’t say they were poor. His father after all had bought him the football that became the magnet for children all over the town.

But in football heritage terms, Waterville was dirt poor. Shoeless poor. Nobody gave them a second thought.

‘It was something people in the area came to accept,’ he would write in his autobiography, ‘even if they greatly resented it.’

Waterville had something though.

Local school master Seán McCarthy was a county board delegate. He recommended the county minor selectors take a look at a young lad called O’Dwyer.

Eventually, he gained a trial. But entry past the velvet ropes was not simple.

He was a sub against Waterford in the first round of the Munster championship. It ended in a draw. He wasn’t selected for the replay either but one of the cars broke down on the way to Kenmare and so he was thrown a starting jersey.

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He scored 1-6.

The final was against Cork. He was dropped again, handed jersey number 18. For the All-Ireland semi-final, he was an even higher number. By the time of the final against Dublin, he was dropped off the panel altogether.

‘I had my own suspicions that it was because I came from south of the Laune river, an area deemed superfluous to requirements by the main power brokers in Kerry football at the time,’ he wrote.

This was Mick O’Dwyer’s ‘Red Bike Moment.’

Within a few months he would partner Ned Fitzgerald – father of Maurice – in midfield with the Kerry junior team. Soon after that, he played for Kerry seniors. The very first Waterville man to represent Kerry seniors.

He would go on to establish himself as the biggest and most influential figure of Kerry footballing history. As Steve Martin said, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’

Wherever they gather today, and in the days, weeks and months to come, they will talk of the same man, filed under two names; Micko, and Dwyer.

There is no argument that he was the greatest modernising influence on the way Gaelic football was played. His success as a player and manager with Kerry across four decades, moving on and spreading his wisdom across other counties, guarantees that.

Former players, spectators, business people, politicians and GAA people everywhere will have their own favourite anecdote. He left behind hundreds of them to be savoured, enjoyed and re-told in the great debating society of Kerry football

From Waterville in south Kerry, ‘Micko’ was an iconic presence in the Kingdom as both player and manager.

While his incredible management career led to the idea of a ‘manager’ in Gaelic Games, he was a remarkable footballer and made his debut in the 1956-57 league season, facing Carlow in October 1956.

He went on to win four All-Irelands, eleven Munster medals and seven league titles during his playing days, while he also lost five All-Ireland finals.

Having retired as a player, he immediately took over as manager in 1974 at the age of 38. He had 12 seasons in charge, winning eight All-Ireland titles, including a four-in-a-row that was halted in dramatic fashion by Offaly in the 1982 decider.

However, after that defeat he still was able to fashion a team to put another three consecutive titles together between 1984 and 1986.

During his early years, the rivalry that grew against Dublin, fronted by their figurehead manager Kevin Heffernan, brought Gaelic Games to the front and centre of Irish cultural life.

In some ways, Kerry were lucky to have Dublin. They knew that in some years that Kerry were winning All-Irelands in modest years.The jersey was carrying prestige and striking fear into others. 

With Dublin, they had a worthy adversary. Kevin Heffernan gained much praise for developing team play. Naturally, O’Dwyer took that personally and drove Kerry players demented in his pursuit of success. 

Football was the centre of all culture in Kerry, but Dublin sports fans found they had a team that they could support and sing songs on terraces, inspired by footage of Match of the Day and several cultural shifts that ultimately brought this Gaelic football rivalry into the mainstream.  

After finishing up with Kerry, O’Dwyer then went on to have phenomenal success with Kildare in two different spells. They ended a 42-year famine without the Leinster title and won it twice, while they also made the 1998 All-Ireland final.

He then had a spell with Laois and led them to an unlikely Leinster title in 2003.

After finishing with Laois he enjoyed a five-year spell at Wicklow. With O’Dwyer at the helm they won a Tommy Murphy Cup in 2007 and reached the last 12 of the All-Ireland in 2009 while claiming the scalp of several counties that resided in loftier league positions.

His final role in management came when he had one year with Clare.

By then, a troublesome ankle injury that was a legacy of his playing career had left him in a great deal of discomfort and after he had an operation, he called time on his management career.

While he was hewn from the richest traditions of Kerry football, he was also one of the modernising influences on coaching. His gruelling sessions held in Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney, outlined in detail by several players, maintained their high level of fitness and tourists would frequently pitch up in the high summer to get a look at what Kerry were doing in training, joining the curious locals.

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On one occasion, preparing for an All-Ireland campaign, he spoke of training the players for 27 consecutive nights, with no players dropping out.

In his later years when he took on other counties, he was famed for conducting sessions that consisted of 40 laps of the pitch, a method that was designed to test the player’s mental resolve as well as building stamina.

While such methods would be surpassed with the advent of sports science, he drilled the Kerry players by running from sideline to sideline in Fitzgerald Stadium and touching the perimeter, known as ‘wire-to-wire’ runs, while players also had endless sessions of piggy-back races.

But his care over his players was an outstanding feature. During the winters he would round up a certain number of players who he felt needed a bit of physical work and would endlessly train the likes of Eoin ‘Bomber’ Liston by playing basketball and doing beach runs. 

He also pushed the envelope on the GAA’s curious relationship with sponsorship and amateurism when he took part in a number of commercial deals for the financial betterment of the Kerry team, one particular arrangement with a washing machine manufacturer causing outrage among those concerned with the strictly amateur status of Gaelic Games.

An innovator in many ways, O’Dwyer felt his players had to be well looked after and that was reflected on their team holidays that took in Australia, New Zealand and America among other locations.

To raise money for these ventures, Kerry took to touring Ulster and playing exhibition games against the likes of Tyrone, where they collected donations towards the holidays.

O’Dwyer was best known as a hotelier, but had a wide range of business interests, including an undertaker service, a garage, and several eateries.

An immensely popular figure around Kerry, a number of his former Kerry players visited O’Dwyer in Waterville in recent months to say their final goodbyes.