Kings of September Page 2

  His UCD teams had tactics and schemes like no one else. He had devised a system for taking long frees, withdrawing one player from the full-forward line as a signal to the remaining two that the ball was coming their way. Players took part in workshops to hone their skills. Their kicking style was deconstructed, first learning to kick the ball accurately over six yards before gradually working up to longer distances.

  UCD teams were a Babel of accents and origins. There was Colm O’Rourke from Meath. Kevin Kilmurray from Offaly. John O’Keeffe from Kerry, with All-Ireland medals in his pocket and a sense of calm and composure the entire team could feed off. Camaraderie became friendship. McGee shared a flat with O’Keeffe and, after training in Belfield, several players would pile into their flat for breakfast before heading to their lectures. Tom Hunt from Waterford, whose thick accent had them slagging him about getting a translator. Dinny Burke, an Arts student from Tipperary, who ate forwards without salt. Ollie Leddy from Cavan. Mick Fennelly, a meaty Agriculture student from Athy.

  ‘It was a homely atmosphere,’ says McGee. ‘The big thing about UCD was that they were a disparate group of people and they only came good at periodic intervals when a large group from the same faculty or the one county came together. The vets came good once or twice. Even the medicine people. There was a whole batch of Cavan and Roscommon fellas in the forties and fifties. A clique would form the nucleus for the whole team. I was ever-present when I was there, so there was continuity for the first time. I was able to bridge the gaps between the fellas departing and arriving.’

  McGee’s personality was abrasive, too. He could be curt. He cut through reputations. No player was greater than the team. Even if they were, he wouldn’t let them know it. When he took on UCD’s Sigerson Cup team – college football’s premier competition – he arranged sessions during deepest winter for seven in the morning. The players assembled in Belfield in the biting cold and darkness, their only consolation the guarantee of warm showers when they were done. He needed to weed the softness out of them. Those who could discipline themselves to show up had the desire he could work with.

  ‘My thinking was, we have to do something exceptional here,’ says McGee. ‘We have to create a sacrificial situation where the players make a supreme sacrifice. There’s nothing more supreme than getting up in November and December and it freezing cold.’

  ‘You’d be shamed if you missed those training sessions,’ says John O’Keeffe. ‘Nobody missed them. He had terrific control and respect from the players. He had that hold over the team. It absolutely amazed me that he had such an in-depth knowledge of the game for a fella who had never kicked a ball in his life. We used always slag him about that. Though I remember at one tournament game we were short a man – Eugene had to stand in in corner-forward with his wellingtons. He had a terrific way of articulating his ideas. I’ve never heard anyone in a dressing room as good as him.’

  UCD started winning. They owned the Sigerson Cup between 1971 and 1974, missed out in 1975 and gathered another three titles between 1976 and 1978. As the club championships began to take shape, UCD were among those to provide the competition with history and tradition, winning two All-Ireland club titles. (Before Kerry appointed Mick O’Dwyer as trainer in 1974, John O’Keeffe would gently tease McGee about taking the Kerry job.) In the Dublin championship, UCD wrestled furiously with St Vincent’s in a rivalry tinged with hatred. Together they created enough waves to raise the tide, and Dublin football prospered.

  UCD were young and glamorous. Clubs all over the country invited them to play in weekend tournaments. One weekend in high summer they travelled to Tralee and took on Austin Stack’s. They won a seven-a-side tournament in Rochfortbridge, Westmeath, one year and each man left for home with IR£50 in his back pocket. They played a Gold Watch tournament in Bailieboro, beating Castleblayney and Crossmaglen and Cavan.

  Then, on a quiet Sunday in January 1976, everything stopped. The day had begun well. UCD had beaten Offaly champions Ferbane in the Leinster club final and celebrated all the way back to Dublin. That night, McGee’s phone rang. It was three in the morning. Bad news. Fr Phil had suffered a heart attack, and died. He was forty-six. McGee put the phone down. He knew his life would change forever.

  Fr Phil’s death left his elderly mother to tend the small family farm alone. Five brothers and sisters were away, unable to return home. Eugene was single and living alone in Dublin, and free to go back. He split himself between Dublin and Longford, continuing to work with UCD while filing his copy to the Sunday Press on the old wind-up phone. It was enough to keep him going, but the perfectly manicured pitches in Belfield and the quiet lakelands and hills around Aughnacliffe couldn’t contain his ambition. He needed a new challenge.

  * * *

  The summer of 1976 was stiflingly hot, and Fr Sean Heaney was restless. Five years had passed since he had come to Rahan, County Offaly, as parish priest, and his first year as chairman of Offaly County Board had propelled him into the middle of a crisis. Relegation to Division Two was bad, but things were getting worse. That June, Offaly played out a dull Leinster quarter-final against Meath that ended with a scowl. First, Meath’s Mattie Kerrigan squared up to Offaly’s Mick O’Rourke. Minutes later, Kerrigan was entangled with Mick Wright. Having ignored the first incident, referee Paul Kelly’s patience was spent and Kerrigan and Wright were sent off. As Kelly left the field some supporters hurled beer cans at him. Offaly lost by nine points, 3-8 to 0-8, and were sliding. Their manager Paddy McCormack resigned and the usual list of former players were queuing up for their turn, but Fr Heaney wanted something different.

  One evening he met Kevin Kilmurray. While the rest of the team’s stars had begun to burn out, Kilmurray was a hero, decorated with All-Ireland medals and All Stars, their last remaining source of light. They talked about managers, and Heaney wondered aloud about alternatives. After spending a few years in UCD, Kilmurray knew what McGee could do.

  ‘What’s McGee like?’ asked Heaney.

  ‘He’s the best,’ replied Kilmurray. ‘Why Longford don’t have him, I can’t understand.’

  Heaney didn’t know much about McGee, but he knew enough. McGee was a self-made man. He hadn’t won All-Ireland medals but he had twenty-five undergraduates training at seven in the morning a few weeks before Christmas. He could keep them together and bring them all over the country without incident. He could handle people and adversity. He was a journalist with a neck like old shoe leather. To survive in Offaly, managers needed that.

  ‘That’s who I want,’ he said.

  Getting McGee would require work – at home in Offaly, and in Longford. Offaly County Board was filled with delegates from every club in the county – a fifteen-man executive committee, including Heaney and county secretary John Dowling, but the power was isolated to one primary source.

  Convince Dowling, and anything could happen.

  To most delegates Dowling was a fearsome figure. But Heaney had a bright, sprightly personality, and a good working relationship with Dowling had softened into friendship.

  One evening Heaney called to Dowling in Tullamore for a chat. ‘The kettle’s on, boss,’ Dowling shouted from the kitchen. ‘Cup of tea?’

  Heaney was thinking football. Where Heaney was keen to experiment, Dowling saw no reason to change. Offaly football was just in a rut. These things happen. Look at the size of the place and only half the county playing football.

  Even if Dowling didn’t, Heaney knew Offaly football needed a jolt. The old story about one former Offaly coach went that, after months of running laps, one player asked if they could shake up training a little to stave off the boredom. ‘No problem,’ said the coach. ‘Ye can run the next five laps in the opposite direction.’ Heaney put the idea of Eugene McGee to Dowling. Dowling was suspicious. The man wasn’t from Offaly. He had no background as a player, and the idea of a journalist taking over the team worried him.

  But there were other issues to consider. Heaney had been Dowling�
��s preferred choice as chairman. Dowling needed him and whatever McGee would do, he couldn’t drag Offaly any lower. McGee seemed a harmless indulgence. Dowling gave the nod.

  One Thursday evening in July, Heaney called McGee and invited him to a meeting. The conversation was curt.

  ‘What do you want to meet me for?’ asked McGee.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to talk about it over the phone,’ replied Heaney.

  ‘Well, if you don’t tell me what you want to talk about, or what you want, I’m not going to talk to you.’

  ‘Okay, well, we’d like you to train the Offaly team.’

  ‘Sure, what would I know about Offaly?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Heaney. ‘But we think you’d do a good job.’

  McGee was baffled, but intrigued. The following Sunday, as Offaly played Dublin in the Leinster minor football final, McGee lodged himself in the Hogan Stand with his match programme and a pen. Dublin beat Offaly, but McGee saw a spark. Offaly had guts. Spirit. McGee placed a tick beside some names: Gerry Carroll, Vincent Henry, Tomás O’Connor, Johnny Mooney. Maybe he could school them through and build a team around them? It was worth a shot.

  Meanwhile, Fr Heaney dropped McGee’s name into conversations around the county and created a foothold for McGee among the executive. When the list of candidates was compiled, McGee’s name was written at the bottom. He was unknown and untested but, with an absence of any other serious candidates, McGee was proposed. Dowling nodded his approval and the delegates fell into line. Heaney had his man. Word was sent to the newspapers just as the presses cranked into gear.

  Westmeath-Offaly Independent

  Friday, 13 August 1976

  NEW TRAINER FOR OFFALY GAA!

  As we go to press, we are told that GAA sportstar Eugene Magee [sic] has been appointed trainer of the Offaly senior football team and is to take up the post immediately.

  Longford-born Magee attended a meeting of the Co. Executive in Tullamore on Tuesday night, at which his appointment was ratified.

  It is further understood he will also serve on the selection committee in company with Messrs Martin Heavey (Rhode), Michael Guinan (Clara), John Buckley (Ballycumber) and John Coghlan (Belmont).

  Mr Magee has proved himself an accomplished trainer, if not at inter-county level, then at least as the man who prepared the successful UCD side in recent years.

  On a sunny Saturday evening the following weekend, McGee landed into Tullamore with a bag of footballs in the boot of his car and strolled out on to the field in his pale blue UCD jersey. Heaney was in the stand.

  Things were already different. Training sessions at Offaly had never been conducted with more than one football.

  The players straggled on to the field and McGee brought them into a semicircle around him, twenty yards from one goal. Up in the stand, Fr Heaney held his breath.

  ‘He threw out about a half dozen footballs and said: “Kick them over the bar.” Here you had guys with two All-Ireland medals, Leinster medals, club championships. It was the most humiliating thing you could ever do. In other words, he said: You can’t do anything. You’re not able to kick the ball over the bar from twenty-five yards out.’

  A couple of weeks later, Offaly played their first game under McGee to mark the opening of a new club pavilion in Clonbullogue. Kildare came with a shiny new team filled with Under-21s that had reached an All-Ireland final against Kerry. Offaly’s team was quickly patched together. A cluster of players was missing, having committed to play for their clubs. Gerry Carroll, one of McGee’s cherished minors, had to cry off with injury. Sean Lowry arrived late. But Offaly showed some cut, and won by five points.

  ‘Most of the Offaly side can feel well satisfied with their performance,’ said the correspondent from the Westmeath-Offaly Independent, ‘and with some serious training under team coach Eugene McGee brighter horizons may lie ahead, but patience must be the key as success will not come overnight.’

  With the team still plump from the All-Ireland wins of 1971 and 1972, McGee started withdrawing privileges. For years they had trained in Edenderry and gathered in Larkin’s restaurant near the pitch afterwards to gorge themselves on steaks. With their guts still churning after a relentless night’s training, few plates were ever cleared. From now on, the players would receive a pint of milk. ‘When you get to the stage that you earn something better,’ he said, ‘you’ll get it.’

  ‘My image of Offaly was the same as everyone else’s,’ McGee explained, ‘a rough, tough crowd of footballers. I made it clear from the start we wouldn’t be trying to copy Dublin or Kerry, and that it would be two or three years at least [before the team made progress]. That eased the pressure straight away.’

  In two months’ time they would play Limerick in their first National League game, a world away from the planet they thought they lived on. That winter, the shocking poverty of their plight would be revealed to them. Five months before, Offaly had given McGee a canvas to compose his finest piece of work.

  Now they needed him to sketch out the next chapter.

  2 REVOLUTION

  This McGee business appealed to Richie Connor. He was young and McGee had ideas. Big ideas. He talked about the game differently to anyone Richie had ever heard before. Richie respected McGee for what he had done at UCD even if no one else at home took a moment’s notice. Anyone who was around Dublin playing football, as Richie was, knew the stuff UCD were up to. McGee was an underground hero.

  And he had a nice car.

  As Christmas approached, McGee had been in touch with a coaching friend of his at Arsenal, and was taking a trip over to watch them train. He was going to take the boat, drive his Fiat Mirafiori from Liverpool to London, and use his sister’s flat in Kilburn as a base. Soccer-training manuals dotted his bookshelves at home, and he knew watching Arsenal would be useful in drumming up a few new drills to run in Offaly, but he’d need a player on the panel to sell his ideas. All winter Connor had been open and receptive. Richie had never been outside Ireland before, and the idea of the trip thrilled him. Plus, McGee had that car.

  They met in Dublin and boarded the ferry. McGee pulled out a board game, Scrabble. Connor had never played Scrabble before and muddled through a few rounds. They had a few pints. As they drove off the ferry, McGee looked at the strange city in front of him.

  ‘How the hell are we going to get through this city?’ he said. ‘Do you want to drive?’

  Connor had heard of the motorways in England and his mind’s eye had concocted an image for himself. He imagined zooming through the countryside, plunging his foot down on the accelerator, eating up the open road to London. He thought of the other cars on the road and the chance the motorway would give him to see them at full pelt. He wanted to feel that speed, the kind of kick he couldn’t get nipping around the narrow bog roads that led home to Walsh Island. Whatever about Arsenal and training methods, the Mirafiori was enough reason to come. They swapped seats, and were off.

  After a while, Connor started getting bored. The roads were empty and straight. There were service areas and signposts. True, he could ramp the car up to its maximum speed, but with no chance to slalom in and out of traffic, no chance to propel the car to top speed through wide, sweeping bends, even top speed started to feel slow. After an hour, he settled on making it to London by nightfall.

  The following day, they headed for Highbury. After two years with Offaly, Connor had developed a concept of elite training: tog out, take the field and run to the point of throwing up. There was no science, just vomit.

  Watching the professionals bemused him. They played weekly games, with the occasional midweek match. Their physical training had been done in the month before the beginning of the season. All they were doing now was tipping the ball around. They did a few running exercises. It was harmless, he thought. A child could have done it. For forty-five minutes he watched them, then they headed for the showers. He strolled out to the carpark, trying to pluck up the courage to say hel
lo to David O’Leary or Liam Brady, but instead watched them zoom away in their sportscars. McGee’s Mirafiori was getting dowdier by the minute.

  Meanwhile, McGee was chatting with his friend, taking notes. He was told that all the players did between games was toning and limbering exercises. Too many games were played for anything more strenuous. Gaelic football didn’t have the same span of games as professional soccer, but McGee noted something in the pre-season training plan. The key to summer success, he concluded, was putting the miles in the legs during the winter. He scribbled some notes, and headed home.

  The winter of 1976/77 had been packed with experiments. Some worked, others exploded in their faces. One evening McGee arrived at training with a bundle of tickets for the players to sell. The proceeds would go towards buying a video recorder and camera to film matches for the purposes of analysis. The video recorder was a large, unwieldy box, and the camera was bigger. McGee filmed the team playing, but there were problems. A fog fell across the field during the game. When the tape was replayed, the video was unwatchable. McGee took the big box home and it was never seen again.

  Otherwise, Offaly had wintered well. McGee had begun the difficult business of cutting loose many of the players who had won All-Ireland medals in 1971 and 1972, but promotion back to Division One had almost been secured and a win against Clare in Lahinch would seal matters.