THE great and the very good of Kerry football gathered last week to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their coming of age \u2014 when football\u2019s \u2018golden years\u2019 begun in 1975.<\/p>\n
Over the next 11 years, Kerry would win eight Sam Maguires, and notoriously denied a ninth and the five in a row by a last minute Seamus Darby goal for Offaly in the 1982 decider at Croke Park.<\/p>\n
The occasion was a Gleneagle Hotel fund-raiser for Kerry\u2019s Centre of Excellence at Currans, and the players of the golden years were formally recognised.<\/p>\n
Chairperson of organising committee John O\u2019Dwyer \u2014 fittingly son of the late Kerry manager Mick O\u2019Dwyer \u2014 explained: \u201cEarlier in the year, the minor team celebrated the 50 years, so it kind of emanated as a seed in [chairperson] Patrick O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s brain that we should do something to reflect the past, celebrate the present, and look forward to the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope to raise a few euros as well for development in Currans, and also to celebrate the few that are still around. We\u2019re missing a few \u2014 P\u00e1id\u00ed O S\u00e9, Tim Kennelly, and John Egan \u2014 who have passed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fighting fit however was \u2018the prince of fullbacks\u2019 John O\u2019Keeffe, who reflected on the 1975 triumph against all the odds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say the youth of the team was important,\u201d he said. \u201cI had played with the team of the 60s and early 70s, and was that bit older than most of lads. This was a complete new influx of young players. I suppose the vitality they brought to the whole scene. And the enjoyment as well, that we had in training and with Micko directing affairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it ever came into our conscience that we were going to win an All-Ireland. I think we were just beginning to get a team together and just let it happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a while, I think people realised, we realised ourselves that there was a lot of talent in that panel.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd at that stage, I think the most important game for us really would have been the Munster final against Cork, who had beaten us quite regularly, just up to 1975. And little did we know that we were going to turn them over in that fashion in Killarney that summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven after that, I think we didn\u2019t really know if we would be good enough. We never really discussed All-Ireland at that stage even. It was because everything was quite new to that squad. And apart from Brendan Lynch and me, all the others were new to the scene.\u201d<\/p>\n
On O\u2019Dwyer, Johnno reflected: \u201cI felt with Micko, we felt very self-assured I think with Micko. Because we knew that he had been an outstanding player himself and I knew him quite well. And any ideas he brought to the training sessions, we totally bought into them. Everyone felt like this was the right direction to go in.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it was quite obvious at that stage that Micko, I think he felt that I have a lot of talent here. These are really skilful players, so let\u2019s get them fit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he heard on the grapevine that there was a lot of physical work going on in Dublin as well by Heffo. So Micko, I think he said, \u2018look, if we want to match Dublin, we have to be as fit as them\u2019. And at that stage, Dublin were four or five years ahead of us in maturity. So strength wise and fitness wise, he realised that we need to get up to that mark to compete with them. We all bought into that idea without a problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then it became obvious, because we used to play a lot of backs versus forwards in training. And the fact that we as backs had to match up with an outstanding forward line brought us on. But I think it brought the forwards on as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Keeffe felt that 1975 win over the Dubs laid the foundations for the glory years that followed: \u201cThe win did a lot for us, even though the average age of the team was quite young. Maybe we weren\u2019t mature enough to realise that this was not going to happen. We\u2019re not going to turn teams over that easily.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just seemed to come together very easily for us in 1975 for some reason. But it\u2019s so difficult to replicate it. I think we got our lessons in 1976, 1977. But the team was so young that there was time for maturity. There was no doubting the talent in the team; it was just a matter of putting it together. And Micko was the right person at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is well remembered that a move against O\u2019Dwyer was barely suppressed after the 1977 semi-final defeat to the Dubs.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, there was definitely no player unrest,\u201d O\u2019Keeffe stresses. \u201cI think looking back, we didn\u2019t realise there was that type of pressure on Micko at that point. We had total confidence in him. And I think [chairperson] Gerald McKenna really grasped that as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no doubt that we would have been very disappointed if Micko was ousted at that stage. We had no inkling that was happening in the background.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was one thing about Mick O\u2019Dwyer; we did an awful lot of kicking, just accurate kicking. In between hard runs or even in the warm-ups and that, there was always about 15-20 minutes kicking, catching, kicking, unopposed. Huge emphasis on finding your man and that with 30-40 yard kicks. And that\u2019s what you need in the modern game as well, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE great and the very good of Kerry football gathered last week to celebrate the 50th anniversary of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1965,1128,61,60,43,850],"class_list":["post-188783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-hurling","tag-football","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}