Inside Track: When Micko failed to turn up at St Brigid’s Park

Among the many hundreds of GAA match programmes I have stuffed in a wardrobe is one from a Louth National League match with Kerry, played at St Brigid’s Park in 1965.

The probability is I have more than one copy – I was wearing the Louth No 3 jersey for that game. When the Kerry team was published, it showed Mick O’Dwyer at full-forward.

“He’ll soften your cough,” a sibling said to me sitting around the dinner table at No 21 McDermott’s Terrace, not exactly filling me with confidence.

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(This is an aside, a story I told here before. While walking out the Dowdallshill on the day of the match, a car passed me, driven by Tommy Kelledy. We saluted each other, me – and Tommy the same, I’m sure – mentally wishing him the best of luck.

We had gone to school together in Dundalk CBS and had played on the same school team. But now we were engaged in different games – Tommy was on his way to Oriel Park to play for Dundalk.)

When I got to St Brigid’s, the word was that O’Dwyer wouldn’t be playing. He was injured, and a chap called Liam Higgins was to take his place. I did just alright in a game we should have won, but were beaten by a couple of points.

Fast forward many years to when members of two generations down from me came about the place, young enough to be taken in by what their grandfather would tell them while reminiscing.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I played against Kerry? I was at full-back for Louth, and was supposed to be marking Mick O'Dwyer, who was one of the country's best footballers at the time.

But he didn’t turn up. Seemingly, when told that Louth had this precocious talent at full-back, he said he wouldn’t be travelling all the way up to Dundalk to be exposed by some upstart.”

They took it in, just as they did when I told them I played with Arsenal. Which I did – competing in the Dundalk Schooloboys’ League. They got wiser as they got older, and weren’t easily taken in. I was never told I was a spoofer, but they were probably thinking it.

Mick O’Connell played at midfield that day at St Brigid’s, allowing me to claim that I played against a couple who made it on to the Team of the Millennium, the Kerryman and the great Seán O’Neill.

I have nothing by way of trophies from a 15-year inter-county career, taking in minor, under-21 and senior, but that’s something that meant something to me, lining out against both, with O’Neill in direct opposition.

Mick O’Dwyer, whose death last week at the age of 88 elicited tributes from all parts of the country, had won two of his four All-Irelands as a player by the time the Dowdalshill game came around, both as a half-back. He would collect two more, playing as a corner-forward.

But star-studded as that part of his career was, it was almost insignificant when compared with what he achieved later as a manager.

Eight times he saw his Kerry captain climb the Hogan Stand steps to be presented with the Sam Maguire. It would have been nine had the referee spotted a blatant foul on Tommy Doyle in the dying minutes of the 1982 final, when Kerry were going for a then-record 5-in-a-row.

O’Dwyer brought his managerial talents to other counties, and had success, though nothing compared to what he had achieved in his home county.

In his first spell with Kildare, in the early 1990s, he was on the line for a Leinster Championship match with Louth at Drogheda. Kildare were red hot favourites, but Louth got the verdict with a point to spare, Stefan White coming in with two late goals.

There was a hint White might have got away with a nudge similar to the one Offaly’s Stephen Darby put in on Doyle almost a decade earlier before planting the ball in the net.

But on his visit to the Louth dressingroom afterwards, O’Dwyer was nothing less than gracious. Not a word of rancour, just congratulations all round.

Listening to him that day, you fully understood why there hadn’t been a major Kerry kick-up over the goal that denied his team a place in the record-books, in 1982.