THE action in Omagh, feisty as ever, had reached an apex of sorts when Radio Kerry listeners sat up in the kitchen, sensing events were about to undergo a startling transformation.
“I think I’m being bullied here in Tyrone,” said Gneeveguilla’s finest, Ambrose O’Donovan, his face reddening.
“They absolutely love us up here,” countered lead play-caller Tim Moynihan, reaching for a morsel of diplomacy in the face of mounting angst.
“Speak for yourself, my lovely boy. The game is back on here again.”
“Ambrose, we have to be very careful about what we say.”
“We don’t have to be careful at all. Careful is one thing we won’t be.”
In the closing minutes, the scoreline stood Tyrone 1-13 to Kerry’s 2-9 but in the commentary position, things were just kicking off.
“Someone would want to tell them it is a League match. There’s a big fella here with a cap and he would want to sit down. I am getting a small bit sick of having him in my face now….
“Timmy…”, an exasperated Ambrose finally advised his co-commentator – and the population of the south-west at large – “I might have to take off the microphone here for a few minutes. So if I’m missing, you’ll know where I am…”
That was last March. This is now.
“This big yoke perched himself down alongside me,” Ambrose explains from the safety of his front room on Killarney’s Lewis Road, a kick out from the front gates of Fitzgerald Stadium.
“He must have nudged Des Crowe, the referee’s assessor, out of the way because Des was sitting there. He started banging the table. ‘F**k Radio Kerry, who do ye think ye are coming up here to Healy Park?’ It went on like that for a bit and there was a cop there and he didn’t seem too bothered.
“I showed our Tyrone friend the mic and told him where it would be shoved (“he could be swallowing a Radio Kerry microphone here in a minute,” he told listeners at home). Eventually – and I mean eventually – the cop removed him and started telling me he was so and so. ‘I don’t give a f*ck if he’s the Pope, we are doing a live commentary here’. I turned back and started using the mic for its rightful purpose.”
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On Saturday, Timmy and Ambrose, the station’s midfield pairing, will again point their Radio Kerry bus north and gird themselves for Tyrone, fortified by a bulging breakfast roll in the café at Smithfield Service station between Croagh and Adare in Limerick. Ambrose might garnish it with a bag of Onion Rings and a Mars Bar. The chances of being poked in the ribs by a Tyrone agent provocateur are less than likely on the seventh floor of the Hogan Stand in Croke Park but that’s not to say Tyrone won’t get under Kerry’s skin again.
Before Kerry fell frustratingly to Tyrone in the covid-delayed All-Ireland semi-final two years ago, Ambrose offered Kieran Shannon of this parish a prescient foretaste of the game and the irrelevance of Kerry’s League semi-final humbling of Logan, Dooher et al in Killarney that spring.
“This is a very dangerous game for Kerry. I’d read nothing at all into the league semi-final. Tyrone would have preferred not to have got a hammering but they primarily came down to Kerry that weekend for a training camp or bonding session or whatever buzzword you want to give it. In my time we called it a piss-up. Whatever the Tyrone boys called it, or did that weekend, they stayed down in Killarney that Saturday night and have been the better and closer for it.
“They can smell an All-Ireland. Dublin are out of it now and all three teams, Tyrone as much as anyone else, will figure they have a great chance of winning an All-Ireland, which is a huge incentive.”
Events at Healy Park last spring have only served to heighten O’Donovan’s wariness of the Red Hand.
“There’s more than a sting there between them at this stage. What went on during and after the match… David Clifford is a genuine sportsman, but he would not shake yer man’s hand afterwards. They work on it, they’re nasty.
“This game Saturday will be difficult to commentate on because Tyrone will sit in and do the sort of stuff that will mean you have to bite your tongue because you don’t want to be upsetting people who can’t see the game either. There’s a pile of stuff off the ball. Tyrone have that siege mentality and, in fairness, it serves them well. They beat us every which way that day in Healy Park.
“We are depending an awful lot on the two Cliffords. Diarmuid O’Connor, Jack Barry, these lads have to put in a huge seventy. Sean O’Shea is looking good again but that was Louth the last day, with respect. The defence is the real key because, ultimately, they are facing four of the best forwards in the country on Saturday, the two Canavans, Donnelly, McCurry. And while defending is a collective thing now, you have to be able to win your one v ones. There’s still a hang-up about Tyrone. The truth is most times they have asked a question of Kerry, we have not answered them too well.”
It’s not that Ambrose O’Donovan liked football better back then. More that he’s the old school they knocked to build the old school. He likes his defenders to win their duels, is non-plussed by coaching ‘innovations’ that place fourteen men behind opposition ball, and wants his midfielders, at the very least, to deny primary possession to the opposition if he can’t win it himself. Alongside the effervescence of Tim Moynihan, it makes for a heady cocktail of passion, pragmatism and principles.
Each time he puts down his mic, O’Donovan interrogates his opinions to make sure they’re good to stand over. Then he wades in with the fans, especially on away trips, on the good and bad of Kerry’s performance. There might even be time for a swift one. And a tune.
“I’m happy once I’m honest and I’m not trying to cod fellas. The one thing about Kerry people and football is there is no two of us going to agree afterwards. We all have our own ideas. I get a great kick out of the commentaries and the hop balls. Friends tell me it’s sometimes like a Hospital Request show but I do it on purpose, I’d be playing requests for fellas that aren’t in hospital at all. I said one day we are huge in Dubai. Are we, asked Timmy?
“The biggest fear I have is bad language, if it gets cross on Saturday, and stuff is going on off the ball, I find it hard to button it. What went on above in Healy Park was nasty. But all is fair in love and war, they say. Tyrone would be confident about beating Kerry.”
O’Donovan is long enough taking the pulse of the Kerry proletariat to notice a sea-change in the attitude towards their players and team. “The one thing about this current generation of support in Kerry is that they are deadly loyal to the cause. I think it might be down, at its core, to the Kerry Supporters Club buses that go to every venue. They are first in, and they have their spot in the middle of the stand, and they support the team through thick and thin… maybe that culture has spread out around them to the rest of the county because there is a lot of backing there. There was a fine-sized travelling crowd in Portlaoise now for the Louth game. I meet them in every nook and cranny and they are desperately loyal. They go to the hotels together, they eat together. And they believe the team are with them too. The relationship has after changing.”
They will scan Saturday’s papers and the snipers on social media and regurgitate the breakfast roll with the chat from Jimmy Briens this week before landing on Jones’ Road for lunchtime. They are on first-name terms with the gatekeepers like they are with the narrative around the Kingdom. Any walk down Lewis Road in Killarney tells O’Donovan much the same thing.
“What we haven’t met this year is the pace of this forward line. You’d be worried about what the Canavans could do to a couple of our corner-backs. Tom O’Sullivan is great going forward, I am not sure how strong he is as a pure defender. And these guys could tattoo you. Jason Foley and Tadhg Morley, Mike Breen too, they have that ability to go one-on-one defending against a forward and deal with the threat. Not so sure about some of the others though. Is it alright these days for a corner-back to score 0-2 if there’s 1-6 scored off him? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to answer that. Jack is cute enough though, and he has seen what happened in Croke Park last year to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
He reckons it’s 18 years since the late Liam Higgins called to him one Sunday for help and insight on an East Kerry Championship game between Rosie’s Gneeveguilla and Kilcummin. By the laws vested in Harty’s Bar in Tralee – no less than five All-Ireland medals – O’Donovan doesn’t qualify as a Kerry legend. But this generation of supporter would do well to recognise that the blue-collar midfielder was a three-year Kerry minor and anchored Kerry’s All-Ireland three in a row from 1984, when he was captain in the GAA’s Centenary year, to 1986. After the break-up of Dwyer’s golden generation, he hung in there for another seven campaigns. These were, by Kingdom metrics, tough famine years. So he’s more than earned the right to share his vox populi by way of earthy analysis.
“I used to listen to Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh when I was a young fella, he’d have the game inside in your sitting room and I’d be trying to do the same. People at home can’t see the switches during a game. There are two teams playing, not just Kerry, though some teams don’t try to play too much nowadays. I could watch Dublin all day, the same with Galway but it’s been hard to watch the last two years, and harder to commentate on it. Thirteen, fourteen men behind the ball. €25 to get into Kerry-Louth in Portlaoise. You won’t get too many people paying that if the GAA doesn’t address the basic fare on offer.
“You must be fair to every player. They are professional in all but name but they’ve jobs and lives outside the GAA. But you would be unfair to them by not giving it straight either. Statisticians mask issues with numbers. ‘Oh but he had 65 possessions…he might have been passing the ball back to the keeper or across his own full-back line for a dozen of those.”
He’s 61 now and might look at retiring from the ESB next year or even the after. He made his senior debut for Gneeveguilla in Moyvane when he was 15. There are places you don’t want to be travelling to play ball as a young fella in Kerry, and Moyvane is one of them. The middle-east isn’t the only place they lop off heads. Gneeveguilla itself isn’t best known to visitors as a hospitable port in a storm either. I tell Ambrose of the day an umpire behind Charlie Nelligan’s goal started flaking the Kerry goalkeeper with the stick and flag when all hell broke loose during a County League game against Castleisland Desmonds. It made the front page of ‘The Kingdom’ a couple of days later. Charlie wasn’t too happy with the author either.
“That was Thadie Leary,” Ambrose gushes, his generous frame heaving at the forgotten fun of it all. “He got a life ban for that, I think. The pitch in Gneeveguilla is named after his brother, Patrick O’Leary Memorial Park. Most of the time when I was younger on the forty, I had my brothers Neilie on one side and Mossie on the other. John came on a couple of years after.”
By the time he made Kerry minor in 1978, he was a man-child. Like Davy Keane from Kerins O’Rahillys (the best minor he played with, Rosie reckons), he was a three-year minor with the county. Moments still race across him now. Clinging a last-minute Munster final equalising goal in 1979 past Cork’s Ger Cunningham (yes!), ‘not burning a ball’ in that year’s final, winning it in 1980 against Damien Barton and Derry, running up against the Dubs, as he would, with PJ Buckley, John O’Leary, Kieran Duff, Barney Rock.
“We cut turf at home, saved hay, piked bales, all manual work. And I was working with a builder for the summer holidays, drawing blocks. Mossie and Neilie were older, John was the younger brother. Tooreencahill National School was like a crucible, a football match there every night. The Murphys – Dapper, Denis, Michael, Neilie – they grew up with us, Timmy Leary was playing with Knocknagree, and he used to come back to us as well. We’d have right clipping.”
Gneeveguilla won an East Kerry (O’Donoghue Cup) championship in 1983 and with a Killarney combination of Spa-Legion under Tommy ‘Bracker’ Regan winning the county championship, O’Donovan found himself Kerry skipper in his formative year with the seniors. 1984 wasn’t just the GAA’s centenary All-Ireland, it was the first leg of Dwyer’s farewell tour.
“Training was cruel in ‘84. After what happened in 1982 and 1983 (he was on the bench for Tadghie Murphy’s dagger at the Páirc), every Kerry player tuned in for one last run at it in Centenary year. Bomber, Ogie, Sheehy, Doyle, we all trained deadly hard. I did nights on my own, and I never did any other year. There were days after it I couldn’t put my legs under me.
“There’s one great feeling – when you have that level of fitness, it’s lovely to go training. We’d the stamina work done in February and March, so come June it was the short, jabby stuff. We still did the full length sprints of the field, I won two of them one night, which would be unusual for me.
“I went all the way on to 1992 and 1993. One or two games in that period left a taste in my mouth. In the All-Ireland semi-final in 1991, people say Down beat us well. With seven minutes to go, we were level pegging, Jacko hit the crossbar, Timmy Fleming hit the crossbar, Pa Dennehy hit the post. I think we missed a penalty too. There’s no doubt that 1987-97 was a bad era for football in Kerry but that was the one year we could have won it.”
He said he was ‘dropped’ for the Clare Munster final debacle in 1992 before offering some interesting context on that fateful day in Killarney.
“For the two weeks before that game, we played A v B games on Tuesday and Thursday. Of both weeks. Maurice (Fitzgerald) was after kicking 4-20 off some lad, I was sick shit of Noel O’Leary from the Crokes. The players were saying A v Bs were no good at that stage, and I said it to Mickey Ned, as one of the senior players, but he didn’t think it was the boys’ place to be chipping in at that stage. I told him ‘you’re training us for Dublin (in the semi-final), but we’re playing Clare in a Munster final next Sunday. That’s our priority! Seamus Moynihan was around 18 and made his debut against Tom Morrissey from Cooraclare, a tank of a man. It all went pear-shaped but I’m convinced we had our eye on the wrong ball.”
O’Donovan was the water-carrying No 9 to Jack O’Shea in the way that Donal Daly, William Kirby, Seamus Scanlon, and even Tommy Griffin and Anthony Maher were after him to Darragh Ó Se. He knew his limitations and understood the primacy of minding the house. “The best of them all? Jack O’Shea would be high up there. When he pushed on, he invariably made something happen. Ger Lynch was a fine player, if under-rated, same with Tommy Doyle. Tommy Spillane too. He was dropped for the minor final the year we won it (1980) by Tom Prendergast – Liam Kerins was picked ahead of him. Funny that only Chimpy (Spillane) and myself really came through those minor teams to play regularly for Kerry.”
It wasn’t a Kerry side credited enough for its ability to mix velvet glove with a steel fist, but Ambrose nominates a surprise wing-man to walk down the rough edges of town with.
“Ger Power is the man I’d want beside me. Every time. We played Offaly in Tullamore after the 1982 All-Ireland final in a League match. The ground was sold out, a full house. Dwyer went white before the game and his false teeth fell out giving the speech. He was trembling with temper. Charlie Conroy pulled on me, and Powery came up and busted him with an elbow. Same against Cork, Power would always have your back. He’d be in your corner.
“Teddy McCarthy – God rest him – done me one year in Pairc Ui Chaoimh. He apologised years after. I was laid out. If Power was around that wouldn’t happen.”
And what of the friendly neighbours across the county bounds, who make their own return to Croke Park for a quarter-final with Ulster champion Derry on Sunday?
“Still to this day, Cork hate the sight of us. Knocknagree is bad now, Cullen and Ballydesmond too. If Kerry were winning the All-Ireland, they’d turn the televisions off. I’d be talking here about the fellas my age, but I’m not so sure the next generation is a whole lot better.
“John Cleary, if given time, will bring Cork on. They need guidance and a bit more guile. The footballers have to be there. I saw a couple of their minors this year, the centre and full-forward, Sheehy and Coakley. Good players. What happened them in the minor championship quarter-final against Dublin in Nowlan Park was sinful. A frightful game to lose.
“Cleary and Kevin Walsh seem to be blending them into a team. They’ll go to the well for each other. What I liked about that Kerry group in 1984 is that once you got into the squad, you were part of it, they were a real team. And anyone who was getting above himself would be brought down to size fairly quickly. I could buy into that. I came from an ordinary country home, and a football house. Gneeveguilla is a good club, they looked after us. There were four sets of brothers – the McCarthys, Moynihans, the Murphys and ourselves, we were fierce close. You need that. We always boxed above our weight.”
He’s been doing that a while.
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