6 days ago
I hurl, therefore I am: Dublin's quiet hurling manager tearing up the script
WHEN NIALL Ó CEALLACHÁIN was 36 years of age, he had a decision to make.
He loved hurling in a way that wasn't fashionable. He had been good enough as a young player to make the very first Dublin Development Squad.
In 2001, he featured alongside Conal Keaney and David 'Dotsy' O'Callaghan on a combined Dublin Colleges team that secured a Leinster SHC 'A' title, beating the famed and fabled St Kieran's Kilkenny in the semi-final before polishing off Wexford's Good Counsel in the final.
At club level, he was a midfield stalwart with Na Fianna, known as 'Nelly' within Na Fianna. The issue was as he was nearing the end of his playing days, there weren't enough Ó Ceallacháin's to go around, says then-manager Declan Feeney.
'He was a real leader on the pitch. Our problem was we hadn't enough hurlers. The reality is we had about 12 on the senior panel. We were struggling to field,' he says.
'Probably had a panel of about 20 but we were running three teams. You had to take the boys from the second and third teams to field. Throw in a couple of injuries and you were in bother.
'You would use junior players on any given day, and give the second and third team walkovers just so we could keep fielding at seniors.'
For such an exacting figure as Ó Ceallacháin, this might have tested his patience.
'It would have been huge. But there was a core of that group that were really dedicated to playing hurling. We just didn't have the numbers around them to support them,' recalls Feeney.
'Everything was about waiting for another year, for the next crew, and hopefully you would get one or two out of them.
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'So, patience was certainly a virtue and he has that in abundance.'
In trying to bundle the next batch of hurlers for Na Fianna, Ó Ceallacháin went mining himself and took teams from U13 to U16.
From that period he polished up the likes of Shane Barrett, Paul O'Dea, Jonathan Treacy, Sean Ryan and Eoin McHugh. He didn't get to keep him with the small ball, but Eoin Murchan showed promise as a hurler. Perhaps his multiple Sam Maguire medals bring some small comfort.
Ó Ceallacháin with Paul O'Dea after winning the All-Ireland club title. Ken Sutton / INPHO Ken Sutton / INPHO / INPHO
As Feeney recalls, they were a funny team by the time they reached U16 level. Around half a dozen players were absolute units and around six foot four inches. There were another half-dozen or so that were tidy stickmen, but just tipping around five foot five inches tall.
But they all could hurl.
Then came The Decision.
When those players came of age, Feeney was finishing up. In his three years in charge – the latest spell having done it a few times before then – they had gone from a team in Senior B to Senior A. He had established the team in that company and they even topped a qualifying group.
Even with a promising team coming, nobody was joining a race to become manager. Ó Ceallacháin took it and was glad of it.
His record there was sensational: a county semi-final in year one. Four consecutive Dublin finals, losing the first two, winning the next two, adding their first Leinster and then All-Ireland titles over last winter.
With such a big prize at stake, Ó Ceallacháin accepted the job of Dublin senior manager in the middle of it all. He was also becoming a father for the first time, himself and Sarah having a little boy Alfie who has been present at a few on-pitch celebrations by now.
Within the Na Fianna chattering classes, despite the prospect of a senior All-Ireland coming to Mobhi Road, there was no surprise at his accepting the senior county hurling manager's job.
'That didn't surprise me at all,' says Feeney.
'It was probably always his ambition at some stage to take Dublin.
'I know when you go back to Anthony Daly's time, Ger Cunningham, Micheál Donoghue, Mattie Kenny, at some stage they were going to have to go for a Dublin manager.
'That would have been my own feeling on it. They needed a Dublin fella to take it.
Niall was flying at the time and he was perfect. You come off winning your second senior championship, you're in a Leinster final, the job presents itself, I would think it would be very hard to say no. It might not be there for you in three or four years' time.'
After a day or two celebrating that famous win over Sarsfields on 19 January, he was straight into the Dublin job, exclusively.
That weekend they put 14 points on Antrim in a game that the Saffrons, under new management of Davy Fitzgerald, had put a red circle around as their first supposed statement of intent.
The Dublin management team celebrate after beating Limerick in the All-Ireland quarter-final. James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
The only games they lost were by a single point to Offaly, and two points away to Waterford.
They reversed that result in the Leinster championship against Offaly, beat Wexford by four, put 15 this time on Antrim in Corrigan Park. Losing the last two group games to Kilkenny (four points) and Galway (five) squeezed them out of the final.
All in, it was solid work for a team that were expected to take their leave once they encountered a genuine Liam MacCarthy contender.
But they tuned up with showing Kildare just how great the gulf is between Joe McDonagh and Liam MacCarthy, before that sensational 2-24 to 0-28 win over Limerick.
In some ways, O'Ceallacháin has been likened to Jim Gavin. For the most part he maintains that inscrutable persona. His post-match interviews leave nothing for the amateur psychologists to gnaw on.
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But he's still able to combust. This is hurling after all, and after Chris Crummy's sending off against Limerick following a collision with Gearoid Hegarty he was in full finger-pointing mode.
'A very deep thinker,' says Feeney about Ó Ceallacháin's personality.
'The game isn't all about hurling a ball, there is so much more to it. He would question what you are doing – not in a nasty way but it would be as much for his own information as it would be for anything else.
'The players in the team have huge time for him. They still have it.
'Is he friends with any of them? I'd say he's friendly with everyone. But not necessarily friends with everybody, which is what you have to do in management.
'He was able to push the right buttons at right times with certain fellas. If the right competition came along, he knew how to put the right fella into the team ahead of someone that might have been there regularly. And then explain to the fella he was leaving out, the reasons for him being left out and how to respond. It was up to them, then.
'Communication is his key.'
It has taken until an All-Ireland semi-final against Cork for the general public to wake up to the Dublin hurling story. Whatever about this weekend, there are a few more chapters coming in good time.
Check out the latest episode of The42′s GAA Weekly podcast here
