The year it all started for Dublin ended against Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final. In the greater scheme of things, the defeat was instructive – maybe not to the same extent as the 2014 ambush by Donegal but more so than the 2012 exit at the hands of Mayo.
Dublin were a project in development, an opportunity that arose from the county’s most recent defeat in Leinster, a five-goal whopping by Meath rendered all the more awkward by the defensive overhaul supposedly being implemented.
The run of matches in the All-Ireland qualifiers knitted the team together and with the bitter disappointment of the semi-final defeat by a Cork side, not playing that well, but on the way to winning the All-Ireland.
It had also been Eoghan O’Gara’s breakthrough championship. A big, traditional full forward – all raw-boned edges and shaven-headed menace – he had graduated from the county’s junior All-Ireland winners in 2008, a downgrade he resented at the time, having been called into the seniors that season.
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On a beautiful June day in Wexford where he now lives, O’Gara is talking to The Irish Times to promote the Beko Club Champion launch, an initiative to reward and celebrate local GAA club heroes – given added currency by his recent transfer to local club Shelmaliers.
Three years since his retirement from intercounty, he remembers the early struggles of getting established when Pat Gilroy took over as manager and politely took advantage of an injury to the player to preach self-improvement.
“He said that he rated me and liked me but there was too much laziness in my play and that I needed to sort that out as well as my shoulder.
“On the road back from the shoulder injury, the number one thing driving me was that he would never question me on that again. In my head I was planning to be the hardest working inside forward. I was no longer going to be a lazy, target-man full forward.”
That is more or less what happened. For a decade, O’Gara was an integral part of the county’s wonder years. He wasn’t always a starter and towards the end wasn’t even always on the match panel but he worked away, accepting the need to subjugate his individual interests to those of the team.
Those in charge noted how hard he strove to make himself two-footed, comfortable off his left.
By the 2010 championship, he was getting tetchy with management over a lack of game time at training, never mind in actual matches. Pat Gilroy and Mickey Whelan counselled patience and told him to wait for the summer and come the qualifiers, he was first choice.
He scored the two goals that did for Louth and added another in the unexpected win over Tyrone in the quarter-final.
The semi-final against Cork started with Bernard Brogan’s goal in the second minute and Dublin led until the 69th when the opposition drew level. They ended up being beaten by a point.
He remembers it all very well, particularly that sense that it is your day and how things can unravel. He played until the 63rd minute but can still feel the atmosphere and how it affected the team.
“One of the things that came up when we analysed performance in later years was nerves and where the mind goes in the last 10 minutes.
“It always comes but you have to be aware as we were in later years when we shut it out. The mind wanders. You start thinking about the All-Ireland final and playing in it, winning it. You start thinking about the team banquet on All-Ireland night. Meanwhile, back on the pitch: Jesus, we haven’t got there yet.
“Be aware. Bring yourself back. We became good at it in later years but that day it was like everyone in the crowd was also thinking that it’s a first All-Ireland final in 15 years! I was on the pitch and you could actually feel it. We’re all thinking it together; it’s like a disease. Cork get a penalty and just kick points. Momentum is such a powerful force.”
Getting there had been a struggle. One of a family of nine children, he was reared in Terenure, South Dublin, and played football for Templeogue-Synge Street where he was mentored by the late Anton O’Toole.
At times an angry young man when he encountered setbacks, he regrets skipping a trial for the Dublin minors because he was playing soccer. After a bit of drift, he found intercounty involvement an anchor. Early indiscipline sorted itself out as he worked on his skills and became less frustrated on the field.
It is noticeable talking to him that the coaches who influenced his entrée to the Dublin scene, Gilroy and Whelan are said – in his opinion – to have liked him or “I had a sense that he liked me”. For a fearsome inside forward, was it important to be liked?
It’s a f***ing chess match now, even at club level.
“I think in your early 20s everyone needs a bit of faith in them. I felt at the time that it was probably the game changer for me – that faith that I could sense coming from Pat and Mickey. It gave me huge confidence and when they started throwing me into significant games, my confidence went to all kinds of new levels.
“That probably says a lot about my confidence growing up. Teenage years I was maybe shy and struggled with self-confidence. Once I was shown a bit of love, I flourished in that environment.”
For the following year’s All-Ireland breakthrough, the main event that weekend was the birth of his and partner Elaine’s daughter, Ella, the Friday before the final with Kerry, leaving him wiped out from lack of sleep.
Pat Gilroy was again generous, reassuring him that he himself had had that experience and that adrenalin would see him through. Although he came on as a sub, he feels it all passed him by a bit.
O’Gara loved the early Jim Gavin style with its out-and-out attacking abandon. In 2013, he missed the early season with injury and was a bench option for that year’s championship.
“As a football player, that’s the way you want to play tactically. It’s not the way it’s been since. It’s a f***ing chess match now, even at club level.”
He emphasised his goal scoring threat by crashing in the coup de grace goal in that year’s resurrection against Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final. As an early replacement in the final, he caused huge problems for Mayo.
“Paul Mannion’s hamstring wasn’t right so I went in after about 15 minutes. I remember being the first man in and we had very good players on the bench. That in itself gave me such a buzz. I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a good place entering the field of play.
“Nerves are generally a good thing in sport. You can channel them to get into the game. I had no nerves that day, which was strange. I was so confident and being the first man into a final is a good feeling.”
Then disaster. He injured his hamstring badly.
“The physio came on and I said, ‘you need to make the change’. I was gone. The manager was in his ear piece and very quickly word came back that we’d no subs left. That was interesting. There was a fair bit left on the clock. If Mayo had copped it, they’d have taken Higgins off me and put him into attack. I just kept him in the corner.
“I was showing for ball so that Mayo would think I was alright. The message didn’t reach a lot of my team-mates in the middle third because Denis Bastick kicked me one and I couldn’t go for it. I was surprised it wasn’t obvious to Higgins that I was f***ed but he wasn’t buying it.”
It’s only on review that you understand how much time he lost to injury. The 2015 season for instance was blanked by a cruciate tear. More conventional challenges followed.
The rising generation of young players plus the hyper adjustment of tactics after the catastrophic Donegal defeat in 2014 – he reckons nothing else in his career was analysed as much – affected his status.
“As the years went by, given the changing personnel and the tactical requirements of each opponent you mightn’t be needed for the next game. The hardest part was that the form was as good as when I had been starting but that same form was no longer good enough to get into a match-day squad. Trying to get the head around that was very difficult.”
Like all committed soldiers he took orders unquestioningly but three years after retirement, he thinks back to a high point in his career and how the management policy of dummy teams impacted on it.
“Very difficult, yeah. That’s what you were told to do; you were on board and that was it. You couldn’t tell friends or family – maybe your wife or partner. The ‘17 All-Ireland final, I knew the week of the game I was starting but the team to the media had me on the bench so my parents didn’t know I was starting until they saw me in the parade. My partner had to confirm, ‘yeah, he’s actually starting’.
“I found that very difficult. Looking back, it was the only All-Ireland final I started and you weren’t properly able to enjoy that side of it. But at the time, no. This is what I was told to do and that was fine with me. At this stage I’m not sure how necessary it was.”
Overall though he has nothing but fond thoughts about the whole experience and the impact on his life.
“Grateful and lucky. I have a bag of memories. All those people are still very close friends and what I learned and experienced along the way transferred into life. Park the disappointments over selection and those things. I spent 10 or 11 years with a county team that was dominating football.
“It opened so many doors and gave me so many tools. I don’t know where life would have gone if I hadn’t got on that train.”
