Interview Dara Ó CinnéideHe has three All-Ireland medals, he spent 10 years as an indispensable part of a great team, and he's only 30. So Keith Duggan asks why he is retiring
"I was over in an uncle's house for the Darby goal. Because he had a colour television." - Dara Ó Cinnéide, January 2006.
THERE wasn't supposed to be any announcement. Dara Ó Cinnéide would have been happy to melt into the afterlife of Kerry football, content with the memories of 13 years of consistent and sometimes brilliant marksmanship for the standard-bearers of Gaelic football. He would have preferred no salutes, but instead to stay quiet until April, when the Kingdom's fixation with the All-Ireland championship intensifies and his absence, his retirement, his not being there, would have been just one of the hundred fascinations to oil the pub talk.
"Except my own crowd got wind of it," he laughs ruefully, referring to his colleagues at Radio na Gaeltachta.
Ó Cinnéide is brewing tea in the canteen of the Irish-language station in Baile na nGall. His work place is on the very edge of the Dingle peninsula, a disquietingly beautiful coastal village that was on this Wednesday afternoon bashed by Atlantic waves and shrouded in a low mist. He left the teabag in the mug and apologised that there was "nothing fancy" to go with it.
"They twisted my arm a small bit, saying it would look odd if people heard it on somewhere else first. Yerra, it's a quiet time of year and they wanted a bit of a story."
At 30 years of age, Ó Cinnéide bows out of the Kerry scene with three All-Ireland medals (it might have been five), a remarkable achievement in the modern game. His staying power, though, is the true testament of his worth. From 1995, Ó Cinnéide managed to take veritable ownership of a starting slot in the most competitive and heavily scrutinised forward lines in the modern game.
When his county career began, on a miserable training afternoon in September 1993, Kerry football had fallen into a black hole. He still remembers the strangeness of exiting the championship in June of 1994: that nobody seemed too bothered.
"The World Cup was on and it was scorching and everyone was talking about Ireland playing Norway. I was just saying to myself that this is bullshit."
He survived those traumatic years of culling and quitting and thrived under the revival pioneered by Páidí Ó Sé.
"We laughed at the time, but I always remembering Páidí promising to put the spirituality back in Kerry football. And you know, he did too."
He featured prominently in the shining games of the last decade: the magnificent Galway-Kerry finals of 2000, the Armagh rebellion of September 2002 and the infamous semi-final of 2003 when Tyrone tossed a gilded generation of Kerry footballers around Croke Park as though they were drunks at a céilí.
He leaves the game at a riveting time, with a Northern revival bordering on the supremacist and Kerry, through no fault of their own, regarded as the Empire, the force to knock and keep knocking.
He was half surprised in October to discover that the yearning to play for Kerry had somehow deserted him, stolen away in the night. But he is fully happy with his decision.
"Immediately after the All-Ireland-final, I felt I couldn't wait to get another crack at Armagh or Tyrone. But that was just a knee-jerk reaction. We started back in October, just one night a week. And it was just myself and Darragh Ó Sé from the old guard. And in the dressing-room, we'd be muttering, who's that over there, who's yer man? And on the field, these lads were buzzing around the place. Serious enthusiasm, now. And I just didn't have it.
"Then St Senan's (of Clare) beat An Gaeltacht in the club championship and we just weren't the team we had been.
"To top it all off, we were in a west Kerry final in December and it was called off the Wednesday beforehand because the opposing team had a wedding. And I had my holidays booked for the following week. Like, I booked for December 12th thinking, no matter what, I'll be covered here. So I just got sick of football. You can't live your whole life around it. I had to put back my marriage three times because of it.
"It was a combination of things. But mainly, I felt I just didn't have what it took to play for Kerry in 2006."
It is a brave admission. Ó Cinnéide is under no illusions: he does not believe he will be mourned for too long. He can list five young players off the top of his head with extravagant talent and dedication, the full package.
"I promise you, three more Kerry players could retire tomorrow and there wouldn't be a problem."
That makes his decade-long record in the green and gold hoops seem all the more glittering. Ó Cinnéide did not possess the idiosyncratic genius of Maurice Fitzgerald, was never quite the cult hero Johnny Crowley was and did not seduce the seen-that-done-that Kerry football public as easily as Gooch, as Mike Frank or as Darren O'Sullivan, the latest flame. But he was a hell of a football player: smart, calm, efficient and ultra-reliable with free-kicks, the bread-and-butter ritual where modern games are won and lost. He had that rarest of qualities for a Kerry footballer: he was indispensable.
And that was like a stick to beat him with. "Sure, they have to pick you," he has been told a million times, "for the frees."
Ó Cinnéide laughs as he repeats the mantra. "Like, what do you say to that? Thanks?"
He promised himself after winning his first All-Ireland in 1997 not to care what anyone said to him or about him since. The Kerry football public are both wonderful and tough. After 2004, in particular, he received many kind letters and emails that touched him. Other times, he just got abuse. He learned to ignore it. A couple of years back, in a newspaper interview, he got talking about cinema, one of his passions.
He was mainly interested in trying to avoid talking about Limerick, their opponents in the Munster championship. He volunteered that his all-time favourite film was the 1945 French classic Les Enfants du Paradis. That Sunday, against Limerick, he turned a relatively easy free wide in the first 10 minutes.
"My girlfriend, Jean, was in the stands and this Kerry guy stood up, raging, and bellowed: 'If you spent less time watching your feckin Indie movies and more time practising your frees, we might be all right.' You can't win. But the good thing was that a film student in Leicester happened to read that article and sent me over a copy of the film."
It remains his favourite. But the story illuminates the central truth - the curse, in a way - of becoming a Kerry footballer. Expectations are endlessly and dauntingly high. The culture and tradition of the Kingdom's game is such that it is not the victories that are remembered so much as the defeats. In many counties, Ó Cinnéide's talent and medal haul would immortalise him absolutely. But in Kerry, he sits in the respectable mid-table of All-Ireland medal hauls and joins the considerable pantheon of former players that can reasonably be called greats, if not quite gods.
I ask Ó Cinnéide if he ever wondered what it would be like to play for a county in its first All-Ireland or in a place with no medals at all.
"I have an idea of the mentality," he says. "Like, last September, after the final whistle, you could see just the instinct and need of the Tyrone supporters to get out on that field. And it is . . . intimidating. When Kerry wins the All-Ireland, the lads will smoke a fag. 'Will we go out on the field or not?' Suppose we better hang around for the oul' speech'. And it's great in a way, because it keeps you on an even keel."
The thrill, he says, comes from the actual games. After the classic 2000 final against Galway, the team made it out to Baile na nGall a few nights later. Dr Jim Brosnan, son of Con and former chairman of the county board, greeted him.
"And Dr Jim has two All-Ireland medals himself - sure, everyone has medals around here. He noticed I was a bit subdued. I was just wrecked, to be honest. He said to me 'You're like any player - after the game is a bit of an anti-climax'. And he was right. It's the 70 minutes that you do it for. Like trying out a free with a certain part of the boot and for it to work out on a big day, that is the thrill that stays with you."
He did not obsess about Kerry football in his childhood. The myth that Kerry stars are inculcated with stories of Con Brosnan and Mick O'Connell is off the mark. In fact, many of the Gaeltacht kids of his generation - the mid-1980s - scribbled the names of the Liverpool FC players on their schoolbags. They did not receive BBC or see many games, other than the goals on the news. But in winter, it was Liverpool.
The Ó Cinnéide home is in the shadows of Mount Brandon and the family have been there for more generations than are recorded. Gaelic football was the summer pursuit, beloved to them all and part of them, like Irish and the stark, natural beauty of the place.
Emigration shaped the area in his teenage years. Soon, his brother will come home from Chicago for the first time in 10 years.
Dara reckons he will be stunned by the changes: the summer chateaus, the symbols of opulence. It is a dramatic leap from the 20 some years since the Ó Cinnéide lads gathered around their uncle's colour Hitachi to watch Offaly versus Kerry in 1982. In his 20s, as Gaelic football became the still point of his life and as he became accustomed to the strange sort of fame bestowed on GAA stars, and as his work as a broadcaster developed, the speed at which the old ways were being left behind struck him.
"My grandfathers were fishermen. Mackerel and pots, just for local consumption. That generation were, and are, I think, seriously thoughtful and broad-minded, tolerant people. And they would be the first to say life is better now. But sometimes you have this romantic notion that you want to go back to setting spuds and cutting turf. Which we still do, thanks be to God. But like, I am a hazard on the sea.
"The great thing is that you can still find a lot of the characters in the pubs. Talk to you about anything. People come here looking for a quaint kind of version of Ireland. And it can still be found. You will find people who can talk to you about Peig Sayers if you want. But they'll talk to you about Dostoevsky just as quick."
Ó Cinnéide makes no secret that he loves the Gaeltacht and believes in its separateness, its sacredness.
On the entrance to Dingle, the placename An Daingean has been spray-painted over by the English equivalent. The debate makes him very animated.
"You'd have heavy talks with good friends about it. The shame is it is getting personalised now. I suppose I feel Dingle either wants to be considered part of the Gaeltacht or it doesn't. Like, the name Dingle is historically sound. And when I talk in English, I call it Dingle. But that means nothing to me. It's like, this place is called Ballydavid. But it's Baile na nGall. In my mind, Ballydavid doesn't exist."
He sighs. He knows that when the primroses blossom and the ocean calms and the scents of summer football fill the air, then not playing for Kerry will hit him. But he will live with it.
For the record, Maurice, of course, is the best he played with or against. His favourite Maurice memory is of a league game in 1993, a rainy relegation game when Jack O'Shea was managing Mayo. Fitzgerald got the ball late on, was pushed in the back and stumbling, but chipped the goalkeeper so the ball landed dead in the mud and trickled over the line. Ó Cinnéide stood there star-struck while Maurice ambled away in the drizzle, looking troubled.
"I remember Con Houlihan writing about the difference between JPR Williams and Gareth Edwards. And it was about flair against consistency. Maurice had bad games, but when he was good, he went so bloody high nobody could touch him. And yet, when Kerry played bad, nobody got it worse than Maurice. I used to cringe in the stands: 'Ya yella-legged bastard', all that. Terrible stuff. And he used to hold the ball too, which is against the Kerry ideal of catch and kick. But his class told. After 1997, he was a cult hero, and then it went the other way. If we won, it was because Maurice was there, and if we lost, it was because he wasn't. It was hard for all of us to take at times."
Perhaps that is why Fitzgerald retired with his glorious talents still intact?
"No, see, Maurice never retired," Ó Cinnéide corrects with a laugh. "Guarantee, if Kerry struggle this year, there will still be calls to bring him back."
He roars at the notion. In reality, he expects Kerry to challenge strongly this year. The one consolation of his last game being as captain in an All-Ireland final was that his team lost to great opponents in Tyrone.
"Though I wish Tyrone supporters would lose this notion we don't respect them. There is no animosity there. Like, you hate losing. In 2003, I didn't like the way Tyrone played, but it was a winning brand. But I like the way they play now. A class team.
"And they have the chance to win a back-to-back All-Ireland. It's like the old wars, when you defend a fort. Armagh came close. We came close. God, it would have been glorious. And if Tyrone manage it, hats off. History says they won't. And I think they will come close but not quite. It might be the final."
By then, Ó Cinnéide will be another illustrious Kerry face in the crowd. He had a last burn-out with the team in New York last October, when the city was at its most magical. They found this bar, Bua, with great tunes and had too many late nights. It was fun. It was like the old days. It was a good way to say goodbye.
Ó Cinnéide reckons he will keep busy with his work and with the Gaeltacht team. He and Jean are getting married, finally. On winter Tuesdays, there is a good film club in Dingle, which tormented him by showing quality movies for the 10 years he was driving over the peninsula for Kerry training. When he wants to escape for a few hours, there is always the splendid isolation of Brandon, where you can walk for hours without encountering another living soul.
"It's just the next phase," shrugs this true Kerryman. "And I suppose, like Jake LaMotta, we'll be getting fat."
