Kennedy’s key role in Dubs re-emergence as superpower

THE Sperrin Mountains – a remote sort of place even by the standards of rural Ireland. It’s also where Michael Kennedy spent his childhood and early adult years before picking up sticks and moving to Dublin.

The Glenelly and Tyrone native probably didn’t envision at that stage that he would play his part in Dublin’s re-emergence as a footballing superpower. Eight All-Ireland titles in the course of a decade marked a stratospheric upturn in fortunes for a county that had previously failed to deliver when the heat was on against the Tyrone and Kerrys of this world.

Kennedy’s own involvement in the Blue Wave didn’t come about by accident: his input behind the scenes helped St Vincent’s to an All-Ireland Senior Club Championship in 2008. Starting members on that team included an 18-year old Diarmuid Connolly, Ger Brennan, Mossy Quinn and a certain Pat Gilroy in a full-forward berth. A few months later Gilroy was drafted in as Dublin senior intercounty manager and Kennedy was brought on board as the Head of Performance Analysis. Carry that thread through to their breakthrough 2011 success and you get the picture.

He wasn’t just a Pat Gilroy man. Kennedy was also taken under Jim Gavin’s wing. Head of Performance Analysis for their All-Ireland U21 win in 2010, Kennedy became even more embedded with his new role as coach/selector of the team that won a second U21 crown in 2012 before another senior triumph in 2013.

While the full story of Dublin’s period of almost total dominance is yet to be fully unveiled, Kennedy is keen to press home the point that the backroom team and players were the key ingredients in the overall success of the operation. Indeed, one of Mickey Harte’s trusted lieutenants – video analyst Peter Quinlivan – even gets credited as a surprisingly significant factor in Dublin’s success.

Kennedy, who recently stepped down as the long-standing Head of Gaelic Games at Dublin City University (DCU) on health grounds, said: “The people really deserving of tribute are the players and backroom teams.

“While I don’t know the current backroom team, Dublin has always had the very best in their field, equal to anybody working in any sport. Their sports scientists, the analysts, nutritionists, strength and conditioning coaches, physios, and medical doctors, which ironically includes my own consultant, professor Diarmuid Smyth, are all world class in their field.

“When I came in, one of my roles was looking at best practice. Essentially that meant I looked at the software used by top level professional teams at international and club level.

“I worked with Celtic, the FAI, the AFL and the Irish and Leinster rugby team and through that Dublin became the first GAA team to install Sportscode as our software. We were replicating what all those professional teams were doing.

“Dublin’s analysis set-up was a match for anything I’ve experienced on a professional level. The level of detail that Dublin went into even as far back as 2009 and 2010 was off the charts. I’d attribute a lot of Dublin’s success to their ability to almost paralyse the opposition, they have it down to a fine art.”

He continued: “Strangely enough, the background of all this was Peter Quinlivan. He was Mickey Harte’s analyst and lives near Garvaghey. He was Mickey’s right-hand man for his entire tenure at Tyrone.

“When I was involved with St Vincents, I set about meeting Peter in Garvaghey. He went into massive detail in terms of showing me what levels we needed to reach in order to be the best club team.

“I brought it back to the likes of Diarmuid Connolly and Ger Brennan, all those top players could now see how they could go out and beat the likes of Nemo Rangers and Crossmaglen. The red and white of Tyrone filtered down to St Vincent’s and right through to the Dublin seniors. The standards Tyrone set at that time were replicated by Dublin.”

Warming to the theme, Kennedy explains that Tyrone were by far the greatest influence on the success-starved Dubliners.

“You’ve no idea. The respect they had for Tyrone was just phenomenal. They saw Tyrone as the benchmark. They knew if they couldn’t get to the same standards set by Tyrone, they were never going to be successful. The first seeds of that was meeting Peter in Kelly’s Inn on that journey to winning the All-Ireland Club title. Little did Peter know at that time the path I would take with the Dublin senior footballers. All those cultures and values of detailed analysis and standards – tackle counts, turnovers, free conceded and high-level performance indicators like that, were brought into Dublin.

“The Dublin players preferred to stay overnight when they came up to play Tyrone in certain league games. They trained at the local GAA clubs, they had kickabouts with the local kids. There was always a massive respect for Tyrone and what they had achieved. Dublin effectively had to become Tyrone in order to win All-Ireland titles.

“We referred to it as an EARN culture. I’m not going to tell you what’s in that, but it refers to the standards set by the Dublin players and managers. We also had what’s called ‘train to play’ – where we replicated what we would bring to a match-day situation and that was very important to us.