Gooch Retires

[Il Bomber Destro]

An absolutely outstanding footballer who played football the way it should be played. He even retired with a touch of class.

Compare his retirement to Sean cavanagh's retirement last year. Sent off, the tears, the complaining and the general cheating. Oh, that's right, he didn't retire after all.

Compare Cavanagh taking the Ulster final by the scruff of the neck and bringing his side over the line to the many big games that Cooper downed tools in over the years when the going got tough.

I know Sean Cavanagh is the type of guy I'd want on my team, dives a lot less than Cooper did too.

[Hardy]

Look at the finals Kerry won and lost over that period. All close games were lost!

Wind-up of the week.

Well played Colm Cooper - one of the best I've seen.

Don't believe that Gooch hid in big games, however, this statement is pretty close to the truth. Outside of the 2014 final when Durkan handed the game to them Kerry haven't won a close final since the 90s.

... or in other words, Kerry, when they don't win, lose only narrowly.

[magpie seanie]

Martin McHugh doesn't think that the Gooch is that good...


https://youtu.be/NTFldkyJJhM

Embarrassing for Mairtin looking back at that.

[From the Bunker]

Look at the finals Kerry won and lost over that period. All close games were lost!

Wind-up of the week.

Well played Colm Cooper - one of the best I've seen.

Don't believe that Gooch hid in big games, however, this statement is pretty close to the truth. Outside of the 2014 final when Durkan handed the game to them Kerry haven't won a close final since the 90s.

... or in other words, Kerry, when they don't win, lose only narrowly.

..........or in other words they lose tight games.

[moysider]

Irish Times from 2004

Locker Room: They used to say of the Native Americans that, critically, they failed to spot on the horizon those boats which would carry their doom because they had never seen such shapes and their eyes were accustomed to looking for other things. It was a mistake you wouldn't think you'd see made twice.  And yet. Coming down O'Connell Street yesterday, happy, blithe crowds of Mayo and Kerry people spilled merrily out from the footpaths and onto the tarmac. It was as if they'd never seen cars before in their lives I thought, as I ploughed through a couple of hundred of them, thus single-handedly easing the ticket crisis a little.  Croke Park. Late. Mayo are already out on the field with nearly half an hour left before the throw-in. Some of them are going to need reading material to kill the time.  Asking around, trying to borrow an opinion for myself. Nobody is too keen on Mayo. Flighty, is what they are. The consensus among the nabobs of hackery is that Kerry are Kerry and Mayo are Mayo. So it is and so it shall be.  Mind always wanders before the throw-in. Must be big-match nerves. Start composing little lists of likes and dislikes in case the GAA want to ask me. Like Mayo's red jerseys. Bit more flash, in keeping with their native self-confidence.  Don't like tubby tenors who "lead us" in singing the national anthem. Croke Park on All-Ireland final day is about the one place where we don't need leading in singing the thing. Adjust scope on my telescopic rifle but can't get a bead on the bugger.  Mayo have shuffled their forwards. Ingenious. Briefly Conor Mortimer establishes a bleachhead at full forward. Trevor goes to the right-half forward spot. Everyone else except Ciarán McDonald is somewhere other than the spot they were picked in.  It starts well for Mayo. A goal and a point up, scored after four minutes. Already they are in the position they best like: the final is theirs to throw away.

Two minutes later it begins to look ominous. The Gooch rises as if levitating and fields a ball on the 21. If I were related to The Gooch I'd get religion and pray hard every time he goes out on a field. And when he'd come home I'd feed him.  I was in Killarney recently, and in the outlet mall at the station there was a big car which Dr Crokes were offering in a draw. Ten euro a ticket. There was nobody around to give the €10 to, but I'm mailing it to the club with instructions that I'm not interested in the motor but I'd like to buy The Gooch a meal.  Anyway, the Gooch catches, feeds Willie Kirby for a point. If I were John Maughan I'd be shouting, "Do I not like that?" The Mayo forwards are playing in the Mayo tradition: subsisting through famine. Conor Mortimer and Ciarán McDonald provoke near hysteria every time they touch the ball, but you can close your eyes and tell Mayo are struggling. The outbreaks of hysteria are getter fewer and farther between.  I love the two lads. When did Gaelic footballers begin to get so flamboyant? I remember Noel Lynch of Meath had a pretty blinding blond Afro years ago, the sort of hairdo you'd need planning permission for in a built-up area, but Westmeath never gave him the platform with which to etch his barnet into the national psyche.

Mortimer reminds me of the story of Seán Thornton, the bleached midfielder who signed a couple of years ago from Tranmere to Sunderland. Arriving on the windswept training ground the first day with his earlobe bejewelled, his hair peroxided and his boots matching, he drew a sad shaking-of-the-head from Bobby Sax, an old coach. "You'd better be good, son, you'd better be good."  And Ciarán McDonald? What's left to say? He's struck two sublime points against the traffic in this first half and everyone in Mayo loves him. They'd swear, in fact, that they always have. I once had a long, rather bizarre and heated argument over the phone with a woman from Mayo. We were discussing the topic of Ciarán's hair, which he was then marshalling into a splendid ponytail. Being the ace wordsmith that I am, I had called him "the ponytailed Ciarán McDonald".
"Why did you call him that?" screamed the woman down the phone.  "Because he has a ponytail," I said back, devastating her with my wit. "You know what I mean," she hollered.  "No, I don't. If he had a beard I might have called him the bearded McDonald. If he had big feet I'd call him Flipper McDonald."  "What were you trying to tell people about him?"  "That he has a ponytail?" "And who has ponytails?"  "Ponies?"
"Don't be smart."
"People in advertising? Bicycle couriers? Artists? Who?" "You know who."  "Who?"  "Homosexuals. You were saying that he's a homosexual. You're a homophobe." This was news to me and, I'm sure, had it been brought to his attention, to Mr McDonald, who I'm sure isn't gay but has every right to be if he so desires.  Anyway, since then I've always been careful about the ponytail issue, and now I dither before describing his do de jour as cornrows lest I get a call accusing me of accusing Ciarán of being black, which I'm not, and which he has every right to be if he so desires.

Mind wandering badly now. Twenty-one minutes gone. Kerry have nine points on the board and the firm of Moynihan and Russell representing them on the bench. Every time I look back at the action Kerry are clipping over another point. Before half-time I'm playing a little game with myself, trying to spot the first Mayo person to get up and leave, shaking his head in conspicuous, mock sadness as if beating the traffic or getting an early pint wasn't what's on his mind.m  Before half-time - quite a way before half-time - Mayo bring David Brady on for Fergal Kelly. There's not much you can say to a man like Kelly at a time like that. Big day, everyone here and you get hauled off before you're warmed up properly.Anyway, Brady is on for 30 seconds when The Gooch leaps like a carrot-topped salmon and pulls down another high one. This time he skins the Mayo defence and puts it in the back of the net. Genius. Game over.  Early in the second half I go to unplug my laptop and accidentally unplug the TV monitor which four of us hacks are sharing. It won't come back to life. We only get monitors for big days in Croke Park and they're such a treat that what I've done is a crime for which I deserve to be flung from the upper deck of the Hogan. The lads just shrug. Nothing on worth watching anyway.  Mind rambling again. I remember being at one-sided basketball games in the US where they would have promotions to keep the crowd interested. If the Knicks, say, score 110 points everyone in the crowd gets free pizza. So in a game that's as dead as a Dana presidential bid the crowd would be apoplectic, urging the boys to pile on the scores. What would 80,000 slices of pizza cost? Kerry are on 1-19 and relaxed. Just say we all got pizza if they score 20. It would stop all those people leaving.
Mike Frank scores the last point for Kerry. An emphatic punctuation mark at the close of business. Strikes me that I'm not old, but I've been here to watch Kerry in 15 finals since 1972, seen them win 11 of them. Any wonder that, when it comes to these September pageants, Kerry are always Kerry and the rest of Ireland are always the supporting cast.


That was before 2005

Awful crap.

[lenny]

It was interesting that Philip Jordan the ex tyrone player in his column for RTE said that Gooch was the greatest player he'd seen or played against and specifically said he was better than canavan. Tomas O'Se also said he was the greatest Kerry player. High praise indeed from 2 legends of the game and well deserved in my opinion. He made so many games easy for Kerry ie games which might have been tight were turned into comfortable wins because gooch took the game by the scruff of the neck.

[5 Sams]

Panic over lads...Breheny has it all sorted out....

http://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/martin-breheny-why-colm-cooper-is-the-fifth-greatest-forward-of-them-all-35594573.html

[The Stallion]

"I know Sean Cavanagh is the type of guy I'd want on my team, dives a lot less than Cooper did too."

Lol

[seafoid]

Panic over lads...Breheny has it all sorted out....

http://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/martin-breheny-why-colm-cooper-is-the-fifth-greatest-forward-of-them-all-35594573.html

No Mickey Linden . Jaysus

[Jinxy]

Classic Breheny.
Everything was better when the world was in black and white.
Cooper would have prospered in the 70's/80's.
Corner-backs were utter tramps in those days, but at least you only had one of them marking you.

[lenny]

"I know Sean Cavanagh is the type of guy I'd want on my team, dives a lot less than Cooper did too."

Lol

Hilarious. Since 08 Cavanagh has played in a team which has lost 14 or 15 championship games. He is a very good player but often poor decision making and discipline has cost his team in those matches. Nowhere near in the class of gooch whose decision making and discipline as well as all round game is exemplary.

[Jinxy]

It's an interesting philosophical question actually.
Can you be a great player without necessarily being an obsessive 'winner' type?
I remember in the salad days of my youth, Meath had loads of winners.
If we were 8 points down, you'd be quite confident Murphy, Giles or Geraghty would say, "Ok lads, fun's over", and dive head first into the fray.
Like the day in Navan (2002) where Louth were home and hosed before we hit them with two late goals.
Geraghty could have taken his point to level the game up with the last kick, but he buried it instead to get the win.
It's the stubborn refusal to accept defeat I suppose.
Then again, I remember Graham destroying Dublin in the 1st half of our game in 2005.
He was nowhere near as effective in the 2nd half, but Dublin were always on the attack so we weren't getting the ball up the field to him.
Did he 'go missing' for that 2nd half?
I don't think so.
I wouldn't be too hard on Cooper.
When a team wins the vast majority of games it plays comfortably, invariably the small few games that they lose will be close-fought affairs.
To correlate that with Cooper 'going missing' is overly simplistic for me.

[Croí na hÉireann]

Not a peep out of the GPA wishing the Gooch well in his retirement. Stems back to Cooper sticking to the Lucozade Sport when the GPA were pushing Club Energise and Donal Og was threatening to throw the Lucozades out of the Cork dressing room if the county board pushed them in. Very petty on the GPAs behalf compared to when other greats of the games who were company men retired. Then again a Leopard doesn't change its spots.

[Beantown]

The losses weren't all down to Cooper. Contrary to popular opinion, In the 2005 final he had a good game, despite some cowardly treatment from Tyrone players.

He was a great player and a joy to watch. His vision and awareness of others is something very few players possess.

Yer hole!! What cowardly treatment???

I dont buy the living legends from Kerry praise as every county will praise their own higher than maybe they deserve.  Especially the Kerry ones, always a twinkle in the eye when they are talking Kerry Football, they like to throw in a grenade and watch everyone else get wound up while they stand back and laugh at the absurdy of it all. 

Colm Cooper will go down as one of the games most naturally talented forwards.  Didnt have a weak foot and had silky skills that many can only dream about.  Not the best in the air but no one player is perfect.   Cooper in full flight was a joy to watch !  Especially when teams tended to play with a bit more freedom and not this blanket defence muck we see now.

As for the greatest? Thats a non starter as each era throws up comparisons with the previous era and its a never ending argument.  We all have our preferences.  Personnally Canavan was the best forward I have ever seen, Cooper never had to carry a team for years the way Canavan did.  Both in the FF Line would have been some set of snipers though.

Of the recent Kerry teams I would have chosen the 3 O'Se's ahead of him. And over the last 6-7 years Brogan has been the most lethal forward in the country. 

[Fuzzman]

Tomás O'Sé talks about Gooch and how he liked his happy ending.

http://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/toms-s-king-of-them-all-gooch-deserved-his-happy-ending-35594571.html