The Diva

[magpie seanie]

I think you've proved my point. Thanks.

[bennydorano]

Wholeheartedly agree with AZ, Micko gets a free ride in the media.  I actually think it's a problem that encompasses the county of Kerry itself, anyone remember the hoofing of high balls into Donaghy being hailed as some sort of tactical masterstroke? - like it had never been done before. Kerry in general have always been cynical, make no mistake excellent footballers, but always prepared to be nasty.

One thing I noticed on Sunday too was Brolly and O'Rourke's insistence that Kildare would be negative - any time I saw Kildare attacking Wicklow had 10 me or so behind their own 50!

As Jack Charlton once said - "If you get a reputation as an early riser you can lie to midday"

[orangeman]

How many 'foreigners' has Micko used in his time in Kildare, Laois and now Wicklow? Is it above the national average? I know Lacey was from Tipp, and his son Karl was obviously from Kerry. At Laois, your man Sheehan is a kerry man, and obviously Tommy Walsh is Carlow, and Dan Doona is another Kerry exile, although that move has yet to happen.

Brian Murphy of Cork and Garvan Ware of Carlow also togged out for Kildare during the Micko era.
Granted some of them might be for valid reasons given that Kildare is part of the Dublin burbs and has seen a lot of inward migration.

Cork couldn't be described as part of the Dublin burbs, could it ??

Larry Thompkins and Shea Fahy went to Cork and won a hatful of medals - I never heard anyone castigating Billy Morgan for that !

[The Real Laoislad]

I think you've proved my point. Thanks.

You'll have to do the quote bit or no one will know what your talking about...

[pintsofguinness]

Never ceases to amaze me the amount of people queing up to crawl up the carpetbagger's hole.

I can't stand the p***k.

[The Real Laoislad]

Never ceases to amaze me the amount of people queing up to crawl up the carpetbagger's hole.

I can't stand the p***k.

Ah come on pints tell us how you really feel stop sitting on the fence 

[Rav67]

So how did all these players qualify?  Does Thomas Walsh not actually live in Wicklow then?  Did Lacey and Karl O'Dwyer both live in Kildare when they played for the county?

[Mike Sheehy]

Mick O'Dwyer has been slandered and villified on this board and other boards like it for years. There have also been plenty of innuendo in the media so this idea that he gets a free ride in the media is complete bullshit. All this has had an effect.Has any other manager been singled out by the revenue and investigated ?  ..and despite the fact that nothing untoward was found people still slander him....

There seems to be one law for Micko Dwyer on here and another one for everyone else. people think they can make whatever statements they like about him without proof or impunity. And ye bring up Sean Boylan as some anti-micko...sweet jesus...everytime I have read an article about Sean Boylan it has been a eulogy from the first word to the last. Even when he lost it was always implied that the players let him down. And how many times has he stood for a post match interview and talked about "good clean football" depsite the reputation that his Meath side had..................has this saintly portrayal been challenged ? like f**k it has !

I've nothing against Sean Boylan and dont want this to turn into a Boylan v micko spat but the sheer hypocrisy of people on here is mind boggling...and what all started this off anyway..a div 4 side win their first championship in ages and the media say nice things about their 70 year old loveable rouge of a coach...IS THIS A F**KING SURPRISE TO YE.....jesus christ what a bunch of begrudging c**ts

[The Real Laoislad]

Mick O'Dwyer has been slandered and villified on this board and other boards like it for years. There have also been plenty of innuendo in the media so this idea that he gets a free ride in the media is complete bullshit. All this has had an effect.Has any other manager been singled out by the revenue and investigated ?  ..and despite the fact that nothing untoward was found people still slander him....

There seems to be one law for Micko Dwyer on here and another one for everyone else. people think they can make whatever statements they like about him without proof or impunity. And ye bring up Sean Boylan as some anti-micko...sweet jesus...everytime I have read an article about Sean Boylan it has been a eulogy from the first word to the last. Even when he lost it was always implied that the players let him down. And how many times has he stood for a post match interview and talked about "good clean football" depsite the reputation that his Meath side had..................has this saintly portrayal been challenged ? like f**k it has !

I've nothing against Sean Boylan and dont want this to turn into a Boylan v micko spat but the sheer hypocrisy of people on here is mind boggling...and what all started this off anyway..a div 4 side win their first championship in ages and the media say nice things about their 70 year old loveable rouge of a coach...IS THIS A F**KING SURPRISE TO YE.....jesus christ what a bunch of begrudging c**ts

Well f**king said

[Hardy]

Mike, I'm getting worried about you. You'll give yourself an ulcer. (I nearly said Ulster). Why all the anger?

I just didn't want to let your characterisation of me (since I'm one of those who dared to criticise Micko) as a "begrudging c**t" pass without comment.  I'm not.

I remember having this conversation with you years ago. Sure there are no new subjects here, really. Anyway, the same situation still stands. You can't make me like Micko (and certainly not by calling me names) and the fact that I don't like him isn't some inexcusable slight on the people of Kerry.

Just a quick answer to your question. The number of times I know of that Sean Boylan 'stood for a post match interview and talked about "good clean football" ' is zero.

[Lone Shark]

A transfer one county over will always raise more eyebrows. Obviously Tompkins transfer to Cork was preceded by some well known rows he had with the Kildare county board so there might have been more to that, but even then no-one would realistically expect anyone to travel from Cork to Kildare or vice versa for training. Some players may choose to do it, but it's hardly realistic to expect it.

Transfers just across the border however will invariably raise suspicions much more so. Ware going from Carlow to Kildare, Walsh going from Carlow to Wicklow, it's not as if these players were suddenly hundreds of miles from training.

Speaking personally, Micko was a great player and manager in his day, but his day is gone and he uses cheap tricks now to get by. He did well at Kildare, but he went to Laois at a time when they had huge potential with some of the best talents in the country about to mature into intercounty. He turned that potential into one Leinster title and not a single AI semi Final appearance. Some may call that a great achievement, I wouldn't. I would call it a little below par - at a time when Leinster football teams were generally uncompetitive in a national context and when arguably the province was the easiest won of all time.

His teams dive incessantly, they are invariably masters of the art of time wasting, they play a horrible looking brand of basketball where every second handpass is barely legal and often not at all and then he'll go whinging to the media who will duly lap it up.

Regarding last Sunday, Micko's very presence got people playing football for the county that never were before, while speaking as neutral, while there were no underhand tactics in that match, it was much more a game that Kildare lost than Wicklow won. The standard was poor, Kildare had no attacking threat barring Smith and McGeeney made a balls of selection by putting two old men in the middle who weren't able for the pace. Anyone saying that it was some managing miracle akin to guiding Leitrim to their Connacht title or Clare to their Munster championship clearly doesn't get football.

[AZOffaly]

Mick O'Dwyer has been slandered and villified on this board and other boards like it for years. There have also been plenty of innuendo in the media so this idea that he gets a free ride in the media is complete bullshit. All this has had an effect.Has any other manager been singled out by the revenue and investigated ?  ..and despite the fact that nothing untoward was found people still slander him....

There seems to be one law for Micko Dwyer on here and another one for everyone else. people think they can make whatever statements they like about him without proof or impunity. And ye bring up Sean Boylan as some anti-micko...sweet jesus...everytime I have read an article about Sean Boylan it has been a eulogy from the first word to the last. Even when he lost it was always implied that the players let him down. And how many times has he stood for a post match interview and talked about "good clean football" depsite the reputation that his Meath side had..................has this saintly portrayal been challenged ? like f**k it has !

I've nothing against Sean Boylan and dont want this to turn into a Boylan v micko spat but the sheer hypocrisy of people on here is mind boggling...and what all started this off anyway..a div 4 side win their first championship in ages and the media say nice things about their 70 year old loveable rouge of a coach...IS THIS A F**KING SURPRISE TO YE.....jesus christ what a bunch of begrudging c**ts

Hi Mike,

Like Hardy, I'm not going to allow that comment about "begrudging cnuts" pass without refuting it. A lot of lads on here know my respect and admiration for Kerry football, and I was raised admiring and falling in love with football through the great Kerry teams of the 70s and 80s. My in-laws are all Kerry, and I spend a lot of my time down there, and following them around when Offaly get knocked out. (Usually early June!! ). So my perspective is not the same as some of your usual sparring partners on this board, far from it.

Now, as for the point at hand. I will try and succintly lay out the main areas of my opinion re. Micko, and especially his relationship with the media. I have made the same points many times over the years, and am not suddenly 'begrudging' the man his success because of last Sunday. In fact I am not begrudging the man at all. Feel free to pick holes in my opinions if you feel like it, but don't try and start an insult war, because I don't do them.

1) Mick O'Dwyer was a great player, and is a great coach. Has been an absolutely fantastic man manager since he took over Kerry, and is probably a better technician than many people think. I've heard people in Kerry say that 'anyone could have managed the golden team' and I disagree strongly with it. He had to handle a huge array of personalities, and keep them coming back to the well again, and again, hungrier every time. The bounce back after 82 and 83 was Lazarus-like.

2) Mick O'Dwyer, in my opinion, is as ready to employ cynicism as a tactic as any other manager. There are various examples of it, but the one I always point to is the inordinate amount of 'handy' frees won by Laois and Kildare especially once he took over. My opinion is that he didn't trust his lads to kick points from play, so he instructed them to go down in order to win frees, of which a high percentage would be scored. I'm not suggesting he instructed them to feign injury or get lads sent off, but as far as I'm concerned, Laois and Kildare, in his stints there, used this tactic. I am not alone in this opinion, and certainly if you talk to any of the lads who played against those teams in those years, you will hear this from several. I know I have.

3) Mick O'Dwyer has always attempted to 'recruit' outsiders to his adopted counties in order to strengthen them. Again my opinion, it could be purely coincidental that there have been many transferees into counties Micko trained, or maybe they are attracted by the chance to work with him, but whatever the reason, he seems to have a much higher than normal ratio of such players.

4) Mick O'Dwyer plays the media like no one else before or, I suspect, afterwards. He has built an image of himself as a footballing evangelist, a purist who would never sink to employing crude or cynical tactics.

5) The media, for whatever reason, are unwilling or unable to see beyond this, and offer up criticisms of him in the same way they would of Kernan, Harte, Lyons, O'Mahony or any other manager. Instead they continually, for the past 20 years and more, feed us stories of this caricature of the man, a dancing, twinkle eyed, magical pied piper type from Waterville.


They are my main points regarding Micko. As I say, feel free to argue where you feel I am wrong, or misinformed. But bear in mind I am not trying to score cheap points off anybody, least of all Kerry football or Micko the manager. It's Micko the PR creation I have trouble with.

Cheers

[The Real Laoislad]

Speaking personally, Micko was a great player and manager in his day, but his day is gone and he uses cheap tricks now to get by. He did well at Kildare, but he went to Laois at a time when they had huge potential with some of the best talents in the country about to mature into intercounty. He turned that potential into one Leinster title and not a single AI semi Final appearance. Some may call that a great achievement, I wouldn't. I would call it a little below par - at a time when Leinster football teams were generally uncompetitive in a national context and when arguably the province was the easiest won of all time.

Speaking from a Laois point of view i wouldn't be so quick to blame Micko for Laois's lack of success,There was a lot of over inflated egos on them Laois teams and i think they felt because they had won Leinsters/All Ireland's at minor that a senior All Ireland was just going to happen without much effort..
Sure you can hardly blame Dwyer for a last minute loss to Dublin in '05 or Mayo scoring two late points in the 1/4 Final of '06..
Maybe Dwyer should have taken them further but he was working with a lot of players who thought they knew more than him and believed too much of their own hype..
And some of the backroom staff weren't much better...

[Aaron Boone]

Micko's not that bad. He has some sort of oracle.

[magpie seanie]

Mike, I know this is something you feel strongly about but I think your rant is a bit ott and certainly misplaced with the likes of AZ, Hardy and dare I say it myself. Most people have huge admiration for Micko and what he has achieved as a player and a manager, me included. I grew up watching that great Kerry team that he managed and would have the highest admiration for Kerry football. That won't ever change.

I think it is legitimate though to raise the couple of issues that AZ has and wonder why the media don't question it more without being called hypocrites or begrudgung c***s.