In January 1994, the year Leitrim beat Mayo to win the Connacht title for the first time in 67 years, John O’Mahony had come to Kells, where from time to time he would move the training session to acknowledge the Dublin-based players. It had been snowing and there was a fair bit settled on the ground.
We were in the dressingroom with a bit of a walk to the pitch and shivering and talking. Surely, we wouldn’t have to go out in that? Get back in the warmth of the car and go home. Ollie Honeyman said that we had better go up to the pitch, anyway.
And there was John, putting out the cones – in a T-shirt. We were shocked that the training session was going ahead but astonished that he was in a T-shirt! He was quiet that night but there was something fierce about him.
“We can make excuses,” he said. “There are always excuses if we want them and it’s easy for Leitrim to find excuses. Not tonight. We are going to train.”
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If you ever wanted to get off training and had a really good reason, he’d listen. Then, ‘Okay, I hear you but I’ll leave it up to you.’ So, it was thrown back to you and you had to work that one out very carefully.
He insisted on equality. Everyone had to do the same work. I remember one fella saying he couldn’t make training because of work or whatever. John said, ‘Well, when can you make it?’
The player was based in Dublin and he tried to make it as inconvenient as possible. ‘Right, says Johnno. Where’s the nearest pitch?’ He was there at the appointed time and he ran the legs off this guy and of course the word went back to us all.
We couldn’t believe that he’d travelled all the way from Ballaghaderreen to Dublin. Equality wasn’t just a slogan on a flip chart. He meant it.
He’d a very clear understanding of what leadership was. I was given the captaincy the first day in Longford. I thought that the captaincy would require me to change, to be a public speaker, which I wasn’t.
In the dressingroom, all the lads were slagging me. Every second word was f*** and f***ing, as I was far too emotional.
When I was finished, John tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Declan, the most important leadership is on the field of play, not what you say. The reason you’re captain is because of the way you play and carry yourself. Don’t forget that.’
He constantly interacted with me on those type of issues because he placed a real value on what you might call, ‘front of house’ engagement. He guided me really well.
The other thing I observed from him was that when the bright lights were turned on – and they weren’t very often for Leitrim – he took a step back. He was at the back of the bus, never at the front. When we were going around the county, it was always a player who got off the bus with the cup.
On the various stages set up in towns, he took a step back. It was an important lesson for me later as a coach. It’s never about you and stepping back sends a really strong message to the group. It’s why you rarely saw me on the pitch after matches.
The night of that homecoming he had two ‘suggestions’: don’t drink while taking around the cup. You may have to say a few words in places. And stay out of chippers – that’s where trouble is!
How he hid a double-decker bus in Carrick-on-Shannon the weekend of the Connacht final I’ll never know, but he did. You don’t want to look presumptuous but you have to be prepared and he knew we might need one. We couldn’t believe it. Did the fella driving it come straight from Dublin?
It was just his way of planning for contingencies and in a way proving his confidence in us. For all that we were Leitrim and synonymous with disadvantage, we wanted for nothing. It was how he expressed his care for us, as well as the role of manager.
He built character and resilience to translate on to the pitch. That was blended with Bill Cogan [a performance coach who worked in industry], who was obviously Scottish and had worked with Celtic and Rangers. Coming into Leitrim and mentioning Rangers wasn’t the most promising of introductions!
Bill came into the first meeting and said that he didn’t know anything about the game.
He wrote a score on the board, 30-30, and said that could be the score in your next game. We all laughed but he wanted to emphasise what the potential was and contrast it with the old predictability of, ‘didn’t you do great – only lost by a couple of points’. It got us thinking, me in particular and I gravitated towards him from the start.
John set a high value on it and so I did. He needed me to buy into it and I thought Bill was great. To this day, I believe it was important. On the way to matches, we’d have a police escort and then stop just outside the town and Bill would get on, understated, never in the dressingroom but just around getting a vibe of how we were doing.
RTE’s Tommie Gorman also helped us. As we well as video analysis, he put together these short videos of all the players with their families wishing them well.
We had never come across such high-quality material. Tommie used his contacts to produce something of great value. It meant that someone had taken the trouble to go around all of these people, who were special to us.
We were actually shaken but it drove home what we were doing and who we were representing. It wasn’t loaded on us just before the match or anything so that we could handle the emotion. He also had Joe Reynolds talk to us. Joe had been there in the old days of claps on the back and he got up and spoke from the heart.
‘This is where it stops.’
Another striking thing Johnno would say before every match and remember those days were knock-out. Get beaten and you were done. But at the last team meeting, he’d just quietly remind us, ‘training in Kells, next Tuesday’. In other words, your season isn’t over.
Imparting belief is an unbelievable talent. You can’t pick it up in college or learn it on a course. You either have that aura or you don’t – that you can give belief to individuals that they can do something extraordinary.
It had to be backed up by hard work and application so that you were earning it and not just absorbing it. You can choose not to, of course but it’s there if you want. I’ve tried to make that happen for others since then.
I didn’t see a lot of him down the years but we stayed in touch. I remember he asked me down to the Dáil, after he had been elected, to show me around and we had a good chat. He was fascinated by this new road he was travelling but also following my coaching career.
He gave me that fascination with psychology as well as the other traits: the attention to detail, the forensic analysis, the stepping aside when it’s done.
Johnno said to me, ‘Dec, I’m watching you and everything you’re doing and trying to do.’ I replied, ‘I’m doing everything I saw you do. Your blood is in my blood now.’
He was a bit taken aback but it was the truth. He made such a difference to my life.
– Declan Darcy was Leitrim captain in 1994 when the county won a first Connacht title in 67 years under the guidance of John O’Mahony. Reared in Dublin of Leitrim parents, he also played for his native county towards the end of his career. As Jim Gavin’s right-hand man, he was involved in the management of Dublin’s six All-Irelands in seven years.
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