In the 12 days it took to replace the irreplaceable Jim Gavin as Dublin football manager there was plenty for Dessie Farrell to contemplate, especially given he’d gone on the record to say he never saw himself wanting the position.
And as great as Dublin might be who would necessarily want to try to follow Gavin’s record - six All-Irelands in seven years, five National league titles and seven Leinster titles, an unbeaten championship run of 37 matches, and more?
Farrell didn’t see it happening, at least not when leaving his role as CEO of the Gaelic Players Association, in December 2016: “No I can’t, to be honest. I think the commitment is too great. I’ve been happy coaching young players and being involved in young players over the years. Under-21 is probably the limit for me.”
At that point the 1995 All-Ireland winner had already managed three successful Dublin teams of his own, the All-Ireland winning minors of 2012 and the under-21s of 2014 and 2017. Turns out he’d contemplated other things too before his appointment on December 12th of last year.
“Probably deep down, there was always this sort of harbouring sort of,” Farrell says now, in the week he takes Dublin in search of a sixth All-Ireland in a row.
“It would be something that would be a great honour to do, at some point in time. I’ve been involved with Dublin football as a player and as a coach of underage teams and it is a great honour and it’s something I enjoy immensely and love doing.
“But I think at the time it was probably more out of respect to Jim, and the current management team. You don’t necessarily need to be distracted by what some gobshite is saying in the paper. That was probably part of it as well.”
Part of Gavin’s success, it seemed, was his unwavering ability to divide his work inside and outside of the Dublin management, even when it came to sending midnight emails: Farrell suggests he may still be in that learning process but so far, so good.
“I won’t say it’s been life changing, but there’s a massive adjustment for sure. You get better at managing time, prioritising, compartmentalising things. Because it’s so all consuming you need to remember the important stuff in life as well and that can be a challenge too.
“By and large you get there and you muddle your way through it and you do what you have to do. Everyone has different ways of doing things, and I’m well used to emails in the middle of the night from a previous world and a previous life. It definitely wasn’t a case of the hard work, or the time commitment. It was more so did you have the tools, know-how and what not. That was probably the greatest concern. But as I say, a great honour and they’re a great bunch of players to get the opportunity to work with.”
Whatever about his own contemplation, Farrell’s appointment came with no guarantee the players would still be as motivated for a sixth successive All-Ireland as they were for a fifth: Jack McCaffrey, who stepped away over the summer, has provided some evidence of that but in the main Farrell has found want for nothing - even if Saturday evening’s showdown against Mayo will present the first true litmus test.
“It’s easy to make the point with Tipperary, if it was Kerry or Cork that Mayo dismantled in that way probably we’d all be thinking differently about it. Tipp are there as Munster champions and that’s a feat in itself so you’d have to be more than impressed with Mayo and how they’ve performed.
“Their (Mayo’s) hunger and desire and that takes hard work so it’s obviously been instilled in them, that level of intensity and it’s difficult to counteract that. It’s something that we’ll pay close attention to for sure.
“Obviously it’s a concern and even when I was a player myself it’s a question you asked as the season goes on, is the motivation still there? I think we set our stall out at the very beginning. We had that conversation around the sort of hunger, the appetite, the desire. We developed a plan and we made ourselves accountable to executing that.
“It’s hard to distil what it is. For me I think it’s more about the attitude, and that’s something that money can’t buy. That’s something we can’t inspire into others or coach into others, it’s about the individual attitude of the players within the group and it’s definitely a golden era because to me that’s what sets them apart, the practice, the extra 100 kick-outs on a given night, like Stephen Cluxton does, or doing the extra sessions or the extra reps and the extra drills.
“That’s not about resourcing or facilities or the size of clubs, that’s about fellas that are hungry and applying themselves and that have the attitude to be as competitive as they can be. That’s where the difference is.”
