The PM O’Sullivan interview: Jumping the great divide

Mick O'Flynn is a Cork man, a Nemo Rangers clubman, who became the most influential non-native on Kilkenny's hurling prospects.

The PM O’Sullivan interview: Jumping the great divide

Mick O'Flynn is a Cork man, a Nemo Rangers clubman, who became the most influential non-native on Kilkenny's hurling prospects.

Seven times Irish triple jump champion, he trained the Kilkenny seniors between 1991 and 2005, except in 1996. He won All-Ireland finals against Cork and lost them. But whatever happens tomorrow at Croke Park, he can't really lose.

Mick O’Flynn has gone singing.

Surprised at himself but singing hard, on a night above all nights forforgetting about singing, a hurling night, a total Cork downer. He is 21 going on 22, standing in The Parade Lounge, this place upstairs in the middle of Kilkenny. Their victorious homecoming in 1969 is out on the street, right up to the Castle. He can see for miles, yard by black and amber yard.

Tough distances, any measure. Mick O’Flynn is Cork out. Ringaskiddy to Turner’s Cross, Nemo Rangers, fresh from a UCC Arts Degree and H Dip. His father, Bernard, did some hurling for the county in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Tough out and worse again. The week before was his first teaching in Kilkenny CBS. He thinks he is going to stay just the year. Thinks a lot of things.

Dom Murphy is a friend. A Cork native, likewise working in the CBS. Dominveigles Micko into coming out, despite the disappointment. Hot disappointment, presumption goes, in a cold climate.

Dom Murphy, careless and kind, changes Mick O’Flynn’s life.

“I had just finished the Dip exams and went away for a few days,” he recalls. “Came home, got the results, which went okay. The mother said: ‘There’s aChristian Brother, from Kilkenny, wants to talk to you.’

I contacted him, and we met the following day in the Imperial Hotel. And he obviously had his homework done. He was looking for someone with my exact Arts subjects, plus the sporting interest.

Off he headed: “I had a Vespa 90 scooter and it brought me up. Indeed I went up and down a good number of times on the little yoke. Two stops along the way. Refill and take a break.”

That September held a twist: “I walked straight into the build up for 1969 All-Ireland final. Of course, Cork were favourites that year, raging favourites, the opposite of 1966, when Kilkenny were madfavourites, and lost. So I was really looking forward to the final.

“Went up as a supporter, and Cork lost out, and I was shattered, heading back down to Kilkenny.”

Enter Dom Murphy and that path to The Parade Lounge: “They just heard theaccent, and looked for a song. What could I do…? No nastiness in the slightest, no gloating. They couldn’t have beenfriendlier. It stuck with me.”

Fifty years later, we are sitting in Cleere’s of Parliament Street, lunch before us. Tomorrow holds Kilkenny and Cork in an All-Ireland quarter-final. This rivalry, traditionally, is a flame with sweetly scented ash.

Mick O’Flynn is modest and watchful, level and exact. He remains by far the most influential non-native on Kilkennyhurling and worked closely with some of the county’s biggest ever names.

Bar 1996, O’Flynn acted as physical trainer for the senior panel between 1991 and 2005, when five All-Irelands were won. He was All-Ireland champion in the triple jump seven times.

What happened?

That Vespa speeds up and the years swim into brightness. Celebrations again. Now the Kilkenny hurlers are dancing in Kytelers Inn, dancing with theseexaggerated high stepping moments, dancing and gesturing and beckoning over to Mick O’Flynn.

He is smiling, resisting, but does end up in the middle of them, stepping it out, as they go celebrating and messing, celebrating more in relief than in exultation but celebrating all the same, because Kilkenny have just won their first Leinster title in four years.

“1991 was crucial,” O’Flynn emphasises, real weight in his tone. “DJ [Carey] and the ten steps against Wexford and the kicked goal. The 100 steps… I think if we hadn’t got into the All-Ireland final in 1991, Ollie [Walsh] would have been gone, and I’d have been gone with him. It’d have over before it started.”

The young man singing in a pub on Rose Inn Street went around the corner and became the middle-aged man dancing in a night club on Kieran Street. Walking those couple of hundred metres took 22 years.

That young UCC graduate surprised himself by settling in well. “I got permission to train in the CBS Sportsfield,” O’Flynn outlines. “I dug a pit in one corner, and I used to be there, doing my boundings and so on. This very pleasant, chatty man used come out, because the back garden of his house on Dominic Street backed on to the Sportsfield. He would offer me the use of his shovel or rake if I needed it.

“I never knew who he was, until someone said: ‘That’s Jim Langton, the great Kilkenny hurler.’ It’s a treasured memory, because I would have heard all about Jim Langton, growing up in Cork, because he’d played in those fantastic finals in 1939 and 1947, when Kilkenny won by a point.

“Athletics wise, I was self-taught,” he clarifies.

Because coaching facilities just weren’t there, especially for the likes of the triple jump. There was no literature at all. I went into Cork City Library, during UCC days, and looked up the variousathletic encyclopaedias. Eventually got a contact to get stuff from the Russiansystem, the leaders in the field in the 1970s. I copied drawings and diagrams into a copybook for myself.

Here was those Kilkenny hurlers’ funny dance in July 1991. The influence ofRussian plyometrics on hurling might be an esoteric topic but not an irrelevant one. Mick O’Flynn’s input worked.

A first marital home in Loughboy proved an important contingency. This area is part of the catchment for James Stephens GAA Club. Mick O’Flynn used the club ground at Larchfield for his own training, a swerve that led to him being asked to train James Stephens’ senior panel. They won 1981’s county final and spun all the way to club All-Ireland success.

This connection introduced him to prominent figures: “Brian Cody was a totally dedicated man to it. Bill, his father, was chairman.”

The involvement with athletics proceeded apace. O’Flynn became national coach for the triple jump after his own career concluded in the early 1980s. He was involved with Kilkenny Harriers and subsequently with Kilkenny Striders. Hurling was a background hum rather than the soundtrack of his life.

The signal changed in late 1990, when Ollie Walsh, the county’s new manager, called into Kilkenny CBS. O’Flynn’smemory is pinpoint: “There was a league game over in Nowlan Park, and Limerick just wiped them, by 17 points. So Ollie just kind of asked me about coming aboard as trainer.

“I was taken aback. One of the things was: ‘What am I going to do if we meet Cork?’ And especially if we meet them in an All-Ireland final?”

O’Flynn knew the score: “Ollie was under pressure. There’s no point in saying any different. Maybe it takes a big setback for people to think of doing things differently. Physical training for Kilkenny wasn’t a big thing at the time.

“But Ollie backed me completely from the start, which was massive. He would have said the first night in Thomastown: ‘Where the physical training is concerned, Micko is the boss.’ That helped a lot.”

Players were the other side of the equation: “Richie Power, father of young Richie, and Liam Fennelly were key men. They had been there for the All-Ireland wins of 1982 and ’83. So they had anauthority.”

Kilkenny met Tipperary in the 1991All-Ireland final and lost by four points on a frustrating afternoon. O’Flynn felt the manager made one of his best decisions during the homecoming: “Everybody was downbeat, and lads had had drink and everything at that stage. But we said: ‘Would we kind of have an oul’ chat with them? Just to tide things over?’ So we mustered them all into a room, about 12 o’clock. And it was amazing. It made that team. Everyone came out of that meeting and it was almost stony silence.”

Coincidentally or not, 1992 broughtsuccess. Cork in the final, though. How did Mick O’Flynn deal with this dynamic?

“I knew in my heart and soul that I only wanted one team to win. I had absolutely bonded with the whole thing. That was it. The win had to be for us.”

Joy was never more loosely bridled: “1991 was such a bitter disappointment. But the bonding that came out of it for us all… I mean, I had those All-Irelandsindividually in athletics. But to be at the centre of a hurling All-Ireland…

“The homecoming was something else. Nine years without a senior All-Ireland is an awful long time in Kilkenny. Looking out at the huge crowd, down at The Courthouse, the joy in people’s faces was unreal.”

Further success arrived in 1993. Their trainer explains a nuance. “It was a huge disappointment to Ollie that Galway beat Tipperary in the All-Ireland semi-final. That was the All-Ireland he wanted. But we got over Galway, for the two in a row.”

The next two seasons drew a blank: “Three in a row was the dream. But we just weren’t able for it. Offaly were coming strong at that point.”

Ollie Walsh stepped down after 1995. Nickey Brennan succeeded and decided to use Richie Power Sr as trainer. That season, Mick O’Flynn did a stint on the sideline with The Fenians in Johnstown.

The following year, Brennan invited Mick O’Flynn to return, which he did. That management team departed after an acrimonious defeat to Limerick in an NHL semi final. Kevin Fennelly became the next manager but departed after a sole season in charge.

Those five sentences compress a lot of grief. Kilkenny hurling was in far from good shape. Yet the scene was set for the arrival of its most influential leader.

O’Flynn glosses:

No one saw it at the time. But Brian [Cody] got the job, and we arranged to meet. Straight away, you knew how knowledgeable he was and, let’s say, inquisitive. He had already in his head who he wanted and who he wanted to shed. Because he went through so many things I was taken aback.

O’Flynn stresses Cody’s impact in the area of player welfare: “A lot of that is down to Brian. Hugely so. He really fought tooth and nail for the players. He had set tos with Ned [Quinn] and all that.

“Now, Ned was open to it, alright. But it still took hard work. I’d just give Brian massive credit for all of that. Every obstruction was moved out of the players’ path. In fairness to Ned and the rest of them, they bought into that as well.”

Now Mick O’Flynn is going down acorridor in Croke Park. Kilkenny have been beaten in the rain. Sluiced out of the contest, a wash of five points on the trot.

Cork, boy. A single point.

Outside, there is a Rebel boom. The supporters are partying like it is 1999, because they have 1999 forever. He can hear the wadded noise.

Former Taoiseach Jack Lynch is lying in bed, blind, dying, listening on a radio to Cork do what Cork could not do in 1939 or in 1947, what his team could not do against Jim Langton’s team.

Lynch will pass away nearly six weeks later, content.

Mick O’Flynn is in no mood for the bigger picture. He is worried about Brian Cody, about the reaction at home. He is concerned about the backlash.

“To this day, I don’t think Brian has got full credit within Kilkenny for his achievements,” O’Flynn says in 2019. “There is a bit ofunwillingness there, all the time, a bit of begrudgery.”

Jimmy Barry Murphy, Cork manager, suddenly appears, coming the other way. ‘Jimmy Barr’, as Micko knows him, through friendship with Billy Morgan. The two men pass each other. “We got one back on ye,” says Jimmy, the beaming handsome face softening the comment.

O’Flynn smiles: “I could only give him the thumbs up. There was no bitterness at all in it, from Jimmy’s side. He is one of nature’s gentlemen.”

2000 needed to be different. Kilkenny gotOffaly, surprise winners over Cork, in theAll-Ireland final. For O’Flynn, Brian Cody’s true leadership emerged in the nervy lead up to this contest. He agreed that the panel should test their collective psyche.

“They really put it in,” O’Flynn remembers.

“And they were really, after number three and number four, they were hanging. This is where the likes of Peter [Barry] and those came along and said: ‘Come on, get on, let’s go!’ DJ was at it, you know?”

“I felt: ‘Jaysus they’re right. They’ll take on any challenge.’

He sketches the fallout from the year before. “I didn’t get it personally but I know Brian got it in the neck from some aficionados: ‘Never again: you’re after leaving an All-Ireland on the training pitch.’ As far as some County Board people were concerned, this was an All-Ireland left in the Park.”

Kilkenny beat Offaly by 13 points. They stumbled in 2001 but took another two in a row 2002-03. The latter year reposed Cork as opponents. 2004 (“It was a team with a lot of mileage on it”) was Cork’s revenge. 2005 drew another blank.

Now Mick O’Flynn is sitting down with Brian Cody, late in the year: “Mick Dempsey and Martin Fogarty, after great success with the U21s, had come in for 2005, and had done well, as far as I was concerned. I was still very happy with Kilkenny under Brian Cody. But I said, when he rang about the new season: ‘Look, I need to talk to you about it.’

“As I saw it, you had three people who were capable of taking this thing on. And I felt that the extra Mick and Martin had brought, that the whole thing could comfortably manage without me. I didn’t have the 100% enthusiasm that I felt I needed for it. Secondly, Brian wasn’t going to have a problem. He wasn’t going to be looking around to fill a gap.”

Mick O’Flynn departed as he had entered, with a quiet assurance. He worked again with The Fenians.

He worked at various levels with Dicksboro, where his youngest son, Paul, hurls. Paul O’Flynn was part of Kilkenny’s victorious 2003 minor panel and victorious 2006 U21 panel.

He also won a senior title with Dicksboro in 2017. He is a Kilkenny native, like all five O’Flynn children.

Tomorrow’s All-Ireland quarter-final? Split loyalties?

Mick O’Flynn pauses but finds a sure tone: “The players I dealt with are all gone now. Jackie Tyrrell and Eoin Larkin were probably the last of my involvement, let’s say. So I’d be more distanced from it, now. I don’t personally know any of the current players.

If Kilkenny win, that’s great. If Cork win, I’d be delighted, especially for their present management, because I think John Meyler is a very honest gentleman. And the players he has, I’d admire them as well, because they’re all totally dedicated to it.

The native shore still calls: “I suppose I would like to see Cork win it.”

Elsewhere in Cleere’s, as I head to the counter, is Richie Power Jr. The town is full of people who plait hurling’s years.

I mention All-Ireland quarter-finalprospects, the chat with Mick O’Flynn. Did he train him during his first year with the seniors? Power is not given to light talk but immediately brightens into an answer:

“Micko did, and he was brilliant. We’ve been lucky in Kilkenny with trainers, Mick Dempsey and Noel Richardson as well, but Micko is up there with anyone.”

The man himself is ready to go. 72 in October, fresh out, Mick O’Flynn is every bit as hale and active as a former athlete must be. Wednesday afternoon and evening is hillwalking. Tonight sees him off to the National Concert Hall, where Moving Hearts are up.

By way of parting, we exchange notes on that moment in Irish music. Christy Moore’s first two albums, Planxty, De Danaan,Stockton’s Wing, The Bothy Band… “You have a Cork note in some of it,” he says.

Then the laconic lilt, never lost it, going out the door: “There’s just something amazing about great musicians coming together.”

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