Mikey Sheehy has stormed GAA History
By Owen McCrohan
Terrace Talk Ireland also Features
a full Audio Interview With Mikey
Sheehy which you can download or listen to now.
On
the outskirts of Tralee, there is a high wall which encircles
an acre of stone crosses, providing living testimony to the memory
of the dead. Within the confines of that cemetery lie interred
the mortal remains of some of the
greatest gaelic footballers that ever walked the land. It is a
stark if poignant reminder that Tralee always was and probably
always will be, the heartland of Kerry football.
In the mid-twenties when the storied and romantic Kerry-Kildare
rivalry reached its
zenith, eight men from Rock Street Austin Stacks formed the bulwark
of a legendary
Kerry side that wrested All Ireland honours from the pride of
the “Short Grass”. This
was the era of Stanley, Goff, Loughlin, Higgins, Gannon, Malone,
Fitzpatrick, Doyle,
Curtis and their contemporaries who had often set the heather
blazing on the plains of Kildare. It was also the age of Joe Barrett,
Pluggy Moriarty, Pedlar Sweeney, Gal
Slattery, Bill Gorman, Jackie Ryan, Rory O'Connell and Jimmy Bailey,
eight men from
''the rock” who carried the torch for Kerry to ultimate
glory. It was a fabulous contribution from one small club where
many of the players lived in close proximity to each other, but
it did not by any means tell the full story because Dan Ryan,
Marin Regan, the Landers brothers, Mike Doyle, Mick Healy and
Jimmy Gorman followed to blaze a trail that stretched meteor-like
across the football firmament. Barrett and Jackie Ryan won 6 All-Ireland
medals each, Doyle’s three before his 21st birthday is still
a record while the fame of the Landers brothers is still fevered
wherever grey-beard Kerry followers foregather.
After that storm of success, the calm of more than 30 years in
the wilderness was hard to fathom but in 1973 after a rousing
county final, the whole world came to know that, once again, the
Stacks were back. A young team had arisen to refurbish the aged
glory of the black and amber. On a side that bristled with outstanding
talent, four men were destined for immortality -. John O'Keeffe,
Ger O'Keeffe, Ger Power and Mikey Sheehy. Cork's Denis Long later
joined them to make it the famous five.
With due respects to all of his contemporaries and predecessors,
there is no Rock
Street man ever who has stormed G.A.A. history with quite the
same authority as
Mikey Sheehy. Not only as a great footballer but in the more mundane
pursuits of everyday living, Sheehy has a place apart. The enormous
popularity he enjoys has,
one suspects, a lot to do with his innate modesty, his unfailing
approachability, his gentleness as a person. The old hackneyed
cliché about being unspoilt by fame never rang so true
of any man.
Although he is a Stacks man through and through, Sheehy's parents
hail from Killorglin where he spent much of his formative years.
However, he was born in the town of Tralee and grew up in St.
Brendan's Park, a housing estate deep in the heart of Rock Street
territory. Here it was that the young starlet learned the rudiments
of the code from Michael Hayes, Jimmy Hobbart and the late Joe
Mulchinock, three men who devoted themselves unsparingly to the
youth of the club.
From the beginning, he had that touch of genius that was later
to set him apart. The
famed Purty Landers was a near neighbour and Mikey himself tells
of the inspiration
he gleaned from hearing of his exploits. Much more significant,
perhaps, were the long hours of practice he was prepared lo devote
to perfecting his skills. Indeed, there are residents of St. Brendan’s
Park today who will testify that all his young life was filled
with football activity. It still is.
Two years in the Kerry minor jersey brought little reward, and
when first selected to
play at Under-21 level for the county in 1974, Michael Sheehy
was a portly and grossly overweight young man who filled the left
corner forward role with no great distinction
and certainly without exerting himself unduly. His skill level
suffered because of lack
of fitness and consequently his great natural talent lay dormant
and unfurled.
It was not until he came under the tutelage of Mick O' Dwyer that
the Tralee
sharp-shooter began to appreciate the true significance of full
physical and mental
well-being as the excess poundage was honed away in a welter of
sweat and toil. Because he puts on weight so easily, Sheehy is
permanently fighting the Battle of
the Bulge. And winning. “If I am idle for any length of
time”, he says, “I start to worry
about my fitness”. It is an exposure which tells it's own
story because his spells of inactivity are frequently enforced
and well-documented. Indeed, his whole career has
been plagued by injury. Two heavily strapped ankles which he carries
into every game are indicative of the damage that has been wrought.
But he need not worry unduly because when the heat is on, few
men train with such complete and utter devotion. Besides the long,
punishing sessions he undergoes as
part of Kerry's preparation, he trains religiously on his own
as well, often running for
hours on end on the soft sand at Banna beach, building up those
massive calf muscles that are consistent with the development
of a long-distance runner. His extraordinary personal commitment
to team morale was never better exemplified than during the summer
of 1981 when, following a serious car accident which saw him,
miraculously, crawl away from a tangled wreck, his sole concern
was that he should not miss a Kerry training session four hours
later. Nor did he.
Given similar circumstances, not many men would have responded
with such heroic character but then Sheehy is no ordinary man,
and his outstanding loyalty in a
moment of great personal trauma was deserving of an award far
in excess of any All-Ireland medal. In that gesture of utter selflessness,
it could be said be said he showed the true badge of courage.
To aficionados of the Gaelic code, Mike Sheehy's delicate and
refined skills bear the hallmark of a true perfectionist. In him
is enshrined are grace of a ballerina, the speed of a gazelle,
the eye of a hawk, the cunning of a fox. No man has taken Kerry
out of more tight corners, and no man since Mick O'Connell has
come remotely near the peaks of excellence he has scaled. His
prodigious two- footed wizardry is awe-inspiring, even for an
acknowledged virtuoso of the code. But it didn't happen by mere
accident. In quiet moments on his own, Sheehy works assiduously
in his quest of perfection, holding be ball on his instep, juggling
with it, toying with it and finally teasing it into submission.
Indeed, his consummate artistry often appears singularly out of
place in the hurly burly of Gaelic football where brawn not infrequently
supersedes brain.
There seems little doubt now that be would have been eminently
suited to a
professional career in another code had he so desired. The great
goal he score in
the replayed Munster Final at Killarney when he “bent”
the ball over the head of Michael Creedon, was reminiscent of
the better days of Manchester United, a score straight out of
the repertoire of Bobby Charlton or Georgie Best.
It wasn't the first time that a Sheehy goal claimed giddy headlines.
Four yearn ago in a moment of high drama when Dublin's great goalkeeper,
Paddy Cullen, vented his righteous indignation, the Tralee maestro
chipped an innocent lob into an unguarded net for an outrageous
score. It was said at the time that only a Tralee man and a Rock
Street man at that, would have had the brazen effrontery to attempt
it, but Sheehy chanced his arm to poach a goal that will forever
assure him of a place in the folklore of the game.
On reflection, it is easy to see now with hindsight how the enormous
pleasure that
Mikey Sheehy has conferred upon Gaelic followers might easily
have been lost. In
1975 after he had won his first All-Ireland medal, a talent scout
from Southampton F .C. came knocking on his door but the trial
that was arranged for him across the water never materialized
because of a misunderstanding. Nobody can say with absolute conviction
but the likelihood is that soccer's loss was considerable because
Sheehy would almost certainly have made it big at The Dell. Or
anywhere else for that matter. But he has no regrets and leaves
one in no doubt that he would not swap a place on the Kerry team
for all the gold in the world.
Even though he is a master of every art and stratagem of the code,
Sheehy’s clinical finishing power is above and beyond all
his works. In 8 years at the top, he has reaped a harvest of scores.
But, most of all, he is a phenomenal reader of the game. No matter
now closely marked, he has that uncanny facility to be in the
right place at the right time. His amazing perception of outfield
play which sees him drift into open spaces with such unfailing
monotony, is no mere quirk of fate. More than anything else, it
stamps him as probably the most astute and devastating forward
in the history of the game. Often when the Kerry attack is in
full spate, he will emerge out of a blur of green and gold, coming
from nowhere at the and of a defence-splitting foray to take the
final pass and stroke the ball into the net with consummate ease.
His talents are so numerous and so complex that any team with
pretensions to nailing Kerry must abide the one basic precept
from which there can be no deviation: SHACKLE SHEEHY! No easy
job.
If, as we are told, the masses lead lives of quiet desperation,
Kerry's No. 13 appears to take the world easily. The transient
and fleeting fame bestowed by the tinsel world of high renown,
he can keep in its proper place. He is always himself. A man who
is totally devoid of theatricals and a most unassuming person,
he will invariably come out of the square even in his most ecstatic
moments with that peculiar stumbling gait of his, arms flailing
easily by his side, eyes downcast, almost as if apologizing for
making scoring look so simple. And when he is on song, nobody
makes it look easier.
It would be no more than fitting if history could record that
Michael Sheehy had achieved immortality in the year of Five-in-a-Row.
But it was not to be. The great odyssey that had seen him scale
the dizzy heights of fame over eight years of unsurpassed endeavor
was halted temporarily, in the rain, stifled by a fine team and
the hand of fate.
It was the end of a chapter only, not of the story because the
story of Sheehv and of
Kerry will go on.
Mikey Sheehy
