Dubliners: 15 short stories about a football team and a city over 50 dramatic years

• Published date: 21 September 2024
• Author: Kieran Cunningham
• Publication title: DublinLive (Ireland)

THEY'RE taking photographs of rainbows on the Hill. It's that kind of day. Dublin are going through the motions, Meath are just playing out time

Dessie Farrell's men have started their 2024 Championship campaign and those in Croke Park have come along out of a sense of duty, as much as anything.

Nobody really expected a contest. Sure enough, Dublin win at their ease, with 16 points between the teams at the end.

By then, many on the Hill have already left for the comfort of a high stool. Nobody gets excited about Dublin v Meath anymore.

This, though, is a Championship that marks 50 years since the Dubs threw off the shackles to become All-Ireland champions.

Nothing would ever be the same again. Don't worry, we're not going down the nostalgia road in these pages. Most have had their fill of that.

Instead, we're going to look at how Dublin became The Dubs, what the team means to its people, how the city is changing, and the implications of those changes for the future.

We had two days out on the Hill this summer, heading back for the All-Ireland quarter-final with Galway. Another wet day, but nobody had time to take photographs.

Galway were Dublin's opponents in the 1974 final, but there would be no neat symmetry half-a-century on.

Nobody really knows what happens next. That chimes with the modern Dublin story. Sometimes messy, often euphoric, always fascinating.

THE SISTERS

BACK in January, 1989, Terry Jennings had a few things on his mind. Reality was starting to bite. He'd have to sit his finals in Economics and Social Science in Trinity College a few months later.

The Sigerson Cup would be a welcome distraction - Jennings was part of a talented team that fell just short to a Maurice Fitzgerald inspired UCC a year earlier.

But, when he bumped into a friend, Ger Downes, in Trinity's Arts Block one January morning, he didn't know what was coming.

Downes had a copy of Magill magazine. There was a Billy Stickland photograph of Kevin Heffernan on the cover. The headline read 'Return to the Hill'.

Nearly the entire magazine had been devoted to David Walsh interviews with the Dublin players that had transformed Gaelic football.

Downes collared Jennings and pointed to a passage early on in the piece - ''is that you?''

Before Terry Jennings Jr, there was Terry Jennings Sr. A Vincent's and Dublin teammate of Heffernan in the 1950s.

Terry Sr and Heffo were close. Their wives, Lily and Mary, were even closer. Nearly like sisters.

On May 26, 1974, an arrangement had been made. Heffernan was starting his first Championship as Dublin manager against Wexford, and he'd be getting a lift afterwards in Lily's Ford Capri.

Mary was in the car too, as was a six-year-old Terry Jennings.

"The two families were very close. We used to go to Downings in Donegal on holiday together. Sometimes, we'd stay in the same place,'' he said.

"I was always at games. Vincent's games, Dublin games. And I loved Jimmy."

Jimmy Keaveney had retired from intercounty football after growing sick of a run of eight seasons in a row where the Dubs didn't even reach a Leinster final.

Dublin had beaten Wexford by 12 points but, as he sat stewing in the car, Heffernan wasn't happy. He felt his team had a freetaking issue that would cost them down the road. That's when a six-year-old made one of the most important interventions in Dublin football history.

"I loved Jimmy and I said something about him never missing frees for Vincent's. My mother has an ongoing argument about it with me, she always maintains it was her that said it,'' said Jennings.

The seed was planted in Heffo's mind. By the end of that summer, Dublin were All-Ireland champions, with the returning Keaveney playing a pivotal role.

His Indian summer would see him win three All-Irelands, three All Stars and six Leinsters.

"Every time my father would be in the Vincent's clubhouse and he'd spot Jimmy coming in, he'd call over 'you have to decorate the bar, you still owe me','' said Jennings.

"I've never talked in public about this before, but it keeps coming up. It's mentioned in a few books, it was in the Irish Times again there a few months ago.''

Nearly two decades on, Jennings was given his own shot at a place in the Dublin team, getting the call from Paddy Cullen early in 1992.

"I was brought into the panel and I felt like an imposter. I didn't feel comfortable at all there. I didn't feel like I was good enough,'' he said.

"I was playing very good football with Vincent's but, when I went training there, I got a shock. It was a different level of pace. I couldn't enjoy it.

"In those days there were 30 on a panel. If I was going to make that, I was going to be number 28 or 29. I was never going to be 22.

"When we were doing sprint drills, I had to concentrate on every sprint, not to be last each time. Some of the players were just sailing through it.''

Jennings has a killer line that he used to throw around. A claim that he spent 20 years trying to get on the Dublin panel, and six months trying to get off it.

"I probably had a few drinks on me when I'd say that. To be honest, I couldn't wait to get out of there. I liked Paddy Cullen. It was nothing to do with him or the players. I just wasn't comfortable,'' he said.;

"I actually dropped myself off the panel. Never told anyone I was going, just stopped going to training."

Jennings is coaching now, concentrating on ladies football with Kilmacud Crokes, getting involved when his daughter, Mia, started playing with them.

He works closely with Paddy O'Donoghue, who he used to play with in Trinity. O'Donoghue was one of Pat Gilroy's selectors when Dublin won their breakthrough All-Ireland in the modern era in 2011.

"People would say to me that my father would be turning in his grave because I went to Crokes, no he wouldn't,'' said Jennings.

"I remember him specifically saying to me to bring the kids to where their freinds are playing.

"I actually had Darragh over in the mini-leagues in Vincent's for a while but, once your kids are involved in a club, you row in. I did feel a bit awkward when we played Vincent's sometimes, but that's just me."

AN ENCOUNTER

KEVIN McMANAMON is one of the children of the revolution. His goal against Kerry in the 2011 All-Ireland final released so much tension in the Dublin crowd that the stands in Croke Park shook.

It was the day that McManamon became the first St Jude's player to win Sam Maguire. When Sean Doherty lifted Sam above his head after the 1974 final, there was nobody from Jude's in Croke Park. That's because the club didn't exist.

It was founded four years later, with the founders surfing on the blue wave released by Heffo and his men.

"According to my parents, it was all farmland back then in Templeogue. Willington was just being built and there was nowhere to play,'' said McManamon.

"The Bishop Galvin National School got going and it all came from there. My father would always talk about the '70s team and David Hickey, in particular.

"We had a VHS of the Dubs at home and myself and my brother would watch it in the morning before going to watch Dublin play.

"When I was brought into the panel, Hickey was there with Pat Gilroy. He knew what it meant to be a Dublin player, to be picked to wear the shirt. Hickey had very much lived it.''

The belief in a Dublin Way went as deep with Jim Gavin as with Gilroy.

A few days after his initial press conference as manager , he met in a more informal setting with reporters to discuss their requirements.

During that meeting, Gavin showed the media video clips of some of Dublin's most glorious days. He did the same when first meeting with the players.

Dublin's past - as well as its present and future - mattered greatly to Gavin.

"He'd show us clips of games from different years. I remember he had the relatives of the first Dublin All-Ireland winning team from 1891 come to meet us,'' said McManamon.

"Anton O'Toole came in to talk to us. There was one season where there was a lot of Heffo paraphernalia around the place.''

It wasn't an easy summer for McManamon as his beloved father, Maxie, passed away in June.

A short break in Paris for the Olympics did him the power of good, teaming up with Michael Darragh Macauley to cheer Kellie Harrington to boxing gold.

There was a ritual that Kevin and Maxie would have on the day after Dublin won All-Irelands.

Both were musicians as well as football men, and they'd meet up in the Palace Bar on Fleet Street for a sing-song.

Mostly Dublin songs, and McManamon has been struck by an upsurge in Dub pride - from Harrington in the ring to his beloved musical idol Damien Dempsey to actor Barry Keoghan.

And a recent encounter showed him that heroes come in all forms.

"Maybe there was a stigma with the accent before but there are so many real role models in Dublin. Just look at the Stardust relatives,'' he said.

"Growing up in Templeogue, we had a neutral enough accent but I love that really strong Dublin lilt. I got involved in a men's group recently and you'd hear the most harrowing stories there.

"Stories of addiction and mad lives. But these men are helping to carry other men out of the ashes. It's beautiful to see.

"These are strong men who know how to put on the armour and be tough as nails but they know how to take it off too."

After McManamon's goal, and Stephen Cluxton's free-kick, and Bryan Cullen saying 'see yiz in Coppers', they were true to their captain's word.

Once the last of the regular punters were ushered out the door at 3am, the lock-in started.

Damien Dempsey got his guitar out and they sang their hearts out until dawn.

"I can't speak highly enough of Damo. He's just so unapologetically himself. He has a bit of everything in him. Reggae, sean-nós, songs from his grandparents' day. He sings them in his own way and that makes him unique,'' said McManamon.

"I think it's his authenticity that's appealing to people. It's like he's saying 'this is what I do, this is my upbringing'. He wears a heart on his sleeve, a lot of people in...