By John Harrington

Mickey Whelan’s impact on St Vincent’s GAA Club and Dublin GAA in general is so considerable that it’s difficult to measure.

Referred to as “the Godfather of coaching in this country” by DCU Professor Niall Moyna, it’s a very apt description for someone who has positively impacted Gaelic games in the capital across multiple decades.

He devised much of the training programmes that propelled the great Dublin team of the 1970s to national prominence under the management of his good friend Kevin Heffernan.

He was also heavily involved in a coaching capacity when DCU became the footballing academy that played a big part in enabling Dublin evolve into the most ruthlessly dominant team in the history of the game.

And he played a huge role in early years of that transformation as the right-hand man of manager Pat Gilroy who led Dublin to the 2011 All-Ireland title.

At club level with St Vincent’s his achievements are legion, and to this day his wisdom is still heavily drawn on within the club.

Now 83, Whelan still retains the qualities that enabled him to become of the greatest coaches in the history of Gaelic games – an inquisitive mind combined with a pure passion for sport.

It’s fitting then that his soon to be published autobiography is entitled, ‘Love of the Game’.

It’ll be launched in the St. Vincent’s GAA club-house this Friday night at 7.30pm, when Whelan will be quizzed on his long and varied coaching career by Virgin Media Sports Broadcaster, Tommy Martin, himself an underage coach with St. Vincent’s.

They’ll be joined on stage by former Dublin manager, Pat Gilroy, who has no doubts about the extent to which Whelan has positively impacted Gaelic games in the capital over the course of many years.

“Mickey's hand was all over a lot of things that happened for Dublin's renaissance,” Gilroy told GAA.ie

“There were a number of things that happened in the 2000s that helped Dublin get to the position of dominance they got between 2011 and 2020.

“Some of that was DCU becoming successful and winning Sigersons with a lot of Dublin players. You had St. Vincent's making the breakthrough in the All-Ireland Club Championship when a Dublin club hadn't won it since Kilmacud in 1995.

“Mickey's hands were all over both of those two things that were a big part of giving people the confidence that Dublin players could win at the highest level in All-Ireland competitions.

“Then obviously his coaching in 2009, '10, and '11 with Dublin was exceptional. The team were in great physical condition and came on a tonne in the three years. If you look at it like that, Mickey Whelan's hand-print has been all over the ten years of Dublin's dominance of Gaelic Football.

“There are a lot of players who came through his hands either with DCU, St. Vincent's, or Dublin and his coaching stood to them all and his imprint is all over it. He has a unique record in relation to that period and what he gave to Dublin football.”

Whelan was a friend of his father but Gilroy first got to know him properly when his fellow club-man was appointed Dublin Senior Football Manager in 1996.

Whelan had a tough act to follow in so far as Dublin had won an All-Ireland the previous year under Pat O’Neill and were an ageing team that were past their best.

He was probably the right man at the wrong time, because his modern methods of coaching weren’t quite the right fit for a panel of players used to doing things in a more traditional way.

“Even then he was ahead of his time,” says Gilroy. “He was doing stuff like having you cover shorter distances on a sprinting pace...more repetitions of it...people weren't used to it and he was just a real innovator and had a great way of looking into other sports to get ideas.

“He'd bring hurdles down to training, he'd bring all sorts of things into training to make things interesting and they were always with a purpose that had an aspect of the game.

“He was able to connect everything you were doing from a training perspective to a reason to do it in the game.

“Unfortunately at the time that Dublin team that won the All-Ireland in 1995 was on a downward curve and probably stronger earlier in the nineties, '92/'93, but didn't win an All-Ireland.

“I think it was a very difficult situation to come into because fellas were probably the wrong age and the game he was trying to play and the methods of training were quite demanding.

“It put a lot of responsibility on the players and it was just one of those things that didn't work out at the time. I think his methods were more than vindicated later on.”

Whelan was ahead of the coaching curve simply because he had more knowledge than most Gaelic games coaches in Ireland at the time.

An All-Ireland winning footballer himself with Dublin in 1963, he took a leap of faith six years later by moving to America to study Physical Education in West Chester University in Pennsylvania, an option which wasn’t available to him in Ireland.

He subsequently also completed a Masters degree in West Virginia and after six years of study decided to move home with his wife and family rather than take up the option of working in America.

Kevin Heffernan made good use of his coaching acumen in the 1970s with the Dublin footballers, and St. Vincent’s GAA club have always drawn profitably on it too.

Whelan actually played most of his club career with Clanna Gael, winning an a Dublin Senior Football Championship in 1968.

But when he returned to Dublin after his stint in America he settled in Sutton and was persuaded to come out of playing retirement by Kevin Heffernan and joint up with St. Vincent’s.

He enjoyed an Indian summer with the Marino club, winning two Dublin Championship and an All-Ireland Club championship.

His achievements as a coach and manager in the club are many.

He masterminded the 1981 County Senior Hurling and Football championship double in the club’s jubilee year, but Gilroy reckons even that stellar success was eclipsed by managing an unfancied St. Vincent’s senior football team to Dublin, Leinster, and All-Ireland SFC success in 2007/2008.

“It was just an extraordinary achievement because he blended a load of young fellas and created a team pretty much out of nothing because there hadn't been a whole pile of juvenile success or anything,” he says.

“He had this unbelievable ability to make sure a team was at its peak when it needed to be at its peak. His physical preparation of any team that I was involved in meant that they were always peaking at the exact right time. He would give them the belief that they were fitter than any other team around.

“He had a way of using the ball for every single thing that he did from a coaching perspective. So even though you were doing hard work in training, he was fooling you by hypnotising you with the ball. He was the one person who could do a training session that would last for two and a half hours and you'd feel you were only there for 45 minutes. He had an incredible way of keeping things interesting.

“You became so comfortable with the ball and used to the ball that he'd instil a confidence into a group of people because you knew you hadn't cheated and that you'd put in all the work. He was just incredible at doing that.”

Whelan wasn’t just a very accomplished fitness and skills coach, he was also a shrewd operator on the sideline and someone with a knack for persuading his players anything was possible.

Those two traits came to the fore in that All-Ireland winning club campaign when St Vincent’s caused upsets in both the All-Ireland semi-final and final itself by beating club kingpins Crossmaglen Rangers and Nemo Rangers.

“It was a big challenge when you saw the draw and you were maybe thinking a Leinster Championship would be the height of it for us, but Mickey absolutely believed we could beat both of them,” says Gilroy.

“The performance in the semi-final against Crossmaglen, I think we completely surprised them. Mickey had done all sorts of things to create that situation where Crossmaglen probably did underestimate us.

“They came up to watch our League Final against Plunketts that year and Mickey mixed the team up all over the place and we were wondering what the hell was going on. We got beaten in the League Final and that was the last competitive game we played before the Crossmaglen match and it was the one that Crossmaglen saw so they were gearing up for that team.

“He was always doing things like that. He would take the hit in a League match for the benefit of the Championship.

“I remember him doing it against Kilmacud Crokes where he didn't put out his best team and put people into different positions to ensure we gave a performance that wasn't fluent so you'd surprise the opposition when you put out your proper team for the Championship. He was all the time thinking like that, he was a different breed.”

Eight months after playing his part in that St. Vincent’s All-Ireland Final win, Gilroy was the somewhat surprise choice of the County Board to succeed Paul Caffrey as the Dublin senior football team manager.

It ultimately proved to be an inspired decision, but Gilroy would never have accepted the role had he not been able to persuade Mickey Whelan to join his ticket as team coach.

“There's no way I would have taken the job without him being part of it,” says Gilroy.

“I wouldn't have had the experience or the know-how to go after an inter-county job at that time. There's no way I would have attempted something like that unless he was coming in as the coach. It was very much a necessity for me because he had all those tools.

“I could bring a bit of organisation and structure to the thing, but without him that wouldn't have been a possibility for me to even contemplate him doing the job.”

Gilroy and Whelan were still working together well as a double-act up to last year with the St. Vincent’s Camogie team that narrowly lost the Dublin Senior Final.

He’s in his eighties now, but Whelan remains as passionate about helping players unlock their full potential as ever and it’s an enthusiasm he’s passed on to countless other coaches in the club.

“His input into coaching throughout the whole club and impact he's had with different people in terms of the types of coaching that goes on in St. Vincent's has been huge,” says Gilroy.

“He would have been doing that over the last 10 years and introducing fairly set methods that have been invaluable to the club. His legacy is huge down there.

“He’s still having a positive influence too with Dublin in terms of Bryan Cullen’s role there (High Performance Manager), because Bryan definitely has been influenced a lot by Mickey.

“When Mickey was teaching in DCU he would have taught Bryan and he obviously coached him too.

“Dublin are getting a huge benefit out of Bryan's experience on the preparation side of things for the last eight or nine years and Mickey definitely influenced that.”

Whelan has positively impacted countless players over the course of his long coaching career and it’s a safe bet that many of them will make it their business to attend the launch of his autobiography on Friday.

“Everyone is looking forward to it and it'll be a super evening for him and his family,” says Gilroy. “It's really nice that it's happening in the club. Fair play to him for doing it, I know he put a lot of effort into it.

“Like anything Mickey does he does it 110 per cent, so I’m really looking forward to reading it.”

You can download free tickets for the launch of Mickey Whelan’s autobiography on Friday night in St. Vincent’s GAA clubhouse HERE: https://vins.ie/booklaunch