Legends: Pat Gilroy

This Thursday evening, August 22, at 7pm, Dublin's Pat Gilroy will take the Bord Gáis Energy Legend's Tour at Croke Park.

Pat Gilroy will forever be remembered by Dublin GAA fans as the man who led the county to the 2011 All-Ireland title, ending a 16-year wait to bring the Sam Maguire Cup back to the capital in the process.

He managed Dublin from 2009-2012, and as well as the 2011 All-Ireland title, he led the county to Leinster titles in 2009, 2011 and 2012. As a player, he won four Leinster titles from 1992-1995 and came on as a substitute in Dublin's All-Ireland final victory over Tyrone in 1995.

As well as his managerial and playing exploits with Dublin, Pat is also deeply associated with the St. Vincent's GAA club. He finished his playing career with the Marino based club in spectacular fashion, winning Dublin, Leinster and All-Ireland club medals in the 2007/2008 season from full-forward. He also managed the team that season.

Away from the football fields, Pat has a very busy job with Dalkia, an energy service company. He is currently the Managing Director of the Ireland and UK sections of the business.

Ahead of his Legends Tour this week, GAA.ie caught up with Pat to discuss both his managerial and playing careers, the role of St. Vincent's GAA club in his life, how he managed to balance his busy working life with managing the Dublin senior football team, and much more besides.

Click here to make a booking for Pat's tour.

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OUR THING

My first real memory was the 1974 All-Ireland final. I was about three or four years of age and I was at that game. My whole life after that was being completely immersed within St. Vincent's.

My father Jackie was at various different times chairman and in different offices in the club, and he was always managing teams and that, so life revolved around St. Vincent's an awful lot in our free time.

That's what we did. That was our thing, and it has been a huge part of my life from that age onwards.

MARINO AND BEYOND

I was involved with Dublin teams when I was 12 or 13 but I took a big stretch and I didn't get involved in anything until U21. And I was actually getting called up more for hurling teams at that time than football teams.

I was on Dublin U16 and that kind of thing but I never played minor for Dublin. But I was involved in some regional development teams. I suppose the main thing in my juvenile life was playing football and hurling with St. Vincent's, Scoil Mhuire in the early days, then Ardscoil Rís and then moving onto Trinity College. They were the really big parts until I was 20.

NOBODY GETS ABOVE THEIR STATION AT ST. VINCENT'S

I'd be shot if I said it was only a football club even if people do think that. It's a football, hurling, camogie and ladies' football club now. Beyond the playing field, we've great history in the place with people winning all sorts of things and people with 15 and 16 Dublin Championship medals from the past. Vincent's won 13 out of 14 Dublin football championships from 1949 to 1962.

But the thing that really marks St. Vincent's apart is that despite all of those successes and people with lots of medals around the place, everybody would treat those people exactly the same as everyone else. They're not put on a pedestal. There's a great humility to the place which I think really sets it apart. It's a club where you're as likely to see Brian Mullins being the chairman as you are to see him going out and cleaning the laneway on a 'club clean day'. That's kind of what's expected of you. It's not written down and there's no creed or rule, that's just the way it is.

Nobody would ever get above their station at St. Vincent's and if they did, they'd be taken down pretty quickly. And I think that's probably the biggest thing I could say about St. Vincent's. There's a great atmosphere at St. Vincent's. I'm lucky in that all four of my own kids are playing there now. I suppose it's our parish. When you're living in Dublin, a lot of people are not necessarily living in the area but your club becomes like your parish and becomes your community. Vincent's is a lot more than just those successes. It brings a lot to people's lives.

KEVIN HEFFERNAN

He was a good friend of my Dad's. But when I was really young, he was never involved in teams with me. The first time I encountered him directly involved with a team, I was probably 26 or 27 so it was probably the generation behind from a Dublin perspective. The likes of Bobby Doyle, Pat O'Neill, Jimmy Brogan and Fran Ryder, those guys had an influence but of course they were heavily influenced by him. You couldn't help but be influenced.

But as I got older, into my later 20s and that, I got a lot more insight into what his philosophies were on football and that type of thing because he managed teams and he was at games. But in the very young years, because so many people had gone under his reign, you had so many managers who had to have been influenced by him so he had an influence in the sort of spirit that St. Vincent's brought to the game.

And a big part of that spirit is that no one is ever bigger than the club or the team, no matter what the situation is. That was a really important part of being on a St. Vincent's team.

1995

It's a stand-out event. I'd always say this - there were many other years where you didn't get those successes at the end, but they were still really enjoyable years. That endgame isn't the only thing.

But it does make a year a little bit special when you do have that success. 1995 stands out for me in that I had probably been a regular the year before but then I was intermittently on and off the team. It was a year that we all really tried our best. It was another part where I learned, ok I wasn't playing, but I might still have an important part to play. I think every one of the 30 players on that panel probably contributed 15 or 20 minutes at some stage during the year that was important.

That stood out as part of the success of that team. I was a young guy, and you thought there was going to be plenty more coming after that. It wasn't to be but it was a great occasion and it was great to be involved.

ALL-IRELAND SUCCESS WITH ST. VINCENT'S

I think it was my 18th Dublin championship and it was my second final and we had only got to five semi-finals in that time, and when you consider that before that, since they had gone senior, St. Vincent's had won two out of every three championships.

So we had a fairly barren period that coincided with my career, so to think of winning a Dublin Championship was an amazing thing and a real goal for me but to end up with an All-Ireland title was just all your dreams coming true.

COACHING

I'd been coaching juveniles from I was about 19 or 20. I'd got involved with that section of the club and was involved with various different teams. I had also coached in college, when I was in college I managed the college team for a year. I was player-manager with Vincent's but I had never really managed a big group on a stand alone basis, apart from that year and a half with Vincent's. But I had been involved heavily in coaching every year when I was playing, to some extent.

PAT GILROY, DUBLIN MANAGER

When 'Pillar' stepped down, it didn't even cross my mind once to be doing the job. It just didn't cross my mind at all. It just didn't come into my reckoning. It went on a while though and then I got a call. Somebody asked me would I come and have a chat so I had a chat. Then they offered me the job.

A big part of me doing it was the fact that Mickey Whelan was quite interested in being involved coaching. I certainly wouldn't have attempted to do it without him. He had so much know-how in that area and I just had none really in terms of the physical preparation and coaching of players at elite level. He had a good bit of experience and he was keen to do it.

So in fairness to him, he managed me to win an All-Ireland club title and I felt I owed it back to him. He was keen to do it and he felt it would be good to do it with me. And I think it worked well in the years that we were there.

ELITE LEVEL COACHING

I did very little of it, Mickey did most of it. He was the coach. I learned an awful lot from him in my time. In the last year, Niall Moyna took over most of that but I would have done a little bit in 2012. It obviously wasn't to great success because we weren't successful ultimately. But we gave it a fair rattle, we didn't shame ourselves in trying to defend the All-Ireland. We just never hit the peaks. But I enjoyed 2012 as well and I did more coaching that year than in the other three.

DALKIA

Up until I was managing Dublin, I was responsible for managing Dalkia's business in Ireland, which was the energy management part. So I was the Managing Director. Since I left the Dublin job, I am now responsible for Dalkia Ireland and the UK since July of this year, so it means a lot of travel.

There's a good bit of expansion in what I've done in terms of my job and that pressure was coming on me to take on some more responsibility towards the back end of last year. It's an interesting job and it is something that I enjoy doing as well. It's certainly taking up a lot more time now, especially with all the travel, so it would be impossible to do anything football wise.

BALANCING DUBLIN AND DALKIA

It was tricky for the four years. Particularly the last one was very difficult. In one sense, the recession starting meant we had a different business model at Dalkia for a couple of years, where we weren't doing as much investing as we would have done previously.

So when I took on the job in 2009, the timing from that point of view was good. And luckily, we had a very mature business here in Ireland so I had a great team around me. I had great support, particularly during the summer from the company in trying to do the job.

But at times it was difficult, there's no doubt about that, but the people who suffered the most were family. They really did have to give up a lot. Summer holidays for example - this year was the first time in a long time that I went on a summer holiday and that was a very nice thing to do.

80 HOURS

You were looking at 45-50 hours of work and maybe another 30 in terms of football at the real peak. The rest of the time was with family, and I got a good chance to see my own kids and that. But you were looking at a 70 or 80 hour week with the football.

Depending on certain things...the off the field stuff, such as watching videos took up a lot of time, even though we had great analysis done for us, you still had to watch through that and get your sense of it as well. So it was time consuming but it was thoroughly enjoyable as well and it was a great time.

BEGINNINGS IN 2009

I think for a number of years, Dublin teams had been getting prepared extremely well. There was a real professional set-up that we were stepping into. So guys were used to a really high standard. But what we needed to do was that while Dublin were really dominant in Leinster, we needed to figure out how to get an edge to win an All-Ireland.

That was the only thing the team hadn't really done for a long time. So I think we piggybacked on a lot of stuff that was there and then you're just trying to add the fresh bits for the All-Ireland series. That was building on some of the things that Mickey had done with Vincent's and then you're building on other bits you pick up along the way, but all in all, we knew we were getting good players and we were getting fellas who had been well prepared.

So it was a matter of trying to find the edge and there's a bit of trial and error in that as well. We tried certain things in 2009 that didn't work and we had to do a bit more in 2010 and I think we started in the league in 2010 to really make a difference. I think we started to see in that campaign a difference in the way the lads were playing and we were getting success with it too, in that we were starting to beat some top teams.

But there were just so many aspects to the job. There's no way you can go into that job realising the amount of things that you have to think about. Certainly because I hadn't been involved in it before, it did surprise me how broad the role was.

It's everything from diet through to conditioning through to hydration through to what's going on in guys' personal lives. You end up trying to help out with work schedules, family schedules. There's so many different aspects and then the mental preparation side of it is huge. How guys get over a bad training session, a bad game. How they get on with it after having a good game.

That mental side of it was very time-consuming and was something I didn't really anticipate being as big a thing as it ended up being in the long-term. The video analysis, the statistics regarding players' conditioning...it was very broad. Then, that's before getting into the medical side, because again, even though you had specialists there, you needed to have an understanding of what was going on so you knew what personnel you would have available.

We were really lucky that we had high calibre people in all of those positions that you could just pretty much leave them responsible for it and then you focus on good coaching and team selection. But you still had to have a good understanding of all the areas.

MANAGING DIRECTOR V DUBLIN MANAGER

There were a lot of similarities between the two. But with the football, there were certain aspects that were even harder because as a manager, the 40 players all want a bit of you, the management team all want a bit of you. In other words, it's less structured, management wise than it may be in a work situation. In that respect it's harder.

But the real advantage on the football side is when you get the live feedback. When you do something in training, you see the guys do it on the pitch, so you're able to coach much more accurately then in a work situation. In a work situation, people tell you what went on rather than you necessarily observing them. But you could always blend the two and benefit both roles.

2010: MEATH 5-9 DUBLIN 0-13

I think that defeat was the catalyst to go back to what we had been trying to do in the league and absolutely stick with it. Our captain at the time was Paul Griffin, and he was injured. David Henry was the stand-in and he spoke in the dressing room in the Cusack Stand straight after the match and it meant none of us needed to say anything, because he had just said it all.

He really galvanised the group. We got together on the Tuesday night and we were determined that the good work put in for the league and the hard training we had done wasn't going to be left behind in the 2010 championship. Really, I'd have to give huge credit to the players for the way they responded to it because they did really change from within. They had worked so hard during the league and they knew that defeat to Meath wasn't a fair reflection of the progress they had made.

DEFEAT TO CORK

I think Cork were just better than us that day and that's the harsh fact. They were a bit further on and I think we had given our absolute all that day and just had nothing left. We probably learned a load of little things, even about hydration, that we maybe weren't thinking as clearly as we could have been in the last 10 or 15 minutes. Maybe substitutes wise we might have done a bit better from the sideline. We had all given our best and it just wasn't good enough. We weren't quite there and I think Cork were the form team and they deserved to win the All-Ireland.

But it gave us all a sense of optimism. We were very disappointed because we had a good lead. But we all knew there was those little things that we could add to that, that maybe would get us over the line the following year.

2011

It's funny. There was one particular moment when we went down to play Westmeath in the O'Byrne Cup. I think it was the only match we lost all year, apart from the league final. Westmeath beat us on a very wet Tuesday night. We were about 10 or 12 points down at half-time. It was a horrible night, a re-fixed O'Byrne Cup match. The character that a lot of the older guys showed for January 6...

I remember coming back on the bus and saying, Ok we lost, but my God, we really dug deep that day to pull back what was not that important of a fixture. We went on and won the O'Byrne Shield. There was an air of determination to push on. Every game the team was trying to go up a notch.

We didn't set the world alight in Leinster that year, we played well when we needed to. But really, the Tyrome match in the quarter-final was when a lot of the things that you hope come together really came together.

DONEGAL

The character of the team in the semi-final was exceptional. To cope, and show that kind of patience, against the heavy, physical challenges Donegal brought was really exceptional.

I wouldn't say we had expected exactly what happened against Donegal. But we had discussed the possibility of it being 0-0 to 0-0 at half-time. We had those kind of discussions. The fact that there was so many men back...we hadn't worked enough on how to break that down to be honest but we had felt that, physically, we would be in better nick than them and that we should be able to break them down a bit towards the end.

We probably should have got a goal in that game. We were through once or twice. Again I think, in terms of the learning curve, we were a little bit ahead of Donegal physically at that stage, and that's what got us over the line.

CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN

Having come through a semi-final like that, we were just so well prepared for the final, no matter what. It was the ultimate preparation. No matter what faced us against Kerry, we were in really good shape both mentally and physically to seriously put it up to them.

You know, at the end of the day we won by a point. It was an amazing day for us and a great win, but it could have gone either way. A match between two very closely matched teams but we just got the rub. You take it when it comes, because it doesn't come that often.

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The Bord Gáis Energy Legends Tour with Pat Gilroy is scheduled to take place on Thursday, August 22 at 7pm. Admission includes a visit to the recently-refurbished GAA Museum, which is home to many exclusive exhibits, including the original Sam Maguire Cup, first presented to Kildare in 1928.

For further information and booking:

GAA Museum, Tel 01 819 2323E: tours@crokepark.ie or check out www.crokepark.ie/gaa-museum Prices for the Legends Tours are as follows:Adult EUR15, Child EUR8.50, Student (Under 16) and Senior EUR10.00, Family EUR40.00