Authors: Donal Keenan
Paul Earley (right) shares a joke with two other legends of Gaelic games, Peter Canavan (left) and Nicky English (centre).
©
Brian Lawless/SPORTSFILE
Paul was part of the earliest experiments between Gaelic football and Australian Rules. The two organisations were in the initial stages of discussions about potential links when the youngster from west Roscommon spotted an advertisement in the
Sunday Press
looking for interested young footballers to take part in trials in Dublin organised by the Melbourne Demons club. His sister Denise was living in Australia and that was certainly part of the attraction.
‘I was a mad sportsman, I loved playing sport and you can imagine what kind of an opportunity it presented to me,’ he explains. His father and guiding influence, Peadar, was ill at the time, so Paul withdrew from the trial. Seán Wight, a Kerry minor with a Scottish background, and Dubliner James Fahy were chosen to travel. Peadar Earley passed away in February 1983 and Paul took some time to decide on his future. Dermot returned from a tour of duty in Lebanon for the funeral but football was barely mentioned.
When Paul’s interest was revived, after a period of mourning, a special trial was arranged for him in Artane in Dublin. A Christian Brother, Tom McDonnell, saw enough to provide a recommendation to the Demons that the young Earley had potential. By May, he had decamped to the capital of the state of Victoria and a completely new way of life. ‘London had been the extent of my travels up to then so you can just imagine what it was like to travel to the far side of the world at that time,’ he says.
His late arrival meant he had missed pre-season, but that merely introduced him to an even more frenetic way of life. ‘They just immersed me in football for the first couple of months. It was non-stop. Even today when I am coaching here I apply some of the things I learned then. I had a football in my hands almost all the time. It is one of the things that sticks in my mind, because the coaches were constantly telling you to keep a ball in hand. If you were sitting down, they wanted you to have the ball; watching television, they expected you to work with it. You brought a ball with you when you went for a walk. They wanted the ball to become an extension of your hand, to make the ball a natural part of your movement. It was a way of preparing you for whatever situation you encountered in a game. When the ball came to you, you were expected to get it with one grab; they didn’t want it to take two grabs. That was one too many.’
For most of his waking hours, he had a coach in attendance. When he wasn’t training, he attended clinics. ‘People think it’s getting used to the oval ball that causes the greatest difficulty for players coming from Ireland but it’s not. You learn the skills quickly. The biggest problem is game sense, game awareness, what to do, where to run, particularly in how you deal with the tackle. When you get the ball you have to move with pace, accelerate away from the tackle. In Gaelic football you have time to look up and see what is happening around you. If you do that in Australian Rules, you get nailed.
‘The biggest thing was the emphasis on skill development. Every session started with basic skills work. You might kick a ball back and across with another player maybe fifty times – left foot, right foot. You then work on the hand pass – right hand, left hand. They never allowed you to lose touch with the basic skills. As a professional player, they believed you should be able to perfect the skills on both sides of your body and they worked hard on that. As a coach now I put more emphasis on the skills side. Sometimes we neglect that here and we allow players to develop them themselves. We don’t spend enough time on the biomechanics of kicking and catching, and running and hand passing. We spend more time on teamwork and tactics, fitness and physical preparation to the detriment of the skills. We have improved a lot, but there is still some distance to go.
‘For example, when Tadhg
Kennelly went out the first thing they did was to change his running technique because they felt it would cause him some difficulty long-term with injuries. That wouldn’t have happened here. That’s professionalism – it’s about having the time and a number of different specialist coaches who can work on different aspects of the game with players. They are able to dissect the game and the players into component parts and allocate specialist coaches to work with individual players – be it a psychologist, a kicking coach, or a strength and conditioning coach. We are trying to do that here now, but with limited time it’s just not possible to do it to the same extent. It’s amazing how much time coaches here do put in with the players, but there are just not enough hours in the day after work to do it. Coaches have plenty of time with the players there; the players have plenty of time to do their work and to rest.’
For many reasons which he articulates well, Paul has no fears about players being recruited by the Australians. They are treated well, most come home and when they do they are better footballers for the experience. ‘Most of the guys who have gone out will say they are looked after well, the environment is great, it’s the great outdoor life. It’s different to the soccer apprentice in England who will have to do all the menial tasks and is way down the pecking order. In Australia, the Irish are integrated very quickly. There is no class distinction of any sort. It is full-time, so you can manage your body in the right way to play at your peak all the time.
‘The other difference and something that we need to learn here is that the players are incredibly flexible and their level of agility and flexibility is far superior to ours because they spend so much time on injury prevention programmes and recovery sessions. The science and knowledge has developed to the extent that they realise it’s important to train hard but to train smart and to have a proper recovery. The physical make-up of the individuals is such that it allows them to play for a number of years and avoid injuries as much as possible.’
Paul had further experience of the professional game in Australia after his own playing days had ended here in Ireland. He moved to Sydney for three years between 1996 and 1998 and became involved with the Swans AFL club. It was quickly apparent that they had made huge advances in every aspect of preparing a professional sportsman to do his job to the best of his ability at all times. He recalls their attitude towards injuries. ‘They had developed what they called an SIPP, which was a Specific Injury Prevention Programme which was designed for each player. They would assess each player through the season and if somebody had a hamstring problem – if their right hamstring was at 80 per cent of the strength it would be at their peak, they would have a specific programme for that player to get back to 100 per cent. And they wouldn’t let him back playing until he was 100 per cent. In an amateur context if the hamstring is deemed okay or nearly there, the next game is most important. What happens then is that a minor injury can become a chronic injury and become a problem for three or four years.’
Paul did assist in the movement of a number of players from Ireland to Australia and is well aware of the concerns among sections of the GAA over ongoing recruitment efforts which have been capturing the headlines in Ireland for a number of years. ‘I don’t know Ricky Nixon [the agent most publicly associated with luring Irish players to Australia] so I don’t know what he is doing. I did have an involvement with Tadhg
Kennelly going to Australia and I was involved with Marty
Clarke going over. I haven’t had any involvement in the last three or four years for a number of reasons, largely my involvement with coaching development with the Leinster Council and I haven’t had the time. My only interest in doing it was to maintain the links and give some guys who are interested an opportunity to do it and to explain to them and their parents what’s involved, the pros and cons. I think it’s important to keep the link alive because it is the closest game to Gaelic football on the planet and because we have learned so much from them.
‘I wouldn’t have the same worries that others have. The stats prove the vast majority of the players come back and when they do, they add value. Anthony
Tohill came back and was a top player for Derry for many years. Colin
Corkery brought great value back to Cork. Brian Stynes in Dublin and Dermot
McNicholl in Derry were two others who were much improved footballers when they came back and gave great service to their counties. Brendan
Murphy is back and will be a big addition to Carlow. Marty
Clarke is back and he will be a massive addition to Down. In many ways we have gained more than the Aussies have because they have invested a lot of time and money in the players who are now back here. Keeping the link alive is important for coaching as well, to allow us access to the most modern methodologies and practices.’
He hears the arguments about professionalism in the GAA from those who oppose the notion and those who would love to embrace it. But he would love a more coherent approach to examining how the GAA should progress in the future; what is possible within the amateur framework that currently exists or whether the GAA could support and sustain any form of professional sport. ‘I don’t know the answer about the way forward and I know there are polarised opinions out there,’ he admits. ‘I would love to see someone commissioned to do a study on it. There’s a discussion every week about it – can the GAA go professional or go semi-professional. Every player, if he is being honest, will say he would love to play full-time. If they are asked in an interview they say no because it is politically the right thing to do. But all of them would love to play without the pressure of work. It is an incredibly demanding task at the moment to be a county footballer. The study would examine if it was sustainable; what impact would it have on the traditions of the GAA; is it financially feasible? It probably isn’t unless there are radical changes to the way the GAA is run.’
He reflects on the tenure of Liam
Mulvihill as the director general of the GAA and regrets that more heed was not taken of some of Mulvihill’s musings during his term of office. ‘Liam
Mulvihill always had interesting stuff in his annual reports and they never were implemented. I remember particularly one report when he talked of moving away from the county system and to a cluster of teams such as Sligo and Leitrim merging, or Roscommon and Longford merging. You could call them the North West Tigers or something. You would have similar amalgamations around the country and it would be interesting to see what impact it would have.
‘I know if you put it out as an idea now you would get some very entrenched views. Some people would mock it. But look at what has happened in rugby in Ireland; look at Munster and what they have achieved. It is a modern phenomenon. Look at Leinster. It’s a franchise. Leinster have started winning and they are gathering great support, something they had never experienced before. They have people from every sporting background following them and they are playing in front of huge crowds every time they play at home.
‘I have no doubt if Sligo and Leitrim got together and started winning, or if Roscommon and Longford got together and started to be competitive, then they would galvanise a support base.’
* * *
There was no one in Ireland as proud as Dermot Earley when the All Star football selection for 1985 was announced in November. His own career had brought him two of the coveted awards. Now, in the year in which he had finally retired from the game, his twenty-one-year-old brother Paul joined him in the famous roll of honour when he was named the All Star full forward. Paul’s career trajectory mirrored that of his illustrious older brother. He had played for the Roscommon minors for three years; he played in an All-Ireland under-21 final, though in Paul’s case it was a losing experience, against Donegal. He had also enjoyed success in 1985 with Michael Glaveys when they won the Roscommon Intermediate Championship. ‘That was one of the real highlights of my career,’ he insists.
His senior career with Roscommon, however, was littered with disappointments in the latter years of the 1980s. He played in four Connacht finals, plus one replay, between 1985 and 1989 and lost three times to Mayo (‘they paid me back in spades for those years when Roscommon beat them when I was a schoolboy’) and once to Galway. The loss in 1989, after a replay, by just two points, was particularly frustrating as they watched Mayo go so close to winning the All-Ireland final against Cork.
In 1990 they finally got it right and beat Galway in the provincial final before losing to All-Ireland champions Cork in the semi-final. A year later Paul helped Roscommon to another provincial title. Meath, champions of 1987 and 1988, provided the opposition in the All-Ireland semi-final. It was a tight, tense affair, the highlight of which was a brilliant Derek Duggan goal. It was not sufficient. Brian
Stafford’s free-taking proved the undoing of Roscommon. ‘Looking back,’ says Paul, ‘you realise that when you lose a number of finals and then win one, the satisfaction levels are much higher. I had lost four, so to go on and win two Connacht finals back to back was incredible.’
By then his body was showing signs of wear and tear. He played on until the mid-1990s, but it was a struggle. ‘Because of the number of injuries I had I didn’t enjoy it as much. If I had some of that time over again I would have retired earlier because I was in so much pain that I didn’t enjoy it.’
Between 1987 and 1991, Dermot served as deputy military advisor to the secretary general of the United Nations, based in New York. Despite a schedule that brought him to the strife-torn corners of the earth, Dermot kept himself informed of events back in Roscommon and in Paul’s career. On his return, he immersed himself again in the life of the Sarsfields club in Newbridge and paid close attention to Roscommon. When a managerial vacancy arose at the end of the 1992 Championship, Dermot was approached and subtle pressure was applied. Paul’s presence on the panel made the decision a little easier and, though success eluded them, the Earleys enjoyed their short period together in different roles. Dermot also managed Kildare and assisted at different levels and in various roles with Sarsfields.