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'The Jacks are back': how the Dubs put their stamp on Gaelic football
Analysis: The swell in support for Kevin Heffernan's high flying Dubs in the 1970s signalled something significant and new for the GAA
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'The Jacks are back'. The legendary broadcaster Michael O'Hehir proclaimed as much in his All-Ireland final television match commentary, by which time The Memories, a popular act on the Irish showband circuit, had already rhapsodized about it on a 7-inch single released by Rex Records.
The Likes of Heffo's Army by The Memories from 1974
It was 1974 and the 'the Jacks' in question were the Dublin Gaelic footballers – 'the Dubs' - who had emerged from relative obscurity to win that September's senior football title. 'From poverty to plenty in twelve short months', as one sports journalist put it.
In the telling of Gaelic football's story, this would come to mark a defining moment in the sport's modernisation - and not just for the higher standards for strength and fitness that appeared to have been set. Rather, it marked the moment where Gaelic games, so long associated with the recreational rhythms of rural Ireland, acquired a distinctly urban accent and its spectator appeal began to extend to a cohort of city and suburban youth that had no previous relationship with the GAA.
Former Dublin footballer and St. Vincent's clubman Kevin Heffernan spearheaded this breakthrough. He observed how his team had succeeded 'to a large degree' in replacing 'the names of English soccer stars in the minds of young footballing enthusiasts and by their example in Irish sporting life' to having 'contributed to maintaining the national identity in the city.'
Variations on this observation abounded. There was a near consensus that the coming of the Dubs was a matter of profound significance not just for the GAA in the capital, but for the broader welfare of the Association as a whole.
There are several reasons for this. For a start, the team's record in winning three All-Irelands in four years represented levels of success that were, at the time, unprecedented for a team populated by native Dubliners. The early development of the GAA in Dublin had been driven more by the city's rural migrants than by native Dubliners, and it was these who had founded many of Dublin's first GAA clubs (many centred around workplaces or occupations) and filled the ranks of the county's teams. They were sufficiently good to helping the county to an impressive 19 All-Ireland titles - 14 in football, five in hurling – by the time the GAA's Silver Jubilee was reached in 1934.
There was no sustaining this success rate. Dublin's fortunes waned noticeably after 1925 when the GAA introduced a new rule that permitted players to play for either their county of birth or residence. Dublin county teams consequently drew from a shallower pool of players and fewer All-Irelands were won. Post 1925, indeed, Heffo's Dubs became the first Dublin team to enjoy a period of sustained success - and Jim Gavin's would be the next with the five-in-a-row.
But how did Heffernan, aided by selectors Donal Colfer and Lorcan Redmond, do it? The answer is superficially simple: by gathering around him the right people and getting them to play in a way that suited them best.
Heffernan stressed that he wanted the right type of players, as opposed to necessarily the best players. He wanted players with character; players who would commit fully to the vision he set out for them. Once he had that, he explained that the job of management was three-fold: (i) to improve their individual skill levels; (ii) to ensure that they each achieved maximum fitness and (iii) develop field tactics that made the most these attributes.
From RTÉ Archives, highlights of 1977 All Ireland football semi-final between Dublin and Kerry with commentary from Michael O'Hehir
This he did to a dramatic effect. The fast movement of players and the ball helped to create space and scoring opportunities. The fluidity it brought to the game led writer Ulick O'Connor to extol that it was 'like watching soccer in the air', a tribute that doubtless disturbed some GAA traditionalists.
The Dubs' swashbuckling style did not sweep all before it, however. It met its match in a young Kerry team under the tutelage of Mick O'Dwyer which surprised many by winning the All-Ireland title in 1975 and surprised even more by going on to become one of the greatest teams of all time. Heffo's Dublin and O'Dwyer's Kerry met five times in five years in championship football during the 1970s in a rivalry that a captivated media played up as a clash of opposites: urban versus rural, city versus county, culchie versus jackeen.
This was a form of stereotyping that only partly stood up to scrutiny. As journalist Mick Dunne observed of their 1975 All-Ireland final encounter, Kerry had only one farmer on their side, despite being standard-bearers for the Irish countryside, and Dublin counted market gardener Paddy Reilly from St. Margaret's in rural north Dublin amongst its ranks. There was also no shortage of so -called "townies" in the Kerry team, the difference being, Dunne pointed out, that 'Dublin city is so much bigger a town than Killarney or Tralee."
That it certainly was, and the disparity in size became ever more pronounced throughout the 1970s. Indeed, the rapid spread of new suburban housing was such that it would end up tipping the capital's population over the one million mark for the first time by the close of the decade.
The rise of 'the Dubs' coincided with this moment of major demographic development and was a gift to a GAA that was increasingly anxious about its place in an Irish society that was no longer predominantly rural-rooted. It was therefore notable that as support for the Dubs snowballed from 1974 onwards, the team tapped into a youth culture that, on big match days, turned Croke Park (and the Hill 16 terrace in particular) into a riot of colour and noise which bore resemblances to images that TV would have made familiar from cross-channel soccer stadiums.
'We got pages of Dublin stories, badges, scarves, tee-shirts, pop-songs and all the other things that go with being successful sports teams nowadays', journalist Eugene McGee noted in late 1974. 'But in Dublin's case, we got it all to a degree that the GAA had never before experienced.'
If the story of the GAA's subsequent development in the capital owes more to patterns of club organisation and to well-resourced coaching and games development strategies, the swell in support for Heffo's Dubs still signalled something significant and new for the GAA. It culturally connected the association to a growing constituency of urban youth and inspired a support base that in subsequent decades would prove both a rich source of Croke Park spectacle and a driver of GAA revenues.
