Every thing. Every day. How Doon reached their moon with McGrath

It was just where he was in life and where others in his life were in theirs: his father Nickey passing away, his eldest son Fionn doing the Leaving, striving to get enough points for medicine.

When you’re as interesting a man as McGrath you have other interests: writing, like for this paper; the study of positive psychology, so much so he signed up for a masters course in UCC on the subject. And so hurling took something of a back seat, or at least he found himself taking a back seat whenever he was involved with it. Still driven but no longer driving it.

He enjoyed that new vantage point. Met wonderful people, some of whom he’d describe as life mentors, like Tony ‘Sack’ Walsh in Faythe Harriers, the businessman Tom Brennan who talked him into coaching the Laois minors, Shane O’Brien with the Dublin U20s. Saw some joyous sights, like Portlaoise packed with Laois and Offaly supporters for a Leinster minor final. He identified with all those causes but he didn’t or couldn’t fully immerse himself in them.

“The Laois minors suited me, something under the radar after something as high-profile as Waterford. Faythe Harriers the same, I loved it down there but I missed one or two of their championship matches as I was on holidays. And I was very conscious of being away when the fat was in the fire and that it wasn’t good enough.

“So while I was still highly committed to them and also the Dublin 20s when I was with them, it wasn’t the obsession it would have been from say with De La Salle in 2012, the [Waterford] minors in 2013 and then the seniors from ’14 to ’18.

“I’ve seen guys play it cute and been visible when they’re involved with a winning team but then when they’re losing, they’re kind of saying, ‘Oh I’m not really involved! I was just doing a small bit with them’! And I won’t say I was creeping into that category but in my own head space I was beginning to ask if I was.” 

Then last January while he was in the car Darragh O’Donovan rang. McGrath normally doesn’t answer an unknown number but instinctively he answered this one.

“I read the Examiner the other day about Tommy Dunne getting the call from Tomás Mulcahy in the Glen and I suppose it was something similar with me. When a guy with multiple All Irelands rings you, your ears prick up that small bit more; your interest can be accelerated based on who is making the call. And I’d always thought from some of the interviews Darragh had given through the years that he was more forthcoming than most about the Limerick set up, that there was something different about him, that this fella had a bit about him.” 

Soon he was meeting O’Donovan and his Doon and Limerick teammates Richie English and Pat Ryan in Ballykisteen and team mentor club officer Dinny Moloney, “a packed delegation”.

“Right away I liked what I heard. There was obvious ambition there. I had watched with interest last year their semi-final against Na Piarsaigh which they lost on penalties. I suppose I identify with a team trying to make a breakthrough. People were talking about their being a big four in Limerick – Na Piarsaigh, Patrickswell, Kilmallock and Doon – but Doon were the only one of them that had yet to win a championship. 

"And it was something that we’d mention as the year went on: how there was really just a big three and that we were outside it which gave us a freedom and a mission to try and break into that special company proper.” 

With a clear and obvious goal, McGrath found himself ignited and immersed. “For the first time since Waterford that I’ve managed a team and been all in.” That meant gach rud, gach lá. 

Later in the year he’d co-opt a fine coach in Paul Keane from Adare as well as team back up with his trusted S&C coach Donal Treacy but in March he would just go down by himself twice a week. Stripping away everything to its core, “just using the back pitch, rough and ready stuff now”, gauging and soaking up the spirit of the team, club, place.

The same in how he approached games. Normally Doon can sleepwalk into a league quarter-final with the way that competition is run in Limerick but McGrath wouldn’t entertain any lethargy. “Every league game we looked at it as do or die. There was always nuggets to take away from a game. Maybe a guy going up to the forwards and being comfortable there. Further instilling good behaviours, that all-in hunger. The only league game we lost was the semi-final to Ahane without the county players.” 

Gach rud gach lá meant extracting and utilising every part of himself, especially his creative side. It wouldn’t be well known but as well as liking “everything from AC/DC and Guns n Roses to Coldplay and Take That”, McGrath and his family are steeped in musicals. He is a cousin of Bryan Flynn, the terrifically-talented theatre director of the Cork Opera House who wrote Michael Collins: A Musical Drama and directed everything from Grease to Chicago and multiple pantomimes before his tragically premature death 10 years ago. Derek saw them all and much more.

“I’d be a closet musicals fanatic! I’ve seen Billy Elliott four times, Kinky Boots the same, Les Misérables three times, Miss Saigon twice, Dear Evan Hansen. Listened repeatedly to the Hamilton soundtrack.

“Now, if there was a sing-song here at Christmas among hurling folk, it mightn’t be a number from any musicals I’d go for, but I get some great ideas from them. I remember watching an amateur production of Les Mis in 2007 and been struck by a line in One Day More, ‘Tomorrow we’ll discover/What Our God in heaven has in store.’ And I’d link that to an idea I had for the team, or get an idea for the team triggered by a lyric.” 

And so, in his time some of his teams have been treated to a track from The Greatest Showman as much as often they’ve heard Thunderstruck accompanying a motivational video. He’ll often have music playing in the dressing room before games, while appreciating it is for the median of the group, not everyone.

“When you’ve been around a group enough or enough groups, you’ll know there’ll be a guy snoozing in the corner. Another guy with headphones and his own music on. A good few then that will get a rush from an audio or visual clip. Others then like Tadhg de Burca, I wouldn’t even have to say anything. Silence can be the best communicator of all. Just a nod will do. I wouldn’t even have to say much to Darragh O’Donovan in Doon. He has his own way of psychologically preparing for a game so why interfere with it?” 

McGrath was all-encompassing when at the helm of the good ship Waterford. He was both Kinnerk and Kiely, manager and coach, rolled into one and even Caroline Currid as well: he grasped not just the importance of the tactical and technical but their mental and emotional state: how their careers and family were. Such a holistic approach meant a lot of time. Meeting up for coffee. Even calling over to the house. With Doon being nearly two hours away, it was more challenging to establish that connection.

“I guess it was more of a connective collective piece I tried to establish on a given night. There was one instance alright where I basically door-stepped one of the lads ahead of a championship match because he wasn’t going to be starting, but that was it. I had to show in other ways to the group that I was sincere and truthful and genuine and I suppose truly gave a shit.

“I remember the day of the Armagh-Kerry semi-final, we had a training camp that morning, then had a barbeque at the field and then went up to a couple of local pubs in Doon and watched the match. It was just another way of the group connecting all the more and me getting to chat and connect with them.

“With Waterford I was dealing with a lot of boys I had known since they were 12 years of age. And you grew to love them. I actually used that word when I left Waterford and I genuinely meant it. I loved those boys.

“And that doesn’t mean you were soft with them as some people would have you believe. Love means you’re willing to chastise them too when it’s needed and they can admonish me and I can come back and say to them, ‘God, you were right.’ 

“So I can’t be hypocritical and say that having been with the Doon boys since only March that I love them and they love me. But I’m loving my time with them, I love how it’s been going and I’m loving the process of connecting all the more with them. And I hope that in two or three years we can look each other in the eye and say, ‘God, we gave it some lash.’’ 

In Waterford they gave it some lash. It was all in. But it took a toll. He won’t mind admitting, it took a long time to be comfortable with being the former Waterford manager and following the fortunes of a cause and group he cared so passionately about.

“I remember the night of the 2017 All Ireland [defeat to Galway]. I had every intention of staying for 2018 but I didn’t say it. Whereas it struck me that a couple of weeks later Stephen Rochford made a point at the Mayo banquet that he and the whole crew would be back the next year. And that was the approach that Mayo crew took a few times: it goes on, we will be back. And that would set a tone for the following year.

“I sometimes think I’d have been better doing the same. Given that clarity on that night. Because if you start to get a bit cute and say ‘I’ll hold off and assess the lay of the land’, you can lose a small fraction of not so much the connection but the momentum you had with the players.

“In 2018 then we had all the horrendous injuries it was almost a blessing when people said, ‘Ah you should go back next year.’ I still had the support of the players. But I felt no, it was becoming too much of a long farewell. ‘One more year.’ To me it should be about being immersed in the work and not worrying about the consequences.

“The difficulty then in say 2019 and 2020 watching Waterford was because of the bond I had with the players. I know some people might not believe me but I actually disconnected from the players completely out of respect for the next man in [Paraic Fanning]: I texted some lads good luck the weekend of the league final and that was it.

“What probably didn’t help was that I had started doing work in the media. I love writing for the Examiner; the process of seeing a game and then having four days to have a take on it, but if I had my time over again I might have been better off leaving it for a year or two.

“I just finished Johnny Sexton’s book and he points out that he doesn’t buy this idea that a former player working in the media should just call it as they see it. If it means being critical of someone he’s gone to war with and over, then he doesn’t want a part of it. I’m not comparing myself to Johnny Sexton but I can relate to that. Honour and loyalty to someone you shared the dressing room with still is at play.

“This was probably the first year that I properly enjoyed watching Waterford again. I love Ronan O'Gara’s articles for the paper and I’ll always remember how brutally honest he was about the hurt and discomfort of watching Ireland finally beat New Zealand without him. And I’d have often thought about the Brick Walsh or Kevin Moran who gave their life to Waterford and going, ‘God, if they win it now when the lads are gone I’ll be sick for them.’ I think it’s human nature.

“But this year my youngest lad [Odhran, 11] was going to all the matches and I just became a normal supporter again.” 

Suitably detached, suitably engaged. The right blend. At last.

And so he was fine that the county board didn’t approach him to succeed Davy Fitzgerald; Peter Queally, someone he knows well and respects hugely as a coach and as a man is the fourth person to fill the position since McGrath left.

He had enough on with Doon. Just because it was club didn’t meant he could lower his own game.

“As a coach you’d be nervous going into a group like that, especially lads who have done so much with Limerick. But that helps keep you sharp, gives you an edge. It’s important you don’t feel like you can just rock in. Unprepared. Being in a classroom every day will tell you that. There’d be 10 guys in a class in De La Salle that are sharper than you and will be able to see if you’re not giving it all. And a dressing room is the same. They’d be very fast to see through you.” 

Instead they started to see things like he did, to the point they had only one vision.

“Our phrase for the year was ‘If not now, when?’ So we probably took the Gary Keegan approach of stepping into the pressure of it and attacking the idea of being vulnerable because we’ve expectations. And we would have done a couple of pre-mortems. Catastrophised. What if we did come short having gone all in?

There’s a book by a Navy Seal called Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom in which he talks about the getting the balance right between emotion and logic to get the very best out of yourself and your team.

“You look at the Limerick players. They’re working with the best analytical minds in the game in Paul Kinnerk and Seánie O’Donnell. So they have this brilliant data-based approach and all these metrics and targets around all the key components of the game. John [Kiely] often talks about it after they’ve won a game. ‘Well, we had a lot to go after.’ I’d imagine he means tackle counts, shooting efficiency, all those things.

“But I don’t know often over the years I’ve seen players who before the game were just talking about hitting their metrics and following the process, and then once they win and the camera is on them, they talk about their hurt, their hunger, their anger! Adam English said as much after the game. ‘We had a hundred years of hurt!’” 

Not now. Though they still have a hunger.

“One of the things I’d been saying to the boys all year was, ‘We want to be here when the lights are on in the club field.’ I think September and October is a lovely time when the lights are on in the club field and your team is still in the championship and preparing for a quarter-final, semi-final, final. And that’s become a mantra. Before the final we talked about making sure the lights were still on the following week. And it was mentioned again afterwards in the dressing room. That the lights would still be on.” 

At least for one more day. Tomorrow against Ballygunner they’ll discover what else heaven has in store for them.