The Kieran Shannon Interview: Niall Corcoran is the blow-in behind the Dublin machine

Niall Corcoran was cut by Galway manager Ger Loughnane after the most torturous time of his hurling life. He rebuilt his inter-county career with Dublin and tomorrow seeks a third county title alongside his old boss Anthony Daly. He’s also guiding the next generation of Dublin GAA players in his role as a GPO. And insists its volunteers not money driving capital gains. He speaks with Kieran Shannon.

The Kieran Shannon Interview: Niall Corcoran is the blow-in behind the Dublin machine

Niall Corcoran was cut by Galway manager Ger Loughnane after the most torturous time of his hurling life. He rebuilt his inter-county career with Dublin and tomorrow seeks a third county title alongside his old boss Anthony Daly. He’s also guiding the next generation of Dublin GAA players in his role as a GPO. And insists its volunteers not money driving capital gains. He speaks with Kieran Shannon.

Meet one of the statistics, one of the faces of the faceless, those supposed automatons employed to make Dublin hurling respectable and charged with helping make Dublin football unstoppable, a robot behind the machine.

Niall Corcoran, 36, is a games promotion officer — or GPO for short — by day, assigned to Kilmacud Crokes, the same club he trains with at night and plays for on Sundays, like in tomorrow’s county final.

On closer inspection this specific cyborg will seem familiar and particularly human to you. For nine years Corcoran played with the county hurling team, manfully holding down the corner-back spot and winning a national league in 2011 and a Leinster title in 2013, days of huge elation and celebration, and for him vindication and validation after being essentially rejected by his native Galway.

He’s been working here since coming straight out of Athlone IT 13 years ago with his degree in sports management, enthused by the prospect of coaching the sport of his life for a living.

At the time Dublin GAA was in the midst of a major recruitment drive for GPOs. An earlier intake had consisted mostly of coaches with a leaning towards football. This second wave, buoyed by additional government and GAA funding, targeted coaches with more of a background in hurling. Although the sport in the county was showing signs of a revival, winning its first Leinster minor hurling title in 22 years, it was still struggling. The senior county team had lost its first three games in that year’s championship by an average of 17 points, including a first-round defeat to Laois by four goals. The idea of them winning a league within six years was as unimaginable as Corcoran playing for them.

There are now close to 50 GPOs operating in Dublin, a county with 91 registered clubs. That means typically one GPO will cover two different clubs. Kilmacud is not your typical club. It has almost 5,000 registered members; 1,200 boys from ages 5-12. Instead of one GPO for two clubs, Kilmacud needs two GPOs for the one club. Paraic McDonald for football, Corcoran for hurling.

He’s heard the cases for and against the extra funding for Dublin, how one man’s helping hand is another man’s financial doping. As a culchie working in the big smoke, he sees both sides of the argument.

Meelick-Eyrecourt, his club back home, has only 160 members. Yet in that part of the world there’s essentially only hurling. As a kid he was coached by the inspirational Michael Joyce, the local school principal, but as well as using a lot of carrot, Joyce would use a bit of stick too; if you didn’t play hurling at lunchtime, you instead ran laps of the field. What else was a kid going to do? Whereas in Stillorgan, Blackrock, Mount Merrion…

“This morning I’ve just come from a school where they have myself in, they have Paraic in, they have rugby coaches from Leinster in, they have soccer coaches in, they have a basketball coach in. Those children have a huge opportunity to play any sport they want, which is fantastic.

But you have to fight harder to gain their attention and hearts than you would outside Dublin. And that’s why the GPOs are in Dublin.

The job description, contrary to popular perception, is not to create elite performers. It’s not even to directly coach kids the game. It’s to promote it and Kilmacud. To raise their interest and enjoyment in sport, preferably Gaelic Games, hopefully enough that they go down to the club.

That’s where they get the real coaching. Corcoran doesn’t take any of the club’s underage teams. The local volunteers, usually parents, do that. A Corcoran, as a member of the club’s coaching committee, just helps coach those coaches.

“I think by and large the clubs in Dublin do a fantastic job. Every club has to provide half a GPO’s salary, so that means the club has to get together and fundraise for that. That takes a bit of work; I know how hard fundraising can be for a club like my own in Galway. And I have to say the level of coaching in Dublin is exceptional.”

Again, he credits most of that to the volunteers, not the army of GPOs. It’s the club and Paul Mannion that makes Paul Mannion Paul Mannion. All a Corcoran or McDonald does is help get a Mannion down to the local field. In Galway, a Joe Canning or Damien Comer were always going to be there. In that sense the GPOs and the scheme that funds them are only levelling that playing field.

“A friend of mine in Castleknock was there when Ciaran Kilkenny was coming through and he’ll vouch that it was all volunteers who coached Ciaran in hurling and football in the club.”

He points you to the programme of upcoming events the county’s games and development are putting on in the coming months. Last night in O’Tooles there was a hurling workshop on creating turnover ball, facilitated by former Limerick player Damien Quigley. It’s been sold out for weeks.

In three weeks’ time Michael Fennelly is tutoring a session on the possession game. Next Friday in Jim Gavin’s home club, Round Towers, there’s a football workshop entitled ‘Teamwork-centred principles’. It’s not Gavin giving it. It’s John Divilly.

Quigley, Fennelly and Divilly aren’t GPOs. They’re not even Dubs. Think of the humility and broad-mindedness to learn more from a Galway man about a sport Dublin currently excel in. Mindset more than money is why they are excelling.

In the clubs it’s the same. Corcoran and McDonald regularly run courses to educate and upskill parents in how to coach the games but volunteers are also giving and running parts of those courses.

If it’s anywhere Dublin are falling down, he finds, is that they’re not doing what they’re often accused of. They’re not creating enough elite players, at least in hurling.

“Participation-wise, there’s a lot more boys and girls playing hurling and camogie in Dublin. The next focus has to be on standards.

“You look at clubs like Crokes, Ballyboden, Cuala. They’re all big clubs with big numbers, so with that you’re going to bring through some really good players. Dublin needs to be producing more players from clubs like St Pat’s Palmerstown or Faughs, or Skerries Harps.

“If you look at our minor squads, they’re now consistently making Leinster finals and All-Ireland semi-finals. But there’s been no All-Ireland final win yet.”

He identifies secondary school level as an area where Dublin can make real gains. This year he’s helping out Coláiste Eoin who this autumn are competing in the Leinster A colleges against the likes of Kilkenny CBS. Lads from Crokes, Cuala, Ballyboden, even a couple from St Vincent’s, playing together at that level can only help.

It’s funny the way life has worked out, that he’s so concerned and engaged with the minutiae of Dublin hurling. For a long time Galway hurling was his passion, his obsession.

One of his most vivid childhood memories is of watching the 1988 All-Ireland hurling final as a six-year-old at home with his dad while his mother was in hospital ready to give birth to his brother. When Noel Lane scored a late winning goal, his father broke his chair from leaping out of it. How could something stir his father like that? Corcoran was intrigued, and all the more so the following week when Brendan Lynskey came into the school with the Liam MacCarthy Cup. Lynskey’s hands seemed as big as the cup they were holding. Lynskey was a giant in his eyes and grew further in his estimation again when as club manager he handed a 16-year-old Corcoran his first start with the seniors.

By then Corcoran was playing with the county U16s and he’d go on to play minor, winning an All-Ireland in 2000, alongside the likes of Damien Hayes, Tony Óg Regan, Fergal Moore and Ger Farragher. He’d got the taste of Croke Park, winning, wearing the maroon and white, and wanted to taste it again as a senior.

He’d dedicate the next six years of his life to it but it didn’t happen. Conor Hayes brought him for the occasional training session but only to sharpen the official panel. Then when Hayes stepped aside, he was succeeded by Ger Loughnane who proceeded with one of the most notoriously punishing pre-seasons in 21st-century hurling. Corcoran was one of the 60 invited, subjected, to the hardship. He wouldn’t survive the cut but he’d survive to tell the tale.

“That was the hardest part of my hurling life that I’ve ever gone through. It was just three months of… torture. One night we were running around the sandtrack and Louis Mulqueen would pick ‘hares’ for the rest of the group to chase. Usually it’d be a flyer like a Damien Hayes or Alan Kerins or Fergal Healy but this night he picked me.

Niall Corcoran in action for Kilmacud Crokes. Pic: INPHO/Oisin Keniry
Niall Corcoran in action for Kilmacud Crokes. Pic: INPHO/Oisin Keniry

“You’d be given an advantage so the inference was that you shouldn’t get caught. And I just remember running as that hare thinking, ‘I’m going to die. I’m going to pass out here.’

“I can see the benefits of fellas suffering together. But there was no merit to the extent they took it. Ultimately what happened with fellas was the appetite to even train wasn’t there.”

The frustrating thing for Corcoran was he seemed to be exactly what Loughnane was looking for — a dog who wouldn’t lie down, that would always come back for more, a Galway Mike O’Halloran.

But it was as if Loughnane only had eyes for the silky stickmen, monitoring which ones could hack the hardship, which ones couldn’t. The likes of Corcoran were just pacesetters, also-rans. The only playing time he got in a challenge game was 40 minutes against Offaly.

One Saturday morning in Dangan, he came on for the last five minutes of a game against NUIG but clearly didn’t do enough; back in the dressing room a roll-call was read out of those who were being invited to the next phase of training. Corcoran wasn’t required, just one of the nameless thanked for their attendance over the previous three months.

“There was a lot of doubts by that stage. I was 24. The likes of Damien and Fergal and Tony Óg were all making it. I was being left behind. I went back to the club and I’d say that year I was very negative around the place, being snappy and narky with teammates. I started going for pints after every game, even took shortcuts in training. We were beaten in the [intermediate] club semi-final and I remember having a few beers out in Eyrecourt that night thinking, ‘If I want an inter-county hurling career, I need to make a decision here. I’m not getting the best out of myself.’

“I would have loved some feedback that time from Ger [Loughnane] but deep down I don’t blame him or Conor [Hayes]. My skill work wasn’t where it needed to be. I was physically fit but I wasn’t physically conditioned. There’s a difference. I needed to be doing a lot more work in the gym as opposed to out on the field, running. It’s only when I looked at myself I realised, ‘I’m just not good enough at this minute.’”

In that self-reflection he came to another realisation: the travel was contributing to his crankiness. He transferred to play with Kilmacud — “the toughest decision I’ve had to make” — and within months was called up to the county panel after a bit of an injury crisis in their full-back line.

Before he knew it, he was marking Rory Jacob in a Leinster semi-final and being taken for 1-3 from play. “That’s when I really realised I was out of my depth.”

But the next day out marking Joe Deane in the qualifiers he survived a rocky 10 minutes to play one of his best games. And when Anthony Daly came in as manager the following autumn he and Dublin would go to another stratosphere.

Anthony Daly celebrates with Niall Corcoran after the Dublin County Senior Club Hurling Championship semi-final. Pic: Daire Brennan/Sportsfile
Anthony Daly celebrates with Niall Corcoran after the Dublin County Senior Club Hurling Championship semi-final. Pic: Daire Brennan/Sportsfile

“The first thing that struck me was his enthusiasm. And he has a way of getting his message across without telling you you’re a bollix. The first time we all met was in Parnell Park and on the way out he pulled me aside. ‘Look, over the Christmas now, go and drink a few pints of Guinness for yourself and put on a few pounds!’ Now, obviously I didn’t. I went on a weights programme Jim Kilty drew up. But it was Anthony’s way of saying, ‘Read between the lines! You’re too light!’”

The following summer Dublin again had Wexford in the first round. But this time, they won and Corcoran wasn’t out of his depth.

“There was a picture of us running out for the team photo for that match and as I’m jumping over the bench, you can just see how much more physically defined I am in my arms, my legs. And my hurling was just way cleaner, tidier. Just being in that environment and marking the likes of Kevin Flynn and Dotsie [O’Callaghan].

“Anthony’s biggest strength for me is that he lets everyone play with freedom. There’s no such thing as ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that.’ If you make a mistake trying to do the right thing, it’s okay. The only thing that’s unacceptable to him is a lack of effort. So I found I could go to the ball, miss it and not beat myself over it. There was no mental interference going for that ball. He was the first coach that really made me feel that way.”

Feeling as free as a bird, Corcoran would take flight. The first time he played against his native county in a league game he was excessively emotional and anxious. By 2011 he’d learned to treat them as another team, though Daly knew they weren’t. That summer in a defining evening in Tullamore, Corcoran won a ball ahead of Damien Hayes and after he burst out to lay it off to Johnny McCaffrey, Daly on the sideline couldn’t resist exclaiming within earshot of Galway selector John Hardiman, “Up Eyrecourt!”

The subtext wasn’t lost on anyone. Ye could have had him — but we’re glad we have him now!

“The previous Christmas I was out with the lads from the club at home and they were saying, ‘What are you playing with Dublin for? Sure Antrim beat ye!’ You would have got that attitude from other counties at the time: not in anything they said, just by their body language. Beating Galway was probably the first time we announced ourselves as a serious team. We’d won the league a few months earlier but it’s very easy for people to dismiss the league.

“That year at the All-Stars the Kilkenny lads came over to the Dublin table. The likes of Tommy Walsh and JJ Delaney sat down with us, had a few drinks and had a right proper chat about hurling. That was probably the first time I sensed, ‘We’re earning a bit of respect around here.’”

He loved his time in blue. The humour of the Dubs, though it took him a while to get used to the lingo. “One of my first nights on the panel, one of the lads said, ‘Well, Corco, are we going saucin’ tonight?’ I didn’t know what he was talking about. Drinking, you mean? I’d watched the Snapper and stuff but it wasn’t any preparation for the real thing.”

The craic with the lads having a bite up after training up in O’Tooles. And the satisfaction that he gave it his all.

Niall Corcoran. Pic: INPHO/Bryan Keane
Niall Corcoran. Pic: INPHO/Bryan Keane

“I’m proud of what I achieved. I read Paul O’Connell’s book last Christmas where he talked about at the end of his career it was just about being the best that he could be. I felt I made the most out of what God gave me.”

That’s probably why he’s got such a keen interest in coaching and sport psychology. After completing his masters in Jordanstown, he did a bit of psych work with a mid-tier county football team. Next season he’ll be coaching the Laois hurlers. He has taken Dublin-based individual players from around the country for one-to-one skills work, most infamously Aoife Murray.

Before the 2017 All-Ireland final, the Cork goalkeeper gave an interview in which she raved about her weekly 7am coaching sessions with Corcoran. The same season Corcoran had been coach to the Galway camogie team that lost to Cork by three points in the All-Ireland semi-final. The week after the interview the board cited it as sufficient reason to dismiss Mark Dunne’s entire management. Was it an excuse or the reason? There’s no doubt in Corcoran’s mind which.

“I’d been in her situation before where I would love to have had a person in Dublin who would help me get better. When a mutual friend asked if I’d coach Aoife, I thought why say no to someone who is just trying to get better?

“I was very upfront with the players and Mark about it. And I said it to Aoife, ‘I’m going in with Galway and am probably going to know everything about you, is that okay?’ And she said, ‘Lookit, Niall, if those Galway players don’t know everything about me by now, there’s something wrong.’

“Obviously the work was completely confidential. We didn’t talk about Galway or Cork. It was just about helping someone out. In the past I did it for Galway and Clare camogie players based up here, last year I also did some work with a few Ballygunner lads.

I really enjoyed my time with the Galway team. It made me appreciate just how hard camogie players train. But the board were tough to work with. I think they didn’t have as much influence on team matters as they would have had in previous years. During the season we actually had to come up with a letter of agreement that they had to sign that they would not interfere with the team, which obviously put us on rocky ground with them.

He didn’t coach Murray this past season; with his masters in Jordanstown he didn’t have the time but instead recommended to her Mattie Collins, his Kilmacud teammate and brother to Cork sub goalie Patrick.

Tomorrow he’ll line out just in front of Collins, at corner-back, with his old mentor Daly on the sideline. It’s an exciting time for the club. They’re thinking less of avoiding a third consecutive county final defeat as trying to win a third county title in Corcoran’s time there; after finally beating their tormentors Cuala in the semi-final, anything and everything seems possible.

Nine of his teammates he’d have first encountered as a GPO in the local schools. Homegrown kids recruited by the blow-in.

Now that they’re of age, they could all be saucin’ tomorrow night.

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