MARTIN McHUGH famously called Colm Cooper a two-trick pony once. He was right.
One of his tricks was to score goals – 23 of them arriving in his 85 championship career with Kerry. And the other trick was to get points, of which he finished with 283 to his name in a career that will be remembered as long Gaelic football is played.
Or – as Eamonn Fitzmaurice, his Kerry manager said last week, “so long as YouTube exists, he’ll never be forgotten”.
As the curtain fell on one of the great Gaelic football careers – one that spanned 15 years and took in four All-Irelands, four league titles and nine Munster titles – the tributes poured in from across so many boundaries, geographical as well as sporting.
David Meyler, a Cork man, making his way as a professional footballer in England, made contact. So too Shane Lowry, the Offaly golfer. And Brian O’Driscoll, the greatest rugby player of his generation wished the greatest gaelic footballer of his era luck heading into his retirement.
“He was Federer, Messi and Ruby Walsh combined into one,” wrote Eoin Liston in his Irish Independent column before he told a hilarious story about when Cooper – aka the Gooch – was working for AIB in Tralee.
“Everyone wanted to get their business done at his kiosk,” Liston said. “It caused pandemonium. Some wouldn’t even have an account there but popped in just to get the great man’s autograph.”
Causing pandemonium was something Cooper didn’t just do in the bank. On the pitch, he destroyed defenders.
“I refused to mark him in training,” Fitzmaurice said. “Catching him was like trying to lift mercury with a fork. He was just too quick and too good.”
A Kerry fan celebrates a Colm Cooper goal in the 2004 All Ireland Senior Football Final (Picture: INPHO/Morgan Treacy)And that was part of the attraction of the Gooch. In an era where brawn replaced brain, he was a throwback to the past, even if he lamented the defensive strategies teams were adopting to try and cope with players like him.
“I arrived onto the scene in 2002,” Cooper said. “And since then the game changed – going so scientific. There are fat tests, strength tests, a test basically for everything and it’s just gone so intense that your downtime is reduced to practically zero.
“I’ve heard guys, like the Dubs, going training before work in the morning. Ten years ago that sort of stuff would be unheard of but if you go across the counties now, it is nearly a standard thing.
“In a way, that is to be expected because if we prepared as amateurs, 80,000 wouldn’t come to Croke Park to see us and that’s the way I look at it. We are amateurs playing as professionals and preparing as professionals.
“Put it like this if Ireland win a Six Nations game or Man United win a match those guys go for a few beers that night - but the GAA guy doesn’t.”
While life in the goldfish bowl has scarred him – he is still a rounded enough figure to see the overall picture, recognising how a tourist can come to Killarney and ask him for an autograph on the street.
Colm Cooper, pictured in March, at the final whistle of the All-Ireland Senior Club Football Championship Final against Slaughtmeil in Croke Park (Picture: INPHO/Donall Farmer)“People can see the Gooch or Daniel Goulding walk down the street and that’s a strength of the GAA which you have to say is special,” he says.
Less special, though, is the modernisation of tactical systems whereby defence is key and winning matters more than entertainment. “The emphasis now is on an athlete, not a skilful player,” Cooper said.
“If that was the case when I was 18 then I wouldn’t have been picked because I wasn’t big or strong. I was small and skinny and relied on ability.
“But at the moment teams are playing to systems and I worry for the future of the small, crafty player. Some managers are obsessed with weights. But at the end of the day, as far as I know it still comes down to who scores the most.”
And that was the thing. Cooper kept scoring, even up to his last big-game appearance, when Dr Crokes, his club, won their first All-Ireland in a quarter of a century.
The Gooch walked off stage on his terms, as a champion at Croke Park. The perfect way to say goodbye.
“It was the right decision for Gooch to make, for himself, if not for Kerry,” Fitzmaurice said.
“We will miss him. He leaves a huge gap to fill but at the same time, that is the way Kerry football works. The next fella comes along and fills the hole and we go again.
“We have young forwards and they have to step up now. And that happened in 2014, when Gooch got injured, fellas came of age then. And I think there will be that determination from the players to up their game to make up for his loss.”
Farewell... (Picture: INPHO/Morgan Treacy)But Fitzmaurice – who held three man-to-man talks with Cooper since December to try and persuade him to prolong his Kerry career insisted he thought the 34-year-old was going to stay on for another six years.
“Funnily enough, I thought that he could have been keep playing until he was 40 because he never relied on the physical side of the game,” the Kerry manager said.
“It was his brain and his decision-making that set him apart. He was always a step ahead from that point of view, so I always felt that he was a fella that could keep going as long as he wanted to. But in the last couple of seasons, he had injuries and set-backs.
“Last summer, he was in absolutely fantastic shape going into the summer and he got weird things wrong with him.
“He had an infection in his foot at some stage, he got a shoulder injury early in the Munster final, missed most of that game and the All-Ireland quarter-final too, which was frustrating for him.
“Maybe thinking about that, he felt that he couldn't take the risk of having another frustrating summer like that.
“We had three sit-downs - it was discussed and discussed to death. With those decisions, for a player who has been there that long and who loved inter-county football so much, it wasn't a decision that he was going to make lightly. He will be missed.”
By anyone who loves sport.
