Plans are currently afoot for a reunion of Tyrone’s 2003 All-Ireland winning team in London this September.
Naturally, all of those involved in that landmark success have been notified and, as is now the norm, a WhatsApp group was established.
However, Paddy Tally, Tyrone’s coach back then and Kerry’s now, left the group no sooner than he had been added.
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“It was probably because of his involvement with Kerry, he didn’t want any conflict of interest,” says Brian McGuigan, the former Tyrone centre-forward.
“But you wouldn’t see Paddy much and you’d see far less of him now because I think he spends most of his time down in Kerry, he seems to have took a year out (of his job).
“Sometimes if you go up to Galbally for youth matches or club matches, there’s Paddy, doing steward and parking cars and stuff and it just shows you the type of man he is - he doesn’t think he’s above anybody or anything.”
Tally was just 29 when Tyrone won that first All-Ireland and was still active on the club scene.
“Paddy was a class forward in his own right playing football,” says McGuigan, which may come as a surprise to many that have pigeon-holed him as a defensive coach.
But there’s no getting away from the fact that defensive rigidity is a key tenet of his coaching - just not the only one.
“A lot of the drills and small-sided games that Paddy did was about you working really hard, whether you’re a forward or a back.
“Even in the wee training drills we were doing where you maybe weren’t putting in the same effort as a defender, he’d have pulled you aside and said, ‘You should be doing the exact same thing as him’.
“Without even realising it, whenever you went into a match, you were putting in those tackles that you wouldn’t have been doing maybe the previous year.”
The famous passage of play in the 2003 All-Ireland semi-final, where Tyrone hunted Kerry down relentlessly along the Hogan Stand sideline, was the ultimate expression of Tally’s work.
“That would have been our training, that would have been Paddy’s wee drills that happened at training all the time,” says McGuigan. “All the time. Those wee conditioned games. That was just a cameo of it.”
The following year, his relationship with Mickey Harte soured and they parted ways. Tally landed in Down in late 2008 and made such an impact that the players pitched for his retention after James McCartan succeeded Ross Carr as manager the following year. They came from nowhere to reach the 2010 All-Ireland final, losing by a point to a far more seasoned Cork team.
“I remember in 2010, he was speaking to me around my fitness and how I was using the ball,” says former Down star Kevin McKernan.
“I was getting up the pitch but was I maximising my fitness to get up the pitch and give it to other footballers up there as opposed to me kicking it away or trying to force things?
“He was just so good at pinpointing that for you. That was his strongest thing. I just loved the way he picked things apart.”
McKernan was a mature student at St Mary’s, Belfast, where Tally has worked as a senior lecturer, when they reunited to win the college’s first ever Sigerson Cup in 2017.
St Mary’s had some fine players, three of whom - Kieran McGeary, Conor Meyler and Cathal McShane - are currently involved with Tyrone, but they still came out of left field.
“The teaching college in Belfast was probably only 1,200 students and 300 of them boys,” says McKernan, “it was crazy when you look back on it now.”
Tally then coached Galway for the 2018 season, their best since 2001, before returning to Down, this time as manager. He got them to Division Two and kept them there in a pandemic-interrupted reign but it wasn’t enough for some.
“The way Paddy was removed from his duties with Down, it still doesn’t sit easy with me,” says McKernan ruefully. “The Covid years weren’t taken into consideration, the fact that the team had stayed in Division Two and had pushed rightly, but we had no back-up plan.
“Then all of a sudden we turn around and he was down in Kerry winning All-Irelands - so he wasn’t good enough for Down at that time but he was good enough to go to Kerry, and that was my biggest thing.”
Leaving the 900km round trip aside, McKernan immediately concluded that Tally was just what Kerry needed when he first heard of the link to Jack O’Connor’s management team.
Last year, soft goals of the variety that they shipped to Tyrone in the 2021 All-Ireland semi-final were virtually eliminated.
“It’s hard work making the pitch small,” says McKernan, “and that’s Paddy’s ethos - how can you defend but also, when you attack, how big and expansive can you make the pitch?”
How sustainable it is for him to continue in Kerry beyond this year is highly questionable, but he’s still a relatively young coach and with Harte no longer a potential obstacle to his involvement with Tyrone, it may yet come full circle.
“I don’t think Paddy Tally will never be involved in Tyrone in some aspect,” adds McKernan.
“What’s he doing down in Kerry? He’s building a CV and he’s learning how Kerry are doing things so he’s getting an insight there, he’ll probably use it in years to come.”
McGuigan can see him being involved with Tyrone again, but says: “I don’t think Paddy will ever come back in a management capacity because I think you can see where you get the best out of Paddy and that’s in the coaching side of things.
“I’m sure it’s still a desire of Paddy’s to get involved again with Tyrone because his heart’s in Tyrone.”
But his head, for now at least, is very much in Kerry.
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