'Like that older brother that you don't want to let down' - Dublin club glory to Meath manager
WHEN THE 2KM runs started up after their league games, there were no objections among the players.
The call to slog it out came after three of those matches. Or maybe it was four? Kilmacud Crokes captain Shane Cunningham can’t quite remember. But what he can recall is that the buy-in was unquestionable.
Everyone on the line. Everyone in agreement that this was the remedy for losing an All-Ireland club final after extra-time. This was ground zero for the Stillorgan-based side. They would not be denied again.
The concession of that late goal against Kilcoo was powering them through every stride. It was still a raw and fresh memory from just a few weeks beforehand. And behind every hard yard was their manager Robbie Brennan. He was selling them a vision for what these 2km runs could bring.
“We’ve played this game but we’re going to put in the extra time now. We’re going to do this 2km run. I want everyone to do it to the best of their ability.”
It was the launchpad of Kilmacud’s 2022-2023 campaign, and a defining moment in Brennan’s tenure.
“It was just his attitude when he turned up for training,” says Cunningham. “It was like a smile on his face and just good fun.
“Initially when we came back from Kilcoo, no one wanted to be there. So when Baggio wasn’t feeling sorry for himself it was kind of hard to be feeling sorry for yourself.”
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He’s always been Baggio to Cunningham. Or Baj for short. Everyone who knows him knows him as Baggio.
The nickname has followed him ever since he missed a penalty for Kilmacud Crokes on the same day that Italy’s Roberto Baggio also suffered the same fate during a shootout in the 1994 World Cup final against Brazil. Even now, as he prepares to manage the Meath footballers into their first All-Ireland semi-final since 2009, it continues to be his identifier.
His birth name would be an unnatural sound.
“I can’t even remember calling Robbie,” says Cunningham.
“I might call him Robbie to other people, but it would be more Baggio or Baj [to him]. If someone’s asking me, ‘Is Robbie here?’ You’d be looking around and thinking, ‘Who’s Robbie?’”
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There’s a certain irony attached with Brennan’s idea for the 2km runs. During his own spell as a footballer for Kilmacud Crokes, he was not renowned for being an enthusiastic trainer. His former teammate, and two-time All-Ireland winner with Down, Conor Deegan, said in a recent interview with the Irish News that Brennan was a “lazy bugger.”
Mick O’Keeffe’s playing career also crossed over with Deegan and Brennan. And while he can appreciate that sentiment, he wouldn’t quite use that term.
“He [Brennan] didn’t enjoy training,” says O’Keeffe, who won three Dublin SFC titles with Kilmacud Crokes.
“He was tall and if he got himself that bit fitter, he probably could have gone on to another level because he was a lovely footballer.
“I was one corner [forward] and Ray Cosgrove was in the other corner. We got all the credit, we scored all the points and all the goals. Robbie was the one who was catching the ball and giving it to us.”
Brennan is a year older than O’Keeffe. After soldiering through the underage grades together, they broke through to the senior squad together just after Kilmacud’s first senior All-Ireland success in 1995. Former Dublin players Johnny Magee and Ray Cosgrove were also part of that emerging group.
A new generation of talent hoping to leave their own imprint on Kilmacud’s growing legacy.
“We would have been the young upstarts coming into that very successful dressing room. You needed to be a big personality to survive in that dressing room,” says O’Keeffe. “You wouldn’t want to be a shrinking violet.”
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When Brennan’s time as Kilmacud Crokes manager concluded last season, Cunningham was asked to give a speech. The players already knew that Brennan was leaving to become the new Meath manager, but there was nothing but support for their departing general. In fact, they wanted to give him a Dublin four-in-a-row success as a parting gift. Cuala, however, crashed that party by defeating them by a point in the final.
It was up to Cunningham to say something that would honour Cunningham’s six seasons of service. Something to mark the three-in-a-row they had achieved between 2021 and 2023, and the fourth Dublin title they won in 2018. There was also three consecutive Leinster titles to thank Brennan for, along with an All-Ireland title in 2023.
Cunningham chose this moment to make a confession: he was disappointed when Brennan was announced as joint-manager with Johnny Magee in late 2017. The Kilmacud hurlers had just hired Anthony Daly as their manager, and Cunningham felt the footballers should be aiming for someone with a CV that was comparable to a two-time All-Ireland winner who had managed the Dublin hurlers to a Leinster title in 2013.
Cunningham, now in his fifth season as a senior player, also felt time was not on his side. Kilmacud had not contested a senior county final since 2012, and their last championship title was in 2010. St Vincent’s and Ballyboden were All-Ireland winners in 2014 and 2016 respectively, and Cunningham feared that Kilmacud were falling further from view.
“I can remember feeling that I was worried that I’d never win a county championship.
“And then you’re thinking, ‘another managerial appointment, and if it’s not the right one, it’s another three years wasted’. And then you’re 27 or 28, it [your career] can quickly go by. By the end of 2017, that was definitely at the forefront of my mind.
“We got Robbie, who had been selector on the previous management team. We hadn’t done so well and Robbie didn’t have too much of a managerial experience. He paired up with Johnny, but it was a bit underwhelming.
“That was kind of the feeling for a few of us when they took over.”
Within a few training sessions, Cunningham could feel the dial moving. The training style implemented by Brennan and Magee was an instant hit and Brennan’s tactical knowledge was particularly impressive.
“It was straight away to be honest. I was kind of blown away by how tactically astute Robbie was in terms of identifying threats and trends of other teams. He was big on matchups and coming up with a plan to negate certain players. I was very impressed in the lead up to those championship games.
“When they came in, it was kind of an attack, attack, attack. Definitely we were allowed to express ourselves, take risks, a lot of kick passing. Throughout that campaign, we had really good games, really good victories, performances were really good.”
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On Friday, 29 January, 1999, the Irish Independent published an article carrying the headline, ‘Brennan back to beef up Kilmacud attack.’
It was the weekend of game three in the Leinster club final between Dublin champions Kilmacud Crokes and Éire Óg of Carlow. The first game on 6 December produced a scoreline of Éire Óg 1-6 Kilmacud Crokes 0-9. The replay was seven days later and ended seven points apiece.
Brennan didn’t feature the first day but came on as a substitute in the 50th minute of the replay. Incidentally, he replaced O’Keeffe the second day out. Brennan started in the third installment and capped his promotion with three points from play as Kilmacud succumbed to a 1-11 to 0-11 defeat.
“That third game was like a whole new season,” O’Keeffe remembers.
“The Dublin campaign is quite long and bruising and I think we ran out of steam going into that Leinster championship. Robbie came back into that. When we needed him in Dublin, he was excellent.”
Despite losing his starting position between the county and Leinster championship, Brennan accepted his place in the squad. According to O’Keeffe, he wasn’t a player “who’d be challenging a manager or throwing his toys out at a pram.”
Experiencing the difficulties of that transition is something that O’Keeffe feels has benefitted Brennan throughout his managerial career.
“I think from a management perspective, if you’re not the superstar all the time and you’re struggling to get in and out of a team, it probably gives you a little bit more emotional intelligence when you’re dealing with lads who are on squads and you have to keep everybody happy.
“Sometimes these superstar players struggle in management because they are so used to everyone having the highest standards and so used to always playing.”
Brennan transferred clubs in 2002, switching to St Peter’s in Dunboyne, later becoming a resident there. The club is home to his wife, and his brother-in-law, David Gallagher, who is a Dunboyne stalwart. It was an interesting development as Brennan had already played against the Meath outfit during that 1998-1999 campaign, at the Leinster quarter-final stage.
Three years later the sides met again, with Brennan now playing in Dunboyne’s black and amber strip. Again, Kilmacud prevailed with a 1-14 to 0-3 result to advance to the Leinster semi-finals.
“We would have kept in touch,” says O’Keeffe reflecting on that 2005 encounter. “I suppose like at that point I was coming to the end of my time with Crokes as well.
“There was nobody having a go at him. There was a bit of banter after the game but we won it pretty comprehensively.”
Another noteworthy link followed in the 2018 season as Dunboyne and Kilmacud Crokes played out a third meeting in the Leinster quarter-final. By this stage, Brennan was back in the Kilmacud camp as manager to oversee a 16-point victory.
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The highlights reel of Brennan’s stretch with Kilmacud Crokes is an impressive set of memories. But there were some lows to endure too. A shock defeat to Longford’s Mullinalaghta in the 2018 Leinster left some scars, while that All-Ireland defeat to Kilcoo also stung. Brennan steered the club through controversy too. The transfer of Galway’s Shane Walsh was certainly divisive, as were the circumstances of their 2023 All-Ireland win over Glen. Kilmacud briefly had 17 players on the pitch in the dying moments.
In those challenging moments, Brennan distinguished himself as a leader.
“I think when Walshie was joining, it was kind of obvious that he was going to go into the team and maybe someone was going to lose out,” Cunningham explains.
“But for us, it wasn’t like whoever was losing out. I lost out last year in terms of I didn’t start a few games. It wasn’t a case of lads being unhappy with Baggio or Walshie. It was very much, we’re in this together.
“We probably had a few crushing blows as well against Mullinalaghta and Kilcoo and definitely 100% Robbie was picking us up off the floor on those occasions. It’s something he’s really good at. He seems to just get on with it with a smile on his face. He brings the energy and fun back into the game.”
When Cunningham looks at the Meath team today, he can identify a confidence in the players that Brennan imparted to the Kilmacud crew.
It’s the same psychological influence that convinced the Kilmacud players to commit to those 2km runs. The Baggio formula has already produced results against Dublin, Kerry and Galway.
Meath will lean into it again later today against Donegal.
“I describe him as one of the lads,” says Cunningam. “He’s not really a father figure to us, he’s nearly like a big brother. He is one of the lads.
“He’s nearly like that older brother that you have so much respect for and you don’t want to let down.”
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