Typical John Costello timing. Dropping the bombshell simply after James McCarthy had accomplished a digital interview with the media. No alternative to elicit his views on considered one of Dublin GAA’s most influential personalities of the millennium.
he retiring CEO didn’t kick the ball over Kerry’s bar in 2011 – that was Stephen Cluxton – to launch an period like no different.
He didn’t information a staff of all skills to 6 All-Irelands in seven seasons between 2013 and ’19 – that was Jim Gavin.
He didn’t ship six-in-a-row within the midst of Covid – that was Dessie Farrell.
Nor did he make historical past by steering the long-maligned Dublin hurlers to a league title in 2011 and Leinster glory in 2013 – that was Anthony Daly.
However hovering within the background via all these salad days was a chief govt whose fingerprints had been everywhere in the myriad triumphs of the last word Decade of the Dubs.
John Costello didn’t magically create Cluxton, however he had a pivotal function in uncorking Dublin’s profitable tradition via the then-leftfield appointment of Pat Gilroy.
There adopted a seamless period of transition, from one supervisor who had confirmed his credentials with two All-Eire U-21 titles (Gavin) to a different who had accomplished exactly the identical (Farrell).
What number of counties would crave an appointments course of that labored in such a straight-forward and logical style, and with out the standard avalanche of leaks?
However this was just one string to Costello’s bow, and never crucial one both. The Dublin soccer squad morphed from tragic (and typically comedic) practically males right into a ruthless profitable machine, not purely as a result of they received the precise managers however as a result of they fostered a participant improvement pathway that was the envy of all Eire.
Costello will retire in October, having served Dublin GAA since 1994. Present chairperson Michael Seavers summed up his legacy neatly when itemizing all these key initiatives – the teaching and video games improvement buildings launched in 2004, the Blue Wave Strategic Plan, the Spring Sequence, and the current acquisitions at Spawell and Hollystown.
True, most rival counties had been deeply jealous of all the federal government largesse and Croke Park funding that facilitated Dublin’s juvenile teaching construction and the particular era of gamers that flowed from it.
Costello, for his half, was by no means shy about defending the deserves of this funding, albeit he tended to restrict public utterances to his annual report – an e-mail awaited with eager curiosity every winter not only for the weighty matters addressed however much more so for Costello’s acquainted interjections of barbed levity.
His targets had been normally anonymous however simply identifiable, whether or not it was ‘Mr Flip-Flop’ (in 2017) or his 2018 suggestion, in response to criticism that Gavin and his gamers had been ‘robots’, that “a senior rating county board official ought to run to Hill 16 after some victory and throw their tie into the well-known terrace.”
Not each hurling supervisor struck gold. The ‘Dalo revolution’ was adopted by a steep dip below Ger Cunningham; one other shock Gilroy transfer ended too early by work commitments; then additional inconsistency below Mattie Kenny.
However that didn’t cease Costello from coaxing a former All-Eire profitable supervisor, in Micheál Donoghue, final August. When such appointments had been made, it could have been a collective determination however there was by no means any doubting who was steering the ship.
The Bomber has left huge boots to fill. It might be Dublin’s greatest take a look at.
