Everything he touched turned to gold, Micko's gone now... but what glorious memories

Man with Midas touch leaves behind a treasure trove legacy

- ROY CURTIS

SCRUNCHED-UP match programme in his paw, all-seeing eyes scanning the battlefield as a hovering hawk might the acreage beneath its wings, grandmaster's mind already a dozen moves ahead, Mick O'Dywer transformed a sport he loved like life itself.

The Waterville Lombardi, football was his oxygen, his lifeblood, his north and south, his noon, his midnight.

On the topography of GAA titans, he towers as impressively as Carrauntoohil itself; from the snow-capped peaks of a life less ordinary, he peers downward at even the skyscraping best of the rest.

He was the man Midas wished he could be, converting all he touched to precious metal.

Even the memories he leaves behind are gilded, forged almost entirely from gold.

As Mozart was to music, so Kerry's Wolfgang Amadeus was to his chosen code: His symphonic compositions soaring, operatic, heavenly - will endure as long as the sun burns in the sky.

His playing career was stellar - winning AllIrelands in three decades, remaining, to this day, Kerry's all-time leading scorer in the NFL.

Yet so blinding was his managerial career that all he achieved inside the white lines feels almost like an afterthought.

The sultan of the sideline, his name a synonym for blueblood managerial genius: Micko.

From Kerry's fertile soil, he reaped All-Irelands at record-breaking pace: Eight in 12 summers, only the famous 1982 flourish of Seamus Darby's boot denying him five-in-a-row.

HARVESTED

From fallow fields in Kildare and Laois and Wicklow, this messianic figure harvested an abundance of equally miraculous nutrients hope and joy and life-affirming days in the sun that the children of those counties will never forget.

At every crossing of the stream, he paused to turn water into wine.