Big Mick Pender Dublin's new last line of defence When big Mick Pender, the new Dublin football goalkeeper, reveals his vital statistics, one's first impression is of disbelief and he admits people have difficulty accepting the bare facts. "I am 6'3" and weigh 13 and a half stone but nearly everyone says I don't look it." Indeed, at first glance it is all too easy to go along with the crowd because Pender looks wee, skinny to be frank, and he owns up to be one of nature's freaks who can eat and drink what he likes and never puts on a spare ounce. "A couple of years back I went into hospital for an operation on my foot and I was thirteen stone, even going in, and wasted to just over ten. Out after a month or so in hospital, I've hit my present weight and I don't vary more than a pound from that no matter what. The lean look, I suppose, comes from training." One of the more important weapons in any goalie's armoury is confidence and it is something the Kilmacud Crokes man has in abundance, not alone on the pitch but off it. Even a business which he says "wasn't going too well for me" didn't dent his confidence and now he works for Texas Homecare as a kitchen sales representative and football, apparently, helped him get the job. "I wouldn't deny that. When I got on the Dublin side there were quite a few avenues suddenly opened for me, but I love the job - I love meeting people." His arrival on the Dublin panel, while not entirely unexpected by connoisseurs of metropolitan football, came as a shock to the man himself as he only found out about it by reading the paper. "I read it in the morning paper on the way to work that I was on the panel for a game against Wicklow and I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day. I was at work in body only that day, I'll tell you." An unashamed fan of the Dubs, "there were people crying on Hill 16 when Kevin Foley scored that goal, I wasn't far off it myself", he cites that four match episode as the best games he has ever witnessed. "That was gaelic football at its best. In fact, the whole 1991 championship was great, exactly what the GAA needed after all the hype about the soccer World Cup the year before." Soccer World Cups are something Pender knows about at first hand, as he actually played in one and reached the quarter finals at that. "When I was at college in Oatlands CBS, we won the schools All-Ireland at soccer and went to represent Ireland in the school's World Cup in Finland. Spain beat us in the quarter final. We had a lad on the team called Ian Smith, who was with the Bray Wanderers when they won the FAI Cup." In fact, Mick actually gave up soccer to try his hand as an outfield player in gaelic, but as luck would have it, in one of his very first games the side's goalie broke his arm and on his school's reputation Mick was shifted back between the sticks. One thing any Dublin goalkeeper on the current setup won't lack from is expert advice as former netminder supreme Paddy Cullen is team boss and, of course, one John O'Leary is still very much in the picture. A fact that Mick is all too aware of. "John is not going to just sit on the bench and say 'well, I've had a good run, it's time for the young blood to take over', and I wouldn't expect him to do that either. Obviously, to have the best 'keeper you've ever seen looking over your shoulder puts pressure on you, but I love pressure. If John O'Leary gets his place back, he'll have to work hard for it." O'Leary - the best you've ever seen - is that an honest assessment or is it just Mick Pender being nice? "No, I meant it. He is the best I've ever seen. There have been other very good keepers, but for me he was number one." The way he says it, you tend to believe he means it. Acting on the old adage that 'it takes one to know one', the question is ventured to Pender s to who he would have had in goal for the All Stars of 1991 - McQuillan or Collins? He hesitates and chooses his words carefully. "They are both very good goalkeepers and both made vital stops at various times during the year, but if I had to choose I'd go for McQuillan, perhaps, because I feel there have been other years when he should have got one and didn't." He mentioned earlier that pressure appeals to him and in his very first National Football League game, Pender experienced a real pressure situation. Dublin, with wind advantage against Armagh, led by just five points coming up to half time when the northerners were awarded a penalty. And what did Pender do only dive full length to his right and save the shot from Jim McConville. Well, it was one way of making a first impression. "Generally speaking, I wait until the bloke hits the shot, but as he came up Paul Curran pointed to my right and I though, here goes nothing and dived that way. I still don't know if Paul was guessing or not." A Dublin minor substitute in 1985 and a junior goalie some years later, Pender wasn't exactly a stranger to the faces he met on his first night in at Parnell Park but he did encounter one thing which was very new to him. "I'd have known most of the lads from club games but the training was a step up or two from what I was used to. Cullen doesn't do any specialised goalkeeper stuff. Well, he hasn't yet, but he gives you some good advice." One thing that has boosted his game no end was a little pointer he picked up from watching Cullen, O'Leary and Charlie Nelligan operating between the posts. "I always had a very weak kick out. I couldn't rise the ball at all until I was about 20 or so, but then I noticed that nearly all the really good inter county keepers were wearing rugby boots, so I bought a pair and they have worked for me. I can kick it 70 or 75 yards now, either with or against the wind. There is a technique involved, rather like a golf shot - just head down and follow through. Though the real secret is practice. I'd spend maybe half an hour every night at training taking kicks." And if Pender has his way the rugby boots could yet be seen in action at the other end of the field for, like a lot of goalkeepers, he is, in reality, a frustrated scorer. "I've one ambition in football apart from winning trophies with Dublin and that is to take a penalty - challenge, All-Ireland final, League or Leinster final, it wouldn't matter. If we were a point down to Meath in the Leinster semi final this year and got a penalty, I'd certainly take it if nobody else wanted to." The seven year old who used to get told off by his mother for doing Pat Jennings in full dive impressions around his Mount Merrion home has come a long way and as he sees it, has just as long a way still to travel. "We've won two out of our three games in the League, which is not bad, but we want to win everything. I mean that. This Dublin team wants to win every game it plays. Success breeds success and winning is a very enjoyable habit to get into." He reads the papers avidly but is realistic enough about what he sees contained in the columns thereof. "So far I haven't got too much stick but I wouldn't pay that much heed to them." As sharp off the pitch as on it, he is quick enough to name three good referees. "Paddy Collins, Damian Campbell and Paddy Russell." Ask him though to name three bad ones and the answer is one word - "no". A deep thinker on the game, Pender, who travelled to Rome for the 1990 Italy v Ireland World Cup game, advocates one way of both speeding up matches and making the game more watchable for fans. "Make it 13-a-side, that's what I would do. At the moment the minute a player gets a ball he is hit from all sides and has nowhere to go. If it was a game with four less men on the field, then players would have more space and the game would get faster." On a recently floated idea that players in the capital, whose parents were from other counties, could declare for those counties, Pender is keen. "It would be a good move. You have counties like Leitrim with a good side at the moment, who are being hit badly with emigration. They could only benefit from such a move, though it would have to be carefully watched and not like the Irish soccer team, where if you Ma shopped in Switzers, you're Irish!" While of the opinion, and it is shared by many, that "inter county players train as hard as League of Ireland lads do and they get paid for it," Pender does not advocate money being parted to the players in gaelic sports. "Look, everyone knows the score coming into the county scene and nobody does it for financial reasons, and anyway, you have to be sensible about it. If you start paying out big money to players, you can soon run into trouble. Look at St. Pats. The won the League of Ireland a couple of years back and they went bust last year. Players are well looked after with holidays and that, which is fair enough, but I don't feel they should be paid." There are many, almost all of them outside Dublin, who would view the coming season as very much make or break for the current Dubs' senior outfit, most of whom have been around a while now without ever actually winning anything. Pender though, is having none of that particular argument. "Look at it in a realistic way for God's sake! Not many of our current squad are over thirty, while a lot of Meath's are. I wouldn't accept this year as being the current bunch's final fling by any manner or means and I can tell you that none of the players view it that way either." So even if it is not their last hurrah, have Dublin totally exorcised that last minute defeat in 1991 from their minds or, at least, regained sufficient self-belief to go all the way this time? Pender, hardly surprisingly, feels they have. "We have a very talented and very fit squad. You can't think of history, you have to believe you are winners and I told you earlier how I felt up on the Hill. I can only imagine how the lads on the pitch felt, but it's over, gone, finished and next summer is all that's on our minds right now." If he retains his place for the championship campaign next summer, Pender will be hoping to avoid a repeat of what he recollects as the worst goal he ever conceded. "It was a schools game and a ball hopped in towards the goal. I just sort of spread my arms out to wave it wide when I realised too late it was going in. You couldn't even say it trickled in as it went in even slower than that. It was every goalies nightmare, but then as any keeper will tell you, it is not the last goal you've let in you concern yourself with, but rather the next one." The football world appears to be at Pender's feet, but he still expresses one particular regret. "Kilmacud Crokes have never won the Dublin Senior Championship, but I feel it's about time that changed. You could say we're working on it." Fact, they say, is often stranger than fiction, so perhaps it might not be altogether out of the question that the man or even the fan who came down from the Hill could have Sam in his hands come next September, and safe hands they'd appear to be, but in his heart of hearts, does Pender feel the All-Ireland is really on for the Dubs? "The immediate answer to that is yes or we wouldn't even bother playing for it, but the honest answer, well, that has to be yes also. You'd want to be inside the camp to know the determination that exists and the side's ability is not in question. Yes, we can win it alright." Taken from Hogan Stand magazine 21st February 1992 Tweet

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