Is John Kiely becoming the new Brian Cody?
There was once a teacher who became an inter-county manager. Being a teacher he was a practical sort. His coaches would do the coaching. He would organise, facilitate, motivate and be the boss.
His first season in the job finished in bitter disappointment. His second season in the job finished in All-Ireland glory. A long wait was brought to a joyous halt. A county rejoiced.
The manager was adamant nonetheless. This couldn’t be the end of the affair. This, if the players were to achieve their potential, had to be the start of something.
The manager’s name was John Kiely.
The manager’s name was Brian Cody.
No, they’re not morphing into the same person. But check out the quotes in the accompanying panel. With some of them, it’s hard to divine which were uttered by Kiely and which were uttered by Cody. Or try this line for size. “Players have to be 100% committed and willing to park other stuff because you can’t do everything. Hurling has to be at the top of this hierarchy of needs in your life.” Kiely. But, again, it might as easily be Cody and it probably has been on numerous occasions. If Kiely may unconsciously be channelling hurling’s presiding genius of the past two decades, what of it? How, in fact, could he not be?
A la Cody, the Galbally man placed great store in the tone and temperature of the As versus Bs games last year. A la Cody, who had the good sense to listen to Martin Fogarty and Mick Dempsey back in 2006 when they stressed the importance of doing too little rather than too much on the training ground, he eased back on the throttle as the summer wore on in order to ensure that sharpness wasn’t lost. A la Cody, given that neither man is a tactical visionary nor has ever pretended to be, he wanted his defenders to defend, not rewrite the playbook. And a la Cody (see 2003, ‘09, ‘12 and ‘14), he ended up winning an All Ireland by way of the depth of his panel.
Like all successful managers, the pair have made a virtue out of maximising the materials to hand. In each case, it meant reinventing a forward whose ship looked to have long since sailed. Cody’s Exhibit A on this count was Eddie Brennan, who in his first four starts in All-Ireland finals mustered a total of 0-2 from play. In Kiely’s case, it was Graeme Mulcahy, who in the course of Limerick’s five championship outings in 2016-17 managed a total of 1-0 (the goal against Westmeath), was twice substituted and came on for the last three minutes against Kilkenny.
Each has his own credo and runs his own belief system. Kiely is a broad-church kinda guy; Cody is the supreme pontiff, cold and remote on his papal throne, infallible even when he’s wrong. In Kiely’s case, his determination to keep everyone inside the tent is easily traceable to his own days in the green jersey.
At one stage there was nothing in the world he wanted to do more than to hurl championship for Limerick. He never did, losing out on the left-half back slot on the eve of the 1996 championship to a swashbuckling youngster called Mark Foley. There would be consolation of sorts in the realisation that it wasn’t just anyone he lost out to; Foley stayed there for the next 10 years. But the episode would inform Kiely’s outreach programme to his panelists two decades later.
Cody too, like any player-turned-manager, has been shaped by his experiences on the field. The man hung out to dry by the Kilkenny management in 1978 when redeployed at full-forward and abused at the All-Ireland homecoming, returned in glory four years later as the victorious captain. It was a journey he made by himself, with nobody’s arm around his shoulder; Liam O’Brien, another of the scapegoats in 1978, at least had had Paddy Grace call over to him in Smithwicks brewery to talk him out of retirement.
At the risk of overdoing the psychological projection, it’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that Cody believes a player’s fire can only come from within. Remember Jackie Tyrrell’s complaint about the “crippling lack of feedback”? One can’t imagine that with Kiely. When James Maher was substituted in Ennis a fortnight ago the manager didn’t glance in his direction. One can’t imagine that with Kiely either.
Life being what happens when you’re busy making other plans, had it not been for Kiely’s appointment as principal of Abbey CBS secondary school in Tipperary town he would have succeeded John Allen, as he’d been groomed to do, in 2014. The blow turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Kiely ended up taking the hot seat at precisely the right time both for him and for the county’s new generation. The stars — and starlets — aligned perfectly. Had he taken over as per the original scenario he’d now be yet another pissed off ex-Limerick manager and the wait would be 46 years and counting.
He ticks all the boxes. Supreme organisational competence, boundless reserves of energy (colleagues have learned not to walk along beside him in the school corridors), the ability to delegate. His hurling acumen was there to be seen as far back as 2002 when the Abbey faced Castlecomer CS in the All-Ireland senior B final at Semple Stadium. Kiely and his fellow Limerick man Paddy Kelly were in charge of the team and David Morrissey, a precocious talent who won three Munster minor medals with Tipperary, the last of them as captain, was their big weapon.
Knowing that Castlecomer would have their homework done on Morrissey, Kiely and Kelly came up with a cunning plan. At a given signal all six Abbey forwards would rotate simultaneously. It worked and it won them the match, the Castlecomer defenders losing their opponents when the button was pressed and Morrissey getting free for the goal that set the Abbey on their way to a 3-13 to 1-13 triumph.
Inasmuch as it exists, the Kiely/Cody dynamic cuts both ways. Praising this “top-class team with an age profile to give them magnificent hope to be there for quite a while”, the Kilkenny manager revealed last week he was impressed with what he’d been hearing from people in Limerick. “People are proud of everything about them. It’s hugely important how you represent the county and obviously, they’re doing it very well.”
One can understand his admiration. Kiely is blessed with a bunch full of bright, ambitious youngsters, new versions of the likes of Brian Hogan and Peter Barry and Derek Lyng. Those were ideal Cody players because of their character, which comes first; skills can be worked on. He’ll have been impressed too with the briskness of the new champions’ return to business and the victories against Wexford and Tipperary.
The counties clash tomorrow with Limerick luxuriating in the humid, heady zone that obtains for every MacCarthy Cup-winning team when the National League comes around. Everything they do is by definition interesting, innovative and — temporarily — right. The new holy writ. It is a situation that cannot obtain, needless to say, and it will not. Diarmuid Byrnes will not be popping up indefinitely at top of the right to laser passes across the enemy 20-metre line, as he did against Tipperary a fortnight ago.
It is Limerick who have the better team. It is Limerick who have the better forward line, even if Kilkenny will scarcely hit 20 wides next time they contest an All Ireland final. Then again, neither will Limerick.
Granted, the champions do not possess a TJ Reid or a Richie Hogan, but Reid is 31 and Hogan is 30. When Galway were defeated at Croke Park six months ago Aaron Gillane and Cian Lynch were 22, Seamus Flanagan 21 and Kyle Hayes 20. In Cody’s 20 years at the helm no other manager has won two All-Irelands. This season’s championship features four men on one apiece. Liam Sheedy, Davy Fitz and Micheál Donoghue.
The fourth is John Kiely.
