Kieran Shannon: Liam Kearns' lasting legacy

They say the measure of a coach isn’t necessarily what you and the players won together but how those players feel about you 10 years after you’ve gone your separate ways

BOND FORGED: Former Limerick footballer Stephen Lavin has paid tribute to Liam Kearns. Pic: Pat Murphy/Sportsfile

Tue, 14 Mar, 2023 - 06:45

Kieran Shannon

Kieran Shannon is an award-winning sportswriter renowned for big interviews, insightful columns and an unrelenting focus on high‑performance sport.

They say the measure of a coach isn’t necessarily what you and the players won together but how those players feel about you 10 years after you’ve gone your separate ways. In that regard and many others Liam Kearns has been one of the outstanding football coaches and managers of this millennium.

Last summer when the Limerick footballers were winning promotion to Division Two and progressing to a Munster final I met Stephen Lavin, a member of the Limerick team that played in several provincial finals in the mid-noughties, and their reverence for their manager from those years was striking. On Monday I spoke to him again, under less jubilant circumstances, and though he was clearly shocked by the news, he still couldn’t help but raise the occasional smile when recalling the man he knew, the times they had, the bond they still shared.