The man who went up a hill and climbed a mountain

Tony Leen speaks to the man who put the smile back on the face of Kerry football.

Sat, 02 Oct, 2004 - 01:00

One hour's walk brings the moment when he looks down on Coomasatharn Lake and wonders how he climbed so high, so fast.

"Becoming Kerry manager was totally against the odds for me. I come from a small, rural club, never played for Kerry. Never even got close to it."

This is true. Think about an All-Ireland winning manager that you never heard of. Hard, isn't it?

Last night at the Inny Tavern in Dromid, the story of Kerry's season of sweetness came to a ridiculously romantic conclusion. Jack O'Connor and player Declan O'Sullivan, hoist the Sam Maguire cup onto the bar counter of the pub named after the local river, and started by Jack and his brother, Michael, fifteen years ago. There is a football pitch and a community centre in Dromid, and not a lot else in terms of landmarks. But for the men who nurtured Dromid Pearses GAA club through its various crises, collapses and reformations, this was a moment in time.

Sean Hard Curran, Jeremiah O'Shea. And Jack O'Connor.

"My sense of self worth comes from football, playing and managing. It has given me confidence, helped develop my personality. To be involved with a Kerry team that put on such a performance in the theatre of dreams on the day it really matters is the moment all my dreams came together."

He is struggling now. It is Thursday night, his voice is hoarse and his mind is pulp. He has spent four celebrating days digesting the scale of his achievement. Not just his achievement. This was a team victory in the truest sense of the word, but in defeat, there would be as many fingers but only one target.

For a county with 32 All-Irelands, there has been amazing acclaim for last Sunday's 33rd, a comprehensive defeat of Mayo. This was an All-Ireland annexed the Kerry way, and the genuine emotion attaching itself to the celebrations was lost on no-one, least of all the coach.

"Johnny Culloty would be a great advocate of winning with a bit of style. That's why people are so delighted. You can see that in the outpouring of emotion. We didn't stumble over the line, we won enjoying it."

After the final, Jack took a quiet moment to call his father at home in Dromid. Now 84, Mikey O'Connor was widowed the night before his son was ratified as Kerry manager.

"I called over today (Thursday). We had a cup of tea and talked about things. I'd have been very close to my mother and we spoke about how much she would have enjoyed this. We reckon she had an input into all this from her lofty perch. The night they were sanctioning my appointment at the County Board in Tralee, we took her to the church..."

O'Connor straightens up. "Had a mug of tea, togged out and I shot away up the mountain. That's my haven up there. That's where I get my head in order."

He taps the dictaphone on the table in a manner that suggests a dark front is hovering into view.

"Before we played any game this year, Pat Spillane wrote in the paper that the last entry on my cv was being beaten by the Waterford U21s. There was no mention that I had trained two U21 All-Ireland winning teams, or been a selector on two All-Ireland winning senior Kerry teams.

"I have been involved in fourteen All-Ireland finals at different levels and won twelve, but this guy was dismissing me as a five-eight (unqualified) coach."

By unfortunate happenstance, O'Connor was reading the article sitting alongside his ailing mother in Tralee General Hospital. She died an hour later. He's not blaming Spillane for the timing, but there is clear and present bitterness at the slight.

"I took that extremely personally. Pat Spillane has made a living throwing out glib comments about people - remember Francie Bellew at half time in the 2002 final? He's talking about human beings with feelings. I took that very badly. I would have no time for Pat Spillane ever again. Anything he would say now about me or Kerry football, I'd have no respect for. None."

Spillane wasn't lying about the Waterford U21 defeat, but O'Connor felt he deserved some time. Instead it got worse.

After a spring training week in Lanzarote, Kerry returned to a humiliating challenge game defeat to Galway. The following week came the nadir in Longford - an opening round defeat in the League.

"I was the underdog with no All-Ireland medals to wave around. It is a help initially if you go into a job with a playing track record, though only initially. But I didn't even have that."

He had hit the ground stumbling.

"We had a rough introduction. I had lost to Waterford and Longford, neither a football powerhouse, so don't think there wasn't a few worries in my head at that stage. You start doubting yourself."

Especially when the management of O'Connor, Culloty and Ger O'Keeffe scanned the League fixtures on the bus back from Longford.

Solace was nowhere: Cork with Morgan at the helm, Dublin away, Tyrone away, Paidi's gang in Mullingar. "That was the time for checking our pulse."

TO appreciate how it all ended with such rich quality, one must understand the core parameters of O'Connor's plan: competitive training, a new physical regime, dynamic influences around the pitch, especially around midfield. Trainer Pat Flanagan was fundamental to it all.

"For us to be competitive, we needed to make training competitive. That's key; you'll play as you train. Pat was always going to be key."

The pair had worked together at Colaiste na Sceilge, but even before that, late night phone conversations told O'Connor here was the man who would come up with something to rejuvenate Kerry bodies wearied by three seasons of Croke Park hurt.

"You get a feeling for a guy so I got him down to the beach in Ballinskelligs for a session four or five years ago. The key is to have players training without realising it. That's a very difficult thing to do."

He is still irked by some who "mischievously" tell him not to rely on training, to pick on match day ability. Don't tell his eyes what to see. He didn't appreciate being told that Kerry was uproarious about John Crowley starting ahead of Mike F. Russell last Sunday, but chooses another example to illustrate the importance of sweat behind closed doors.

"Brendan Guiney got 30 seconds of Championship action, and that was in the final. But his contribution to our success over the course of the season was as important as anybody's. I've never seen anybody as dedicated as that man was - he missed one session all year, winter or summer; whenever we needed to check out a forward in training, we would put Guiney on him because he is a real tough customer. There's a bit of a mad streak in him which is no harm. But any forward going in to him wasn't going to get it easy any night."

O'Connor says he "keeps an eye on those fellas" who tend to the whims of Premiership millionaires. He admires Arsene Wenger but quotes Brian Clough: "Never give a man a job he can't do, because you'll destroy him".

He is referring to Paul Galvin. "We identified him very early in the year as being crucial. One of the areas Kerry fell down on over the last few years was the intensity around the middle of the field to pick up breaking ball. Paul had a lot of critics because he wasn't a typical Kerry forward who kicked points from forty yards, but this is all about balance. We had the Rolls Royce fellas, now we needed a grafter. I'd put his contribution down as being one of the most crucial. It depends how a player sees himself. Paul's a winner of breaking ball, a worker in that midfield area. If I put Paul Galvin at wing forward and said 'score four points or you're off', he wouldn't do."

It wasn't always a Galvin love-in. After the Finuge forward and defender Aidan O'Mahony were caught 'skelping' against Limerick in the Munster final, O'Connor bounced them off the walls the following week. Galvin's ears were ringing for a week. Not that Jack remembers it that way.

"Paul and Aidan were in a pressure cooker situation. They're human beings and they stepped over the line. It reflected badly on me and on the image of Kerry football that we wanted to portray.

"That Cork (league) game was absolutely crucial. They talk now about All-Irelands but that was a very important period to get some momentum going, to get a bit of confidence in myself and for the management team to believe in themselves. Confidence isn't something you pick out of the sky, it comes from results."

He remembers Moynihan's leadership that night in Tralee, of driving up a few weeks later to Ballincollig to talk John Crowley out of premature retirement. And meeting Maurice Fitzgerald down in Ballinskelligs.

"Maurice came back and we chatted over things, some of the pitfalls I could face. I threw it out that if he got his fitness up to a particular level, he might throw his lot in with us. He was a bit taken aback. Psychologically I'd say he felt his days were numbered. He said he'd think about it, I rang him a few times, and he did eventually decided around March that he would give it a go.

"He had a real go, but then he went over badly on his ankle which put him out for five or six weeks. By that time, we were on a bit of a run so it didn't happen. It may have happened..."

As Kerry stabilised, Seamus Moynihan was steering. O'Connor is both manager and fan. "That was the time we needed Moynihan and (Dara) O Cinneide, the time you need men to stand up. Anyone can come on board when you are doing well. Moynihan was crucial, he was a driven man. He's up there among the top four or five Kerry players in history. He has to be, this man has done it for 12 years. Anyone can do it for a couple of seasons but he's done it for club, college, county, province and country."

In the Bianconi Inn in Killorglin now, and much like his season, O'Connor is finding his feet. He said last Monday that the two Munster finals against Limerick turned the season from potential to mission. In the drawn game, O'Connor chased after referee Gerry Kinneavy like a lunatic. It took Culloty to pacify him.

"Johnny is an extremely calm character, has a calming influence on people around him. In the League game in Mullingar, we were playing with a gale of wind, and we got a free. Instead of banging it into Mike Quirke, who had created two goals already, we kicked it sideways over the line. I went ballistic, and I drew a kick on a water bottle in front of me. Johnny reprimanded me and told me to sit down and behave myself. I was like a scolded schoolkid.

"How can you quantify what Johnny brings to the set up? He's one of the most respected football men in the county, won five All-Ireland medals, played in nine finals, and would have come under the influence of Eamon O'Sullivan. We have that connection though him to the Dr Eamon era. When this man talks, you listen."

The replayed Munster final recalls an interesting sidebar about the other selector Ger O'Keeffe, a decision O'Connor rates as critical to their season.

"It's ironic now to think we took off (Johnny) Crowley so early in the Limerick replay in Killarney. We were all over the place, 1-6 to 0-2 down, playing with the wind. We could have taken off any one of ten players, but a few balls hopped off Crowley. That allowed us to put O Cinneide full forward, Eoin (Brosnan) to the forty and we brought Tommy Griffin into the middle of the field.

A few minutes later Brosnan got the goal which turned the game, but Griffin flew at midfield - even though he had never played a minute in training there. That was Ger's decision, and how it worked."

Hoe he enjoyed O'Keeffe's diary in this paper last week. He reads the papers, admires Colm O'Rourke, and tries hard not to hold grudges with the low-blowers.

"What used Ali say when he was rope-a-doping against Foreman in Zaire? 'Is that all you've got?' The mischievous stuff puts you off only if you're not focused. You deal with the most of it, but Spillane was different. He wasn't going on my record, he was taking the legs from under me. He's trained Templenoe U12s. Good at dishing it out, but not taking it."

Clearly the vindication of Crowley's selection is still raw. And he rewinds to the League final victory over Galway, when the Glenflesk man pilfered two goals.

"People dismiss the League final as being mickey-mouse game, but I kept referring back to it during the Championship because we played some of our best football that day. The fact that it was at Croke Park was key; it's so big you have to play a different type of game there - you could hit the full forward line from spots on another pitch that you wouldn't in Croke Park because it's longer."

During the score-fest, he turned to his selectors and smiled.

This was perfect - the long high ball was the way to go for the September Road to Croke Park. And now he's the small man atop the big mountain, the fall will be easy. There is unpolished diamonds in Kerry - Beaufort's Dan Doona for one - but after a treble-winning first season, after an All-Ireland that the natives caress as a thing of beauty, the only way is down.

"There was a circle of us having pints on Monday night - Gooch, Crowley, Moynihan, Marc O Se, (sub keeper) Kieran Cremin and myself. I asked Gooch what's next? A guaranteed All-Star, an All-Ireland medal winner at 21, one of the great corner forward displays, one of the great All-Ireland final goals.

What's the motivation for next year. Can he raise the bar, bring it to another level? One good team wins an All-Ireland, but it takes a great team to put two together. I suppose it was a rhetorical question for us all."

As Jack might say, that's key.

Jack O'Connor's Season:

THE LEAGUE: Division 1A

Round 1: Longford 3-7 Kerry 1-12.

Round 2: Kerry 0-11 Cork 0-9.

Round 3: Dublin 0-12 Kerry 1-12.

Round 4: Kerry 2-18 Fermanagh 0-6.

Round 5: Westmeath 0-10 Kerry 2-10.

Round 6: Kerry 1-13 Mayo 0-8.

Round 7: Tyrone 1-8 Kerry 1-7.

Semi-final: Limerick 0-10 Kerry 0-12.

Final: Kerry 3-11 Galway 1-16.