O’Keeffe ponders future
County Board chairman Sean Walsh will begin moves today to set up a weekend meeting with the five selectors in a bid to iron out the problems sparked by a controversial newspaper interview by Ó Sé 12 days ago.
Mr Walsh returned from Cape Town yesterday, while Páidí Ó Sé is due back this evening or tomorrow.
The Board executive will meet on Monday night ahead of a scheduled full board meeting in Tralee on Tuesday. GAA officials will use the intervening period to stabilise the situation, with O’Keeffe already considering his future as Kerry trainer after withdrawing from a planned training run tomorrow at Banna Beach. Not surprisingly, that opening session of the season has now been cancelled, and though it is only just over two weeks to the Kingdom’s opening Allianz League game in Cork, senior officials say they are only dealing with “immediate concerns” for the moment.
The other three Kerry selectors, Eddie O’Sullivan, John O’Dwyer and Eamonn Walsh, will also be brought in by board chairman Walsh, though informal communications between the parties in Kerry are continuing daily.
Two more Austin Stacks colleagues of O’Keeffe’s, his cousin Ger O’Keeffe and Pa Laide, said yesterday they feared the ongoing controversy could seep through to the players.
“The flames are being fanned with each passing day and nobody seems to have clue to what’s going on. Ultimately it’s the good of Kerry football that must take precedence over everything else,” said All Ireland winning corner back, O’Keeffe. “Kerry football is the most important factor here. In fact no matter what happens now, the Kerry team when they go out to play football will be under enormous pressure to perform, which is unfair, ” O’Keeffe said on Radio Kerry yesterday.
All Star Laide, who won an All Ireland with the county in 1997 stressed that chairman Sean Walsh will have a major role to play.
“I think this whole affair will have an effect on the players and the last thing players want at this time of the year is this stuff going on. I suppose before Christmas they would have been smiling, happy enough watching what was happening in Cork, with the players and county board having problems. Now the roles are reversed and it’s now happening in Kerry.
“It will definitely affect them and they are probably like the supporters, not knowing who’s coming or who’s going. Probably if everyone was in South Africa together, the problems might be all sorted out. This did not happen and I think that chairman Sean Walsh will have a big part to play in getting all the parties to meet and try to come to some agreement.
“Damage may already be done. I am not sure that this problem can be sorted or has too much damage been already done. Maybe everything would have been okay but for Páidí’s interview on national television on Tuesday night. That was probably the final nail in the coffin for John O’Keeffe and that’s why he came out with the statement. I think that they would have met and everything would have been sorted but I think the biggest problem here is the lack of communication between the selection committee.
“Having worked with Paidi for three years as a Kerry player and worked with Johnno as well, I can say they are both very passionate men about football,” said Laide. “They are different types of characters, Paidi would be more robust, and Johnno would be a lot quieter. The amount of detail that both men go through is phenomenal in the built up to games.
“I suppose when you look at the position that Páidí holds, he should not be saying the things that he has said. In the words of Clive Woodward, what goes on within the camp should stay within it, and I think that was the first unwritten rule that was broken. Everything should be done behind closed doors and it is not right to be washing your linen in public.
“Both Páidí and Johnno are very much immersed in Kerry football and at the end of the day the sooner it is sorted, the better for Kerry football.”
Laide said he was surprised that Ó Sé had “dropped his guard” in the Sunday newspaper interview, given his advice to the players in their dealings with the media: “Páidí was very strict with us especially coming up to big games, and he would be afraid that one of us might drop our guard just like what has happened now with himself.
“It is unusual that he got caught because he had been preaching to us from ‘96/’97 onwards that you don’t get caught out like this, that the media are waiting there just to stir up things like this and we were on our guard at all times. It’s a quiet time of the year, the media have little action on the field to be writing about and they just love things like this. It is most unusual that Páidí should get caught.”
O’Keeffe also told Radio Kerry that Ó Sé might be trying to distance himself from recent failures.
“It seems to me that he is undermining his own selection committee. It is not even what he said, but what is being read into what he did not say. Unfortunately every time an interview has been done it has only succeeded in fanning the flames, which had almost gone out.
“This has led Johnno to come out with his statement because he must obviously feel threatened. I don’t know whether he has been talking with other selectors who came back or not or discussing it with Páidí you just do not discuss these things in the media.
“There should be no more solo runs in the media, rather an agreed statement from the five on the management team that would sort things out once and for all. In my view Páidí should not have given the interview from South Africa until such time as the five lads could all sit down together with the executive and sort things out.
“I think what is important is that Kerry football should not suffer as the game with Cork is coming up. I think that it has a collective responsibility and a manager is no good if he has four Yes men with him. Johnno was appointed trainer because he is probably the best in the country, the selectors went through an election process among the clubs of the county to do a job so all should have an equal say about team affairs.”
“I think some people may have believed that they have more power than others, which is wrong,” warned O’Keeffe, “and if they are not happy with the system then they know what they have to do. This is like Saipan all over again and we should be above that in Kerry.”
