Two close to call

Jack O’Connor may step down as Kerry coach next week, but in the meantime he has a few big decisions to make and an All-Ireland to win. No pressure then says Tony Leen.

JACK O’CONNOR has a week of big decisions ahead. The latter concerns his future as coach — the first could even define his time in the Kingdom hot-seat.

Eoin Brosnan or Declan O’Sullivan: that appears to be the stark choice facing O’Connor and his two selectors as they contemplate the permutations of an All-Ireland final selection.

Get it wrong, and O’Connor, Ger O’Keeffe and Johnny Culloty will be the Kerry management team that lost back-to-back All-Irelands. Irrelevant in the eyes of their constituents that they’ve appeared in three successive finals, or that they banged Kerry football back into shape after the unseemly end to Paidi Ó Sé’s time in charge.

Nor will it be submitted in defence that O’Connor and his management colleagues have got few key calls wrong, though it is indisputably true. An advocate of training ground form, the Dromid man has tended to pick with his eyes. And that’s what makes the outstanding selection decision, in what is likely to be his last game as coach, so difficult.

Brosnan is the man in possession, and has shown a huge improvement in form since the All-Ireland semi-final defeat of Cork. However all the reliable evidence from training says that O’Sullivan deserves to start too.

The selectors could tinker with the Darragh Ó Sé-Tommy Griffin midfield partnership to accommodate Brosnan, but that would represent a move too many for Kerry. The West Kerry partnership is indeed that — Ó Sé performs better in the middle with Griffin than Brosnan, meaning that it should be a straight head-to-head for the No 11 jersey.

That O’Sullivan is from O’Connor’s own club, Dromid Pearses, and would be returning as captain, is irrelevant. Therefore, it may come down to who will make more of an impact if introduced as a substitute.

The Kingdom had a final trial game behind closed doors in Páirc Uí Chaoímh on Saturday, and with Brosnan and O’Sullivan both given spells on the 40, none of the players left Cork any wiser as to the final selection. Critical though the decision may be, O’Connor appears to be enjoying the build-up to Sunday’s final more than the previous two. And it isn’t all about the end being in sight.

“It was a bit claustrophobic last year,” he reflected. “Certainly there isn’t the same pressure on the team. There’s isn’t that weight of putting back-to-back titles together, or all this talk about the Ulster teams.

“In one sense it was a great thing for us to lose to Cork (in the Munster final), because it took the pressure off us in many ways. We were virtually written off, and it’s hardly a coincidence that the team has played without that pressure. That Cork defeat released the pressure valve.”

It also precipitated change in the formation and tactics of the side, the catalyst being the strident criticism at home in Kerry.

“Nothing surprises me in Kerry when it comes to football,” he smiles ruefully. “You’re a hero one day, a villain the next. The pressure is constant on the players in Kerry. But we’ve been amazingly consistent over three years — lost a couple of league games here and there, won two leagues, lost an All-Ireland by a kick of a ball. At this stage it’s not about proving anything to anyone.”

Not even himself, and the self-doubts when he took the job on the basis that he hadn’t a boxful of All-Ireland medals?

“I’d be a fairly driven individual, whether it be underage or schools, or inter-county. I’d always try to win every competition I’d enter, and yes, being in a third successive final is great from a consistency point of view. But the bottom line is you don’t get any medals for being in finals, the goal is to win. We’d consider the year a failure if we don’t win the All-Ireland.”

In recalling a spirited Kerry fight-back in Scotstown this season, which yielded an unlikely league victory over Monaghan, O’Connor adroitly addressed the fighting spirits of the opposition next Sunday.

“We came back from two points down to win in Monaghan. Mayo came from seven back against Dublin in their own backyard. I knew before their semi-final that there’s a huge battle ahead with this team.

“And that’s how they are playing — as a team. There is togetherness where there was a bit of individuality before. They played exciting football back in February in Tralee (a one-point league win), and they’re still playing exciting football in September. They say the league isn’t a Championship benchmark but we drew with Dublin, Mayo beat us by a point, and when it came to the Championship, Mayo beat Dublin by a point. There’s not much in it.”

Doubtless, his own future will be the subject of much speculation but O’Connor is keeping the blinkers on for now. “It’s the wrong time to be thinking, or talking, about it. I said last year we’d be back for one season, and I meant that, but you’re not going to be thinking about that the week of an All-Ireland final. We’ll cross that hurdle when we get to it.”