Looking to make some new memories
PAT O’DRISCOLL is scrutinising the piece of paper between his fingers. On it are the names of the sides his Ardfert team defeated during an unprecedented unbeaten two year voyage through junior and intermediate ranks in Kerry, Munster and beyond.
O’Driscoll, who hopes to extend that run against Kildare champions Confey at the Gaelic Grounds tomorrow (12.30pm), smiles at the memories condensed onto an A4 sheet.
Two games stand-out and its bad news for those who bet on him recounting fondest memories of title successes. The highlights reel starts a little closer to home.
“We won the All-Ireland Junior final but I did not get the same kick out of it as many of the games along the way. The Kerry junior semi-final against Ballyduff in 2005 was an absolute belter. We are great old rivals and I have tried to mould Ardfert into the Ballyduff way. They are a fantastic group of sportsmen.
“They are like Armagh. If they get something into their heads they will win it. It will take an awfully good team to beat them. So to beat them was huge. We were seven points down 20 minutes into the first half and people were thinking that they would choke the life out of us. But we made an unbelievable comeback and ended up winning by six. That was a cracker of a game.”
Another semi-final – the All-Ireland meeting against Monaghan Harps last year — also jumps off the page for the 35-year-old.
“That was seriously special. We were down four points with two minutes to go. We were after taking off Sean Flaherty and Sean came up to me on the sideline and said: ‘Pat, throw me back on’. We put him on and he caught the first ball that came his way turned around and banged in a goal. Next thing John Egan wiggled in from the sideline and stuck the ball under the goalkeeper’s legs. The place went ballistic. It was a Houdini act.”
O’Driscoll was never one for strait jackets. Even as a child growing up in what is predominantly hurling country, the youngster was off doing his own thing. He recalls how his father used to say that ‘something has to be done with that young fella’ such was his love affair with an O’Neills. “I used to sleep with the ball.”
The romance didn’t wane when he hit his teens. It became more passionate. When training with the Kerry minors he would thumb a lift to sessions and would wear his gear underneath his work clothes in an effort to make the sessions on time.
A recent six month work commitment best displays his passion. “I’d leave the house at quarter to six to be down in Castletownsend at quarter to eight. We’d work until quarter to five and be back home at quarter to seven and be at training 15 minutes later. My wife Joanne would have dinner ready when I came home and then it was off to bed.
“Even now I have no interest in talking anything but football. I spent seven years in the States working and playing football. They were fanatical for football and that drove me mad altogether.”
But it wasn’t without a few glitches. Two serious shoulder injuries meant O’Driscoll’s playing career had come to a premature end. There was no other option for such a football obsessive on his return to Ireland in 2002 as the players of this North Kerry town learned in no uncertain manner.
“I was lucky because I was detached for seven years and none of the young lads knew me. In a way it was a like an outside manager coming in. We were in serious trouble. I came in and told the players that if we were more committed and pulled up our socks we would get out of Division Five (the basement of Kerry’s league) and get something going.
“We spent several murderous sessions down on the strand in Banna and over a couple of weeks you could see the fitness levels improving.”
Define murderous?
“Gruesome” he grimaces. “We would go to the beach on Sunday mornings and we would do a mile circuit four times with three minute breaks in between. Other days we would go to the field and do wire to wire; wire to 30; wire to 90. Then you would see the boys puking.
“So I would try and mix it up with a few sit-ups (100) and a few press-ups (100) and then the stomachs would be like jelly.
“Next would be a few diagonals (six) and maybe throw in another few sit-ups (200). But the fitness levels just shot up.”
Fitness levels attained, it was happydays.com for Ardfert footballers. But there was one caveat.
“If I thought the fitness levels were after dropping I might get them to do 20 laps, or 15 or 10 depending on how bad they were. But coming close to game time it would be all ball work. The start was the key. Taking a few scalps in the County League gave the lads a bit of belief and it snowballed from there. We trained like savages but it has stood to us.”
O’Driscoll still looks for things that give him and Ardfert an edge. Trips to Boston to see his brothers often involve visits to bookstores in a bid to discover any new training manuals from the best and brightest coaches in the NFL or the NBA. He is a self processed fan of Ger Loughnane and Tony Considine and fondly recounts the night Kerry trainer Pat Flanagan spoke to the team leaving all present with “the hairs on their necks standing up.”
O’Driscoll continued: “I would give anything to play but I am only operating on one wing. My fitness levels wouldn’t be too bad but that bone is in bad shape in my shoulder. But at least the games are coming so fast that I don’t get a chance to mull over it.
“I think if I wasn’t involved in training I would be a seriously depressed man. There isn’t five minutes of the day that I’m not thinking about Ardfert football, wondering can we do this better or can we do that better. I’m painting and sanding away but there is an O’Neills hopping everywhere in my mind.”
But it’s not a one man show. “Martin Ferris, Sean Griffin, Mike Fitz who are on the sideline with me are three of the best club men that every walked the earth. Any kudos or slaps on the back I get is definitely shared with the three boys. It is great to have three men that will do whatever it takes.”
He is loath to single out any players. But those in Ardfert will point towards the likes of Eamonn Ferris, the Flaherty’s Sean and Conor along with Stephen Wallace as being the headline acts on a side that are only now getting the full credit their achievements deserve.
Ironically the seeds for their astonishing unbeaten run were something of a bye product of O’Driscoll’s desire to march to the top of the Kerry County League.
“I remember telling the lads before the game away to Sneem that we wouldn’t worry about the Intermediate,” he says of the start of this current run. “The plan was to keep going up the divisions in the County League and try and get a better standard of football. My attitude is to never settle in the Division you are in. Forget this thing about consolidation — go for the jugular and if you are not good enough you are not good enough.”
So to tomorrow. The two years
unbeaten championship record goes on the line once more but the Ardfert boss dismisses suggestions that the run is a topic of hot discussion amongst the team’s amateur psychologists.
“Not in the slightest.We prepare for every game in the same way with the same attitude. If we win, we win. If we lose we will look at our mistakes.”
A recent example: “We played Rathmore in a challenge prior to the intermediate final against Annascaul and they beat the living daylights out of us. I nearly broke everything in the dressing room at half time. And what I didn’t break then, I broke after the game.
“We had a meeting afterwards for about an hour – and it was all so intense I was still shaking when I went home. I had to have a glass of brandy to steady myself – I was that livid over our performance. But in a way we learned more from that defeat that any other game that year.
“If you look behind you, you will be toppled over by something in front of you. It is pointless looking back. I have never watched any of the tapes of our wins. My focus is always on the next game and seeing where we can go from there.”
O’Driscoll’s pride isn’t confined to their championship run. “Division One in Kerry is the Holy Grail. Now that we are there we don’t want to get hockeyed. Staying there is the key as is getting the younger players to learn from the experience. It has been phenomenal. But I wouldn’t be bragging or boasting too much about it because you will never know when the tide will turn.”
* Tomorrow: AIB All-Ireland club IFC semi-final: Ardfert (Kerry) v Confey (Kildare), Gaelic Grounds, Limerick, 12.30pm.
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