‘Mentally tired? That’s just an excuse’
Slowly the Kerry footballers make their entrance and soon are sprinkled about, manning the training accoutrements in three of Fitzgerald Stadium’s four corners. However it’s the group working with what seems to be a slingshot catapult that are having the most fun.
Not least when Tomás O Sé ends up arse over kettle trying to keep pace with midfielder Seamus Scanlon. Everyone doubles up laughing.
“Donaghy calls it a bungee belt,” Tommy Griffin confirms next morning. “That was our first time using it. It’s basically for speed purposes over medium range.”
We leave them to their devices, wondering about all this weariness, an ageing team, a sated group of players.
“How many more teams are going to August anyway?” Griffin wonders. “You’re only talking about an extra month a season either way. What else would you want to be doing? Fishing? Fellas talk about us being on the road for the last five years until September. I wish it was the last ten years they were talking about.”
The Dingle man goes back to the start of the decade with Kerry, and he came on as a sub in that horror show of an All-Ireland semi-final against Meath in 2001.
“What does mentally tired actually mean?” he muses “We have a real freshness in training with the different drills. It’s new all the time because we’ve had three different trainers in the last five years – Pat (Flanagan), John Sugrue, now Alan O’Sullivan and Pat. Eamon (Fitzmaurice) does a good few football drills, and Ger (O’Keeffe) has his idea on things as well. This mental tiredness – I don’t know what the hell it is. I think it’s an excuse. You could say we were mentally tired playing against Cork the second day, but we were just bet out the gate in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. We were shite on the day.”
It wasn’t too long ago when Griffin couldn’t string a month’s training together – persistent back problems triggered other injuries and then there was the frustration of ankle injuries and a broken bone in his hand.
The Sicknote jibes started, all in good fun – he thinks.
“The ‘sicknote’ thing would be in the back of your mind, like ‘he can’t even handle a tough training session’. Trust me, you’d rather be throwing your guts up on the sideline that being on the physio’s table.”
Griffin learned one valued lesson while laid up. “You are better off not going Kerry training at all. I used to be there for a while hanging around, but you’re better off to bail and do the physio in your own time. (In 2005) with my ankle, I tried to come back too soon and broke down a few nights in training. You’d be close enough to jacking it up then. That’s what I did, just bailed out completely for a few weeks.”
Kerry name their side this evening for Sunday’s semi-final reunion with Meath, and whatever number Griffin is given, it may bear little resemblance to the position he’ll occupy come 3.30pm on Sunday.
“The half back line’s nice, probably wing back, breaking forward, bit of freedom. Most fellas would love that bit of freedom if they were honest, to be out of the full back line. But what is a GAA position nowadays when you have full backs like Tom O’Sullivan up scoring points? There’s so much interchanging.
“I met (fellow Dingle man and 1950’s West Kerry legend) Thomas Ashe recently, and he was telling me about the time he kicked two points for Kerry in the first half of an All-Ireland in Croke Park. Delighted with himself, he went in to the dressing room thinking he’d get a bit of a gee up from (coach) Dr Eamonn O’Sullivan, but he ate the head off him for being on the wrong side of the field. Imagine what Dr Eamonn would have said to Tom O’Sullivan after scoring a point against Dublin.”
The Kerry defender says the buzz of that All-Ireland quarter-final landslide didn’t even carry them home on the train. Besides, the foundations were already there.
“There was great mileage for us out of the three qualifier games,” Griffin argues. “They were better than six months training. Tough, physical games. We got belts in the Longford game that we hadn’t shipped since the All-Ireland final last year. They played with fierce intensity, and we were very lucky to get out of it. We were cat.
“We couldn’t get our hands on the ball in the second half, we weren’t winning our own kicks outs until (Mike) Quirke came on. But lads showed a bit of maturity there as well. We didn’t have to win it big. We were happier with that than winning easy, and scratching our heads wondering where does that leave us for the next day.
“Longford was the biggest scare, We played a lot better against Sligo, even though (keeper Diarmuid) Murph had to bail me out with the penalty save. It’s been a good learning curve this year, but we won’t know how much benefit it’s been unless we end up winning the All-Ireland.”
Griffin has more reasons than most for regretting the fall-out from that 15-point hammering by Meath in 2001. He was one of the scapegoats the following season as Páidi O Sé attempted to atone for his lowest day as a manager.
“Someone had to take a fall, I suppose. I didn’t play again until Jack (O’Connor) came in at the end of 2003. I played with the Kerry juniors, I was only called into the seniors to make up the numbers.”
Established now though? “I thought that last year too, and I was dropped for the All-Ireland final. Plenty of fellas have done interviews like this and got a fair shock the following week,” Griffin half-smiles. “I’ve learned to take nothing for granted.”
The thought that he may not have returned this season under Pat O’Shea is floated.
“There are two ways I can take it,” he says. “Would it have stopped me coming back this year? I don’t think it would. (Pat) didn’t have to explain to me. I came on for 20 minutes and didn’t do much. That’s hard, a real special skill. It’s a great thing to be able to come on and make an impact, especially guys with great pace. You try to be as positive but maybe my head wasn’t right (after being dropped) for the final.”
He’s calibrated now to avoid presumption, even to the point of warning a couple of Mayo friends watching their quarter-final at a recent wedding not to take a semi-final rematch with Kerry for granted.
“Were Meath ever afraid of any team?” he asks rhetorically “Playing Kerry, it’s a win-win situation. They’re dogged. Do you ever see their forwards with the hands out, moaning about the quality of the ball into them? They fight for everything.”
He recalls a “fairly infamous night” after the 2001 destruction by the Royals, but Griffin almost didn’t make it to the final whistle.
“(Giant Meath midfielder) John McDermott was on top of me at one stage, and his knees had my arms pinned down on the ground. He was getting ready to dispatch me to the next life, but (William) Kirby came along and pulled him off by the collar. There was a lot going on.”
Griffin’s easy, unfussed way is self-evident; you need to know him a bit better to discover the under-stated, acerbic wit. An ideal combination for the clientele who wander up Sráid Eoin to Muiris Dan’s pub, which he runs with business partner Padraig McLoughlin.
“Actually it hasn’t been a bad summer in Dingle. Fellas will always complain. People are surprised when I tell them I like it. You meet people. I’ve probably got to know more people in the last five years than at any stage of my life.
“But money is scarce. You don’t see fellas throwing fifties up on the counter. You can see it with the amount of guys who don’t have summer jobs – college guys, school guys, fellas who might have been mixing mortar for the summer.
“They were able to pick and choose their jobs for the last ten years – will I work in the shop, the hotel, with the builder? Do I want an outside job, an inside job, day or night? They’re the guys we depend on, the local trade, but they don’t exist any more. Any fella with a job is holding onto his few quid.”
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