TWO TRIBES WITH GOOD VIBES
PAT O’Shea and Eoin Brosnan referenced it in different conversations that were years apart, so Dr Crokes’ Kerry Under-21 final success of 1986 is as good a place as any to start.
Last Christmas, I happened upon an old Kerry’s Eye sports almanac for that year — a circulation booster before newspapers recognised the importance of such — and scanning over the two team line-ups posing before the game, I muttered the same then as we all said 24 years ago and 100 teams have said since: how did Crokes beat us?
Castleisland had the bigger players, the more established names, the tougher route to the final. Crokes had good players but a lot of fellas we didn’t rate much, on the basis that their reputation hadn’t spanned the 16 miles between us. And we lost 1-12 to 2-4, a scoreline every bit as comprehensive, and more, as it appears.
Scores of semis and finals have ebbed this way and that since, Crokes ones that is, watched from the lavish comforts of the press tribune. And every time we whisper in that faintly ludicrous way of thinking that the opposition will hear us... ‘you haven’t the Crokes beaten until you’re inside in the shower.’
In the Kerry county senior final before last, South Kerry were infinitely bigger, more experienced and speckled with star turns. But a raw, featherweight Crokes took them to a point and an inch of defeat. It was startling to watch and heart-rending for all that. It’s what separates them from the rest in Kerry, from Austin Stacks, Strand Road, Laune Rangers and Desmonds.
Making lemonade out of lemons. Squeezing the most out of every situation. Maximising resources, output. That’s what Dr Crokes do, better than anyone I’ve ever seen. Even Nemo Rangers.
Crokes haven’t had the success of Nemo, but who has? The Cork side are an exception to every GAA rule of peaks and troughs, famines and fallow periods. Crokes cannot compare to Nemo’s silverware, nor its history; they measure up though for consistency, pride and club ethic. Structures and long-term strategy too. That’s where they’re alike.
Since that ‘86 U21 success which proved the engine for senior honours, Crokes have only won three county senior titles and three Munster club titles. Only once, in 1992, did All-Ireland success follow. But they’ve never dipped out of Kerry’s cutthroat League Division One, a standard that’s always been treated more seriously than its recently-reworked counterpart across the county bounds. They have taken Nemo’s template for underage development, shaping the juveniles to the Crokes style. And for that, Pat O’Shea takes a lot of credit.
Pat O’Shea, and regular exposure to the Nemo way for over a decade and more.
“I’d go right back to 1998, my first year in charge,” says Harry O’Neill, coach to Dr Crokes. “We would have challenge games against them when Billy Morgan was in charge. They would always travel (to Kerry) but they’d always have more players than us. Cork were in All-Irelands at the time but Shea Fahy, Colin Corkery, Steven O’Brien, Martin Cronin... they’d all be there. Fahy and O’Brien might be injured, but they would still have travelled. We were Raggyball Rovers by comparison.”
It was sinking in, though. “The following year, we met them in Ballincollig in the Munster League,” O’Neill remembers. “They were preparing (their second string) for an intermediate final in Cork, and after our game in the bar, they were coming up to Billy (effects Cork accent)... ‘are we going with sandwiches Tuesday night or will we get something more ready for the lads?’ ... ‘what time will I have the bus driver there?’ I was talking to the boys going home that night and we were like ‘we need to get to that level’.”
They’ve closed the gap but O’Neill, who has had two well-separated spells in charge (1998-2001 and 2009 to this year), says they’ve regularly used tomorrow’s Munster final opponents as their barometer. Not that they will be spooked by Nemo in Limerick’s Gaelic Grounds (2pm).
DARA Ó Cinnéide often jibbers in frustration at the 2000 county final when his An Ghaeltacht were outflanked by what many would have perceived a weaker Dr Crokes fifteen. How, holding a one-point lead, Crokes used all their well-spent basketball youth running down the clock on the open terrace side of Austin Stack Park. Ten minutes of keep-ball, legend has it.
“It was actually a minute and a half, I’ve timed it on the video,” laughs O’Neill now. “The perception was that we were a team on the way down, Gaeltacht were the coming force. Which was true, because they won the county the following year.”
Two things crop up from that season. “Fellas in the club were baying for my head at one stage in 2000. My brother Pat was over in New York and he met Eddie Tatler (O’Sullivan) who had heard I was being kicked out. I remember it, May 15. Donie O’Leary was in charge of the Crokes at the time, and he said ‘hold tough on this one and we’ll be okay’.
“We beat Cordal in an O’Donoghue Cup game in Farranfore, then beat (Kerins) O’Rahillys in the league. It took off from there.”
But he did lose a player. The way the chattering classes in Kerry had it that year, O’Neill and Brian Clarke — one of the team’s star, if wayward, turns — came to blows in the dressing room. The coach dug his heels in with the club, who suspended Clarke. “It may’ve been a turning point that year, I don’t know, but it probably strengthened my hand with the players. That could’ve gone either way, but we won every game thereafter.”
Including a victory down in deepest South Kerry that sums up Dr Crokes. Lemons and lemonade.
“Below in Waterville, bad day, and the general consensus was that it was all against us. But our lads stood up to it. We engineered a goal between Gooch (all 17 years and nine stone of him) and Noel O’Leary. Then we beat Rathmore, but (keeper) Peter O’Brien, who scored a penalty, made some mad saves for us that day.”
At the start of that season, O’Neill drafted back in Eddie Tatler as a selector but also brought Donal Lynch — who had challenged him for the position — inside the tent. It brought everyone together. “We still had a lot of the older guys — Connie Murphy, Pat O’Shea, Roland Neher — but there was a new group coming through from the minors, Batt Moriarty, Gooch, Melon (David Moloney), Eoin Brosnan, Eanna Kavanagh. That bunch had a fierce will to win, they were never satisfied.”
Seven years outside the wire but knee deep in other areas of the club (vice-chairman, underage) has not changed Harry O’Neill’s perspective of what makes Crokes the envy of all other Kerry clubs.
“There are the older people in every club who might not be directly involved with the teams, but they’re the ones at all the juvenile games, all the senior training sessions. There’s a huge amount of passion in the club. They’re Crokes to the core and they’re tuned into everything about the club, at every grade. I feed off them, they’re keeping myself, (joint coach) Denis Coleman and the players on our toes all the time.
“Take Pat O’Shea’s family alone, his mother (Bridie) and father (Murt) back through the years. They’ve been the heart and soul of the Crokes. By their presence alone, they are driving along everyone else. Pat himself has put fantastic structure into the underage set up, he’s the driving force along with Vince Cooper. Starting off with the six year olds, he got five or six coaches involved with each age group. That ensured good structures all the way up and if the system is right and proper, the players are going to stay.”
THE REST of us? We watch enviously, often jealously, at their successes, the shiny new home across from the stadium and nourish awful thoughts that the Crokes’ self-confidence tips over into arrogance. Occasionally it does, or so we perceive. Or maybe that’s just a townie thing.
Nemo get the same jip in Cork.
So is there a whiff of arrogance on Lewis Road? “I don’t think so,” says Harry. “We’ve said it many times ourselves, the day they’re not talking about us is the day we know we are down. We have to strive to keep them talking about us. If they’re not talking about you, they have beaten you.”
O’Neill’s second coming, in 2009, as Crokes coach, came with a rider — better delegation. For that he turned to Denis Coleman. “His input into the team is immense. I’m the mouthpiece,” he says.
They had lost 2005 and 2006 county finals to South Kerry, so the 2009 defeat, again by a single point to South Kerry, was gut-wrenching. “The defeat hurt, the fact that we were that close, and you ask yourself ‘why didn’t we go over the line?’ Is there something missing? Then we got caught by Milltown-Castlemaine in the last 10 minutes of the Co League final. We went away to think about closing the deal in the last few minutes.” Always learning.
In the Munster Club semi-final against Aherlow in Cashel, a brutal hour of more bash than bish, they trailed by two points going into injury time. They eked out a draw before closing the deal in extra time. Clinical when it mattered, Kieran O’Leary the latest scoresmith.
“There’s always fellas with an eye for goals in the club — Connie Murphy, Pat, Neher, Colm (Cooper), Eoin Brosnan. And now you see young fellas watching Gooch training. What better than watching The Master do his stuff?”
Cooper said last week he can’t remember the last Kerry game when he wasn’t under pressure. Gooch in a goldfish bowl. With Crokes, though, his responsibilities are different. “You’re inside the dressing room with fellas you’ve always hung with, played in their house with. He is almost a father-figure to a lot of players on the team, even though he mightn’t admit that. At 27, he is now taking on that role with the young fellas like Daithi Casey and Chris Brady. None of them see themselves as the next Gooch, they are comfortable in themselves, there’s no pressure on them.”
Tomorrow is a big day though. Nemo are still peeved by a rare Munster Club loss to Dr Crokes in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in 2006, and they will be favourites. But will anyone really be surprised if Crokes bag a fourth provincial crown? That’s the ultimate compliment to the Kerry champions.
They’ve had a few weeks weather break since a run of cut and thrust games. Says O’Neill: “The extra week’s break will have helped too. We’re hoping that will bring an extra bit of freshness into their legs.”
And ice in their minds.
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