O’Connor rises above the ‘energy vampires’

JACK O’CONNOR doesn’t have an All-Ireland medal but he’s turned player judgment and preparation into an art form.

In a county where the credibility to stand in the street and yap about football is determined by how many All-Ireland medals you’ve won, O’Connor has won universal respect in Kerry the hard way. The Qualifier route to the Hall of Fame.

Ask his selector Ger O’Keeffe. The Austin Stacks defender was once told to pipe down in a debate in Harty’s pub in Tralee because he’d “only four All-Irelands”.

O’Connor has now steered Kerry to three All-Irelands in six seasons at the helm — and after guiding the Kingdom to a fifth Munster title on Sunday, he’s moving rapidly northwards in the pantheon of great Kerry coaches. He’s the most successful since Mick O’Dwyer’s epoch-making period in charge and no longer has the list of luminaries that some begrudgers will claim made his job easier in 2009. In fact, one could argue with some confidence that Kerry claimed their 74th Munster title on Sunday with as weak a team on paper as they’ve had for a decade and more. Then again, O’Connor the underdog likes it best when the odds are against.

He’s always gone his own road. Yesterday while the players golfed and celebrated, O’Connor walked up the mountain side behind his home and discussed Sunday’s final with its four-legged inhabitants. They nodded approvingly, he says.

Had he listened to the chattering classes in Kerry of late, none of Brendan Kealy, Eoin Brosnan, Anthony Maher or Bryan Sheehan would have played in Sunday’s victory. Those who knock and knock now float over O’Connor where once they needled and peeved him. He calls them energy vampires, sucking the belief out of players.

“If you see something in a player and work with them, you’ve got to let them know you believe in their ability. We had the same thing with Declan O’Sullivan in 2006 — now he’s one of the best Kerry players in history,” O’Connor reflected last night.

The Kerry management team that O’Connor leads plots and devises stunningly simple strategies better than any other inter-county brains trust. Alan O’Sullivan and Donie Buckley provide the innovation in terms of physical preparation, while Ger O’Keeffe and Diarmuid Murphy — now finding his feet as a selector — are tinkering and tweaking, second-guessing and arguing with the head coach. O’Connor, though, formulates most game plans. He takes counsel from a few close confidantes and even if he concurs with advice, he has a trick of initially rebutting it in order to draw out the debate.

On Sunday, they clearly identified Graham Canty’s lack of high intensity match practice at full back, a position that requires sharpness of mind and body as a pre-requisite. However, would any other county than Cork had done better dealing with the three-hand reel of Donaghy, Declan O’Sullivan and Bryan Sheehan rotating and switching? Perhaps a fit and prepared Eoin Cadogan may provide a full back option, but he’s not there yet.

O’Connor was already senior Kerry manager when he watched Darran O’Sullivan scorch through the Armagh minors at Croke Park in 2005 and now that he’s added a goalfinder to his radar, he’s all but unstoppable running onto ball. The Glenbeigh man is another the coach has cajoled to a point where Paul Galvin may now have to settle for a place on the bench for the All-Ireland quarter-final next month — not because he’s not good enough, but because Kerry want to keep O’Sullivan in the half-forwards. Though Kieran O’Leary was taken off Sunday — incorrectly in my opinion — he did well enough to retain his place for the August Bank Holiday weekend.

On Sunday night a few of the Kerry players were chewing the fat in The Malton in Killarney when Darran O’Sullivan’s shooting style came up for debate. Too often in the past, he’s scorched efforts over the crossbar but the man himself says he’s not for changing after another gunblast on Sunday.

“I still prefer to hit them over the keeper’s head or shoulder. I hit the second effort lower and (Alan) Quirke came out and got a block on it. If you can put a bit of height on them, even if the keeper gets a hand, the least you’ll get is a point. Jack’s had a word with me about it and ironically the week before the game, I was hitting everything but the net. But the important one went in,” he said last night in his home town as Newstalk’s Ulster Bank off the Ball Roadway trundled onto the Ring of Kerry.

Kerry will cool the jets this week as the players prepare for third round matches in the Kerry County Championship next weekend. But already O’Connor and the selectors are tinkering with the flawed template they employed between Munster final and All-Ireland quarter-final last year. That may even include a challenge game against another county, something Kerry have tended to shy away from in the past. Two weeks ago they met Laois in Limerick and O’Connor feels it served a useful purpose. Appropriate opposition could be a problem, but Jack O’Connor has proved to his remaining few doubters what a resourceful coach he can be.