The long and winding road
GETTING Tomás Ó Sé to talk is one thing. Retrieving recorded evidence of the conversation, quite another.
“I feel like hopping that thing off the wall,” he says. That ‘thing’ is a dictaphone, a writer’s football boots. But how then do we prise morsels from Legends of the Fall if we don’t prod and probe. The ways of winning, again and again. Five All-Ireland medals is it? Who’s counting.
“It is five, a sixth would matter even more,” he stresses. “You have to have as many as you can, you’re there to win medals.
Not because you can be telling fellas,” he explains, “but for myself, to know I’ve got the best out of myself. I’d read a lot on the history and tradition of Kerry football, not just about the older fellas, but how they played in games. It’s good to know you are part of that jigsaw, and be comfortable there. Feel like you’re not an imposter. Kerry is full of medals but they never boast about it, same as Kilkenny. We wouldn’t be into that.”
The last time Tomás Ó Sé spoke meaningfully with a journalist within earshot was in the minutes after Kerry lost the 2008 All-Ireland final against Tyrone. He was impressive and searingly honest in the media room. He pulled a baseball cap down over his head and opened the door to Kerry’s sundered dreams. But he spared us the heartstrings. Coldly analytical. Kerry would be back next year — they were — because that’s what Kerry do.
Now when we meet, Ó Sé flings the training gear bag on the floor and warns you’ll be hooshed out the door at 10. All-Ireland finals have their own rhythm, but pre-match routines are inflexible. Even after five All-Irelands.
It’s the selfishness of the madness.
“If I missed a (training) session, I’d be very annoyed. It’s a very selfish mentality, football takes from everything else. I watched Páidi growing up, and he was a very selfish man in that sense, but he was well ahead. He was essentially a professional footballer, he lived for Kerry football. He came out of the guards so it would suit football. Everyone’s different.”
A loud Ó Sé laugh follows. “It was middle of the championship so we’d be off school for the summer. On his night off from Kerry training, Páidi would do his Slea Head run which was 13 miles, over the mountain and back around. When he was doing that we’d be setting up these hurdles for him on the beach. They used to be stolen on him because the run would take an hour and a half so our job was to bring them and his boots down to the beach. When he was finished he’d leap into the sea, head up home and go into a salt bath with a glass of port to warm him up. That’s no lie.”
He’s away from Kerry for years now, comfortable in the relative anonymity of Cork, and Tomás meets Páidi less than his brothers. But he has to be grazed by such a force of nature.
“Were we influenced by him? It’s seeping in all the time. He was mad for piseógs. I wouldn’t be big into them. I remember being parked up with him waiting for some cat that he’d have to see before we headed off training. I don’t know was it any cat or a certain cat. That’d come from my grandmother, but in modern times it’s less and less. I think they call it routine now.”
Seven years have passed since Kerry ousted Páidi, leaving three disaffected nephews stewing in Jack O’Connor’s dressing room. At least that’s what the manager thought.
“Actually, I found when Jack came in, it was easier to play under him than under Páidi. Expectations were different, I just felt freer. Like, the man was 50 yards away from us at home, if you drive past the house late at night, he’d notice. We were in each other’s pockets all the time, so the downtime was less.”
Three Ó Sé’s though? “I suppose looking back now, I can see the scenario that Jack faced. We’d be clannish enough, black in fact. But we never caused trouble, we were never awkward. Maybe because there were three of us....
“As a coach I regard him very highly, he’s good at breaking down opponents. He’s open to change, freshening things up, calm in the dressing room. All good points.
“He’d appreciate as well my point on a certain situation, we both want the same thing — to win. He does take things on board. People have this thing that we’d be barking at each other, but it’s always constructive discussion.”
This week he’s preparing for his ninth All-Ireland final as a player, and it mightn’t be his last, despite what many presume. He’s gone 33 after all.
“If the body is right and I was happy I’d play away. I like it still, there’s a buzz. Before the Limerick (quarter-final) game I was apprehensive, but the buzz is there again. It’s great to go training this time of the year. It’s always hard in January and February, but the feeling you have in September compensates. I’d hate to go away thinking I could have gone on.”
Ó Sé’s low mileage in 2010 and 2011 has more to do with suspensions than anything else, but he’ll always bristle at the suggestion that’s implicit in such censure.
“If you’d ask any player I’ve marked down the years, there would be broad agreement that I’m not a dirty player. If things got out of hand I wouldn’t be shirking either, but I would not be the fella to start it. Maybe, that’s a small part of my problem.
“I was cranky and my head wasn’t right against Limerick (in the Munster final) last year. It was actually one of my better games and there was no history with your man (Stephen Kelly) from Limerick and we spoke after the game, fine. It was daft, simple as that. I don’t know where it came from.
“But the Tipp game this year... I’d argue ‘til I die that was handbags stuff. I don’t know what way the game has gone. I got a fit of laughing when I saw (Diarmuid) Connolly getting the same sideline man (as spotted his infringement against Tipperary) coming in to sort things out the day against Donegal. I was saying to myself ‘someone’s definitely getting done here.’ To get two months for that in the middle of the championship. Come on. What happened in the Tipp game occurs in every single game, your man collapsed like a sack of spuds. Fellas are seriously afraid to go in with a shoulder now in case they’re a quarter of a second out and it’s all over RTÉ and it looks terrible. If he stays down, there’s a good chance you’ll get a straight red. Referees know, or they should know, who the scuts are. What happened Connolly was ridiculous, I’m glad he’s playing.”
There was only one upside to sitting out this year’s Munster final — “the second most important game of the year” — in Killarney. He got to bring his son, Michéal, five, as a fan. Since, he’s had him in the dressing room in Croke Park for the semi, his uncle Marc across the way. Nice to store.
“We enjoyed the Munster final, but they are the days you look forward to as a player. I didn’t think the time fitted the crime. Got two months for a tap. I’ve played that way throughout my whole career, never looking for trouble. Do you remember me stepping over the line in a big way? I haven’t lost my discipline, I’m still playing the same way.”
Did he think that Dave Coldrick allowed Mayo too much latitude in the semi-final or were Kerry grateful for the grilling?
“Tough tackling yes, but nothing untoward for me. There wasn’t a foul blow really. We needed a physical game, I didn’t hear any (Kerry) players saying afterwards they were over the top. You’d be hoping we’d give as good as we get on Sunday and Kerry have always been like that. If teams want to be physical with them, they can take it, mix it up.”
It’s a long time since Ó Sé’s championship bow — 1998 since you asked, and he was lost at sea, chasing Cork’s Aidan Dorgan in Killarney — but there are pre-match moments that still ruffle him.
“No matter what any player says, talking about the match does drain you, spouting the same answers all day to everybody. In Kerry, they talk football night and day. I’m sure Gooch gets a lot more of it, and Donaghy too. The lads would be coming out of the bank with the phone stuck to their ear to avoid more of it after work. It’s easier to live here (in Cork).
Match day too, those quiet moments on the team bus, snaking towards Jones’ Road. Here he concurs with Darragh.
“Coming into the game, I get bouts of nervousness. You’d look out of the bus and see a fella fishing in a small river in a tub and you’d think it’d be great to swap life with him for the next hour and a half. But when you get out on the field it tends to leave fairly quickly. Two minutes, I’m grand. I read where (Henry) Shefflin was saying he over-cooked it last year in terms of preparation, but I was never a fella who’d dwell too much on things. Maybe five or six minutes (thinking about the match) on a given day. Then I’ll park it.”
Sunday is a ninth All-Ireland in eleven seasons for this warrior of West Kerry. His legacy is secure but strangely that of this team isn’t.
“We’re not exactly looking for plaudits, no side is when they’re still in the here and now. The ‘Golden Years’ team, individually every one of them were great players, you could still name the team in your sleep. But the bulk of these lads are very good players that could stand alongside that team in any fair comparison. Look at Tom O’Sullivan. He has snuffed out the best of corner forwards for a decade, the pick of them. People are still giving him grief but he keeps doing the business. Mike McCarthy the same, Marc is also a serious player. And there’s no ego there. There’s no-one in that dressing room who’s cocky.”
The Kerry way? “Kerry teams always have one quality — they show respect to every team, prepare the same way for all opposition. We’ve not been caught out by an underdog because we’re too afraid of losing. Meath in 2001 would hurt Kerry players a lot more than losing finals to Tyrone. That was humiliating. You don’t want that happening a second time.”
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