Waiting for Johnny to jump up

Dr Crokes’ lead midfielder knows that there’s more than tomorrow’s Kerry SFC final opponents, Dingle, keeping an eye on him as he heads into what he calls his “breakthrough season” in 2013.He spoke to Tony Leen

IT’s the perennial question, the nagging doubt about certain footballers, and Johnny Buckley, even at 14½stone and 6 ft 2, comes to mind. Is he too nice? Does he have the drive, the want, the cut to horse Anthony Maher and Bryan Sheehan out of the way and instal himself in Kerry’s midfield in 2013? You ask and the response is unfailingly polite.

“Without a doubt,” he emphasises when the importance of next season with Kerry is broached. “It’s a breakthrough year for me. It was great to be coming on (as sub) this year, but I’m four years with Kerry, and I need to be keeping my foot in the door. I know what I have to do.”

Not convinced? You’re not alone. Football watchers in Kerry have been waiting for Johnny Buckley since Darragh Ó Sé waddled off into the sunset in the 2009 All-Ireland final. Buckley and David Moran were the next wave, but 2010 and 2011 came and went for Buckley with what seemed minimal progress (Moran has been bedevilled by a double cruciate ligament problem, but he’s back on track now too).

People wanted Johnny to Jump Up. Jack O’Connor spent most of the summer of 2010 waiting for Buckley to bowl him over. He was left waiting. 2012? Well there are signs of a forward push, a move into contention. Golfers call it Moving Day.

He graduated from UCC this year with his BComm degree, putting it to use with Kerry Group in Tralee before settling into the family coach business in Killarney. Solid personal development material.

He’s taken his championship bow with Kerry in Páirc Ui Chaoimh — impressively too — had a taste of Donegal in Croke Park, and helped pilot Dr Crokes to tomorrow’s Kerry SFC final, their fourth in a row and sixth in a decade. The clash with Dingle will gloss or smear Buckley’s football season but all told — and not forgetting they lost an All-Ireland Club semi-final to Crossmaglen last February — it’s been a full throttle 2012 for Dr Crokes’ laid-back midfielder.

“I’ve plenty going on in my life, and football plays a big part in it, but it’s not the be all and end all,” he suggests. “But it’s been a good year of learning, right back to the Crossmaglen game.” That was the last Championship game Crokes lost — they haven’t come out the wrong side of a Kerry championship game since the 2009 final defeat to South Kerry.

“(Crossmaglen) was a tough one to swallow, we didn’t follow through after a great start. That was a huge disappointment. You see their calmness, even when they weren’t going well in the first-half...they didn’t seem to bat an eyelid. Their work ethic and poise was something you’d admire and learn from.”

IT’S 20 years now since Dr Crokes one and only All-Ireland Club title and while no-one on Lewis Road dare mention anything beyond Dingle this weekend, it’s a poor national record for such a pre-eminent club.

There’s a secondary reason for needing another Paddy’s Day success — the last one, believes Buckley, is one of the reasons the Dr Crokes club is so strong and self-sufficient.

“I was three, but I remember being lifted over the wire to my father (Mike, who played with Crokes at the time). All the players from that generation are still involved in the club, whether they’re coaching or organising. A lot of them are based around Killarney — John Clifford is driving with us — and there doesn’t seem to be any distance between that team and the players that are there now. There’s no sense of a generational gap. A lot of my buddies are Dr Crokes, and my father goes golfing with a load of Crokes players still. The friendships are strong.”

Buckley’s been fortunate in that regard. When he wasn’t being reared by Dr Crokes, he was being nurtured by UCC, an experience he is happy to reflect on for many reasons, not least the classy manner in which the collegeallowed him return to Dr Crokes when the clubs were destined to meet in a Munster final last year.

It was a strangely satisfyingdouble life. “When you are in the middle of it, you are only looking at the next weekend. But looking back now, it was brilliant (winning county titles in 2011 with both UCC and Dr Crokes).

“UCC football is a special kind of experience,” he explains. “Talking to fellas in other colleges, maybe I’m wrong but they seem to be fairly blasé about the football, never getting much of a buzz out of it. But the minute you went into UCC, from the first Freshers training session with Christy Kearney, you get involved in the whole UCC ‘club’ mentality. That’s not something every college team is able to achieve. And similar to Crokes, the old UCC generation always seem to get back involved with teams later on. You go in there wet behind the ears and you are immediately embraced in this family sort of set-up. They’re brilliant times.”

Buckley’s transition from college life to the family business might have been problematic had he not already developed a teenage passion for the coach business run by his father, Mike. Kerry Coaches and Buckley’s Tours is a sizeable operation and a reliable weathervane for the climate around Ireland’s tourism capital. The seasonal verdict? Very good in fact, with visitor numbers to Killarney up to 10-15%.

Notwithstanding the obligatory tourist-town finger wag — “we needed it the way things were the last three or four years” — the coach company profited from an increase in golf tours and, crucially, the Navy-Notre Dame game in September. “A lot of Americans came in the week beforehand, doing the sights around the country, and flew out after an eight-day tour. More stayed for a week after. We had 56 coaches bringing people to the game from the base in Killarney.”

Buckley is around the business since he was 12, now dipping his business degree into everything from margins to marketing. “I have the bus licence, but trying to get insurance is the fun part when you’re 23. I think to insure me for the summer was something crazy like €2,500, so for the time being I drive the eight-seaters. If football wasn’t there, I’d be heading off for a week around the country with a bunch of American golfers.”

That he isn’t has more to do with his boss not wanting him missing Dr Crokes training than anything else. Dr Crokes put a new senior management team in place this season with Vince Casey joining former midfielder Noel O’Leary. The College of Further Midfield Education for Buckley brought him through the spring and up against Cork, Westmeath, Clare and Donegal in the championship before locking in his focus again on the club bid for a third successive Kerry football title. Dr Crokes are a phenomenal force, not because of their apparent invincibility, but because their run of success came after they lost three county finals to the same opposition, South Kerry. That would have broken many outfits. For Buckley, watching from terraces, it only fuelled the desire of the next generation like Daithi Casey, Fionn Fitzgerald, Jamie Doolin and himself. The “older guys” now are Gooch, Eoin Brosnan, ‘Melon’ (keeper David Moloney) and Shane Myers, and they’ve shared too many painful years together to be fretting over fatigue and long seasons.

Nevertheless, come next Spring, the chances are that Buckley may return to Kerry off the back of a protracted provincial season with his club. He hasn’t addressed any such issues with Eamonn Fitzmaurice yet, but the player is aware he could do with a vigorous winter weights programme if he is to prove the doubters wrong in 2013.

“Playing with Crokes on high profile days like county finals does mean you are in the public eye,” Buckley explains, “whereas if you were beaten in the first round there probably wouldn’t be so much scrutiny of you. I’m not complaining. There is a jump from club to inter-county and some make the adjustment quicker than others. The big thing is having to think faster. Everyone and everything is moving at a quicker pace than you are used to at club level. It’s a huge step up physically and mentally.

“The first year I went in with Kerry to make up the number (2009), I got a few “lessons” from Darragh. But watching Seamus Scanlon for a while, you’d learn a lot too. Physically I must improve; looking at Maher and Sheehan, I have to do something to get the nose in front of them next year.”

Getting the nose in front of Dingle will do for the time being, though.