Michael Quirke: New breed of middle man ruling the Kerry GAA roost

For some reason, I was never overly fond of the word ‘mobility’. 

It seemed to haunt my playing days for as long as I can remember. ‘He’s a fine fielder, but as slow as a cart horse’ seemed to be the general consensus of the experts and the terrace mafia.

Hard to argue with, I suppose. In 2009, Pat Flanagan did a range of fitness tests with the Kerry squad. One of them was a 20 metre sprint test – designed to measure your start up power and sprint speed. He had the top of the range technology with all the electronic gates and gizmos set up. This was really supposed to be an opportunity for the really quick guys to shine. The machine was to beep three times, and after the third beep you sprint as hard as you can through the last gate. He had a couple of college students there to supervise it, but there was no cheating – ‘you can’t fool the computer’ said Pat.