John Evans, me and our very own Saipan on Strand Road
It isn’t unreasonable to suggest he must be one of Kerry’s most successful managers and one of county’s greatest exports, along with the butter and milk crowd of course.
I was managed by John back in the mid noughties when he took over Kerins O’Rahilly’s senior team for two years.
He came at a time when the club were just coasting along without any great drive or ambition, happy enough at having bridged a near 50-year gap between winning county championships only a few seasons previously. In his first team meeting with us, he left nobody in any doubt that this was going to be his show and his show alone.
He was never a coach who sought to improve technical elements of your skills, nor was he a guy who had any revolutionary master game plan.
He was a blood-and-guts operator who hung his hat on getting a group of men to believe in him and in turn, find the belief and motivation in themselves to succeed.
He always stressed basic principles of honesty and hard work. He wanted to break you mentally, and then rebuild you. He’d incessantly gnaw at you during training for giving away a ball, or lambaste you for not winning a run. He was old school, but he had your respect.
One evening, Tommy Walsh and I thought we’d be good club men and ramble away down to the field to watch a bit of club training, hang out with the lads - John was big on that.
We had trained hard with Kerry the previous evening in Killarney as we had a break of a few weeks before the first Munster championship game, so the bodies were tired and sore.
Declan Quill, who was also on the county panel but hadn’t been training with Kerry the previous night as he was coming back from injury, decided unbeknownst to us that he would do a bit of work with the club that evening.
As myself and Tommy were having the craic with the lads in the dressing room before training, I noticed John getting changed in the corner with his head down but never opened his mouth to either of us. Not a word.
Little did we know what was coming. Just before training, he started excitedly blowing his whistle and calling everybody into a huddle before ushering myself and Tommy to walk down to join them down at the bottom of the field.
As we got closer he started angrily shouting at me “where’s your gear, why aren’t you togged out? Too good for us are you - Kerry only I suppose...”
Before I could even think about answering, he had moved his fury onto big Tommy and gave him the same blast. I looked around at the players for a bit of support, but like a bunch of sheep in the midst of a wolf, their eyes became fixed to the grass for fear or drawing attention to themselves. Our very own Saipan.
Tommy was a young guy at the time, so I told John to relax, that we had trained with Kerry the previous night. And that’s when he really lost it. He pointed at Quill and exploded about how we were disrespecting him, and the rest of our team-mates.
If he could train, John figured then so should we. After a few minutes of listening to this vitriolic tirade of abuse I had enough, I wanted to have a go. I was face-to-face with him, nose to nose - well, I had to bend down a little - ready to trade blows if he was up for it.
He was screaming in my face to “get off my field… go away back to the Kerry boys” as we were both being restrained by a few players. I gave him as good as I got, and told him if he wanted me off the field he’d have to take me off it. It was heated stuff. Just then, I turned around to see Tommy nearly 100 yards away just about to get into his car. I thanked him later for the back up!
The next day John rang me to meet for a coffee. We laughed as soon as we saw each other. He told me it had been completely premeditated and he had been planning it for a few weeks.
He wanted to show the club players they were the most important people to him, not the county guys. He knew we would deliver, but he needed those other guys to believe in him, and wanted to show that he had their best interests at heart.
He needed them to feel that he was fighting their cause. At the time, that’s exactly what we needed. That’s his magic. He binds a group and injects a mental toughness and an ambition that is hard to penetrate. Roscommon, like Tipperary before them are benefiting from John Evans’ insatiable appetite for improvement, mental toughness and success.
He knows full well that people will scoff at his assertion that Roscommon can win an All-Ireland in the next few years, but he doesn’t care what you think.
He only cares what the men in his dressing room believe.
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