Developing young talent has been Mikey Sheehy’s great legacy
“He was always a team player. He never gave out. He always encouraged you if you made a mistake.”
It’s said that as tight as Eamonn Fitzmaurice and Diarmuid Murphy were buddies, having played and worked as selectors together under Jack O’Connor, it was Sheehy who Fitzmaurice first approached about joining his management team in 2012.
If Kerry were to be successful again, a pep had to be put into the step of their under-performing U21s. Cian O’Neill, when he came in from 2013, would look after their bodies, but someone needed to develop their minds.
Sheehy wasn’t just Mikey Sheehy. He had over half a decade’s experience working with minors back in 1990 when they reached an All-Ireland final in 1990, losing to Meath and then as a selector with Charlie Nelligan, winning an All-Ireland in 1994. On the conveyor belt he helped assemble were the nuts and bolts of at least three senior All-Ireland winning teams.
Former Munster and Kerry chairman Sean Walsh was a fellow selector of Sheehy’s under Nelligan. He always knew he was a legend who wore his crown lightly, but it was the humility he showed with the teenagers that made him such an asset.
“The one thing that I can say about Mikey Sheehy in my five years as a selector with him was that every player in the county got their opportunity.
“No matter what club they came from, no matter where they were, he looked at every player not once but two or three times. He was always conscious of being fair to young lads.
“He was a great man to pull a player aside and have a quiet word. He’d be telling them how great they were but it was always done as a quiet word.
“You were guaranteed that after he spoke to them they always improved. He had a special touch that way.” It’s known that Sheehy has been a key factor in Paul Geaney’s impressive progress these last 15 months.
Sheehy has imbued a confidence he may have lacked previously.
Since the league game against Kildare last year, he has scored 7-45 in 16 championship and league starts as well as 1-2 coming off the bench against Tyrone in the last game of this year’s Division 1 campaign.
The manner in which Geaney contorted his body to shoot past Paul Durcan 50 seconds into last year’s All-Ireland final wasn’t so dissimilar from how Sheehy twisted his frame to manufacture that unlikely last-gasp goal in the drawn 1987 Munster final.
Statistician and Kerry’s Eye journalist Sylvester Hennessy got to know Sheehy well when Sheehy joined him on Radio Kerry’s Terrace Talk panel. Hennessy had been working with the Kerry minors but was astounded by the knowledge Sheehy had of the under-age scene both in and outside the county.
“Before most people had heard of the Dublin player Eric Lowndes, Mikey was talking about him. He has an encyclopaedic football brain.” Having that sort of an advantage goes some way to allaying Fitzmaurice’s fears that Dublin’s resources regards tracking other teams and players.
“When he came on board with Eamonn, there were some saying ‘What would Mikey know? He doesn’t go to games’,” recalls Hennessy.
“That was absolute bull. Mikey is so unassuming he would never make a big deal when he went to games. He’d just take his place on the terrace, maybe watch on with some of the fellas he plays golf with and nothing more would be said.”
Then there’s the unruffled assuredness he exudes. Much like Fitzmaurice and Murphy, he’s a calculating figure on match day.
“Mikey was always very cool on the sideline,” says Walsh. “He would calmly analyse what was going on and if he had something to say he’d say it. If Mikey came back to Charlie and said ‘we’ve to change the goalkeeper’ as happened one time, then it was done. Charlie had that faith in Mikey.”
As Kerry supporters had in him as a player. As they now have in him as a selector.
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