Dr Crokes’ Harry O’Neill: Keeping it in the family

Management loses games, players win them (Great GAA truisms, No 53 in a series). On the bad days, the ditch carps and criticises and moans about the sideline. Lambasts may be the association term. Clueless clowns. On Lewis Road in Killarney, you might catch a carp or two on the odd occasion Dr Crokes lose a game, but it’ll be a brave ditch hurler all the same. Or a fool.

There’s All-Ireland-winning experience stretched across the Dr Crokes dugout that straddles five decades. From Eddie ‘Tatler’ O’Sullivan, a selector in Dwyer’s golden years, to Niall ‘Botty’ O’Callaghan, still involved in Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s backroom team. Sandwiched between are two forwards in Dr Crokes’ one and only All-Ireland club success in 1992, Pat O’Shea and Mike Buckley (both with sons playing tomorrow in Croke Park). By the by, Pat trained Kerry to the 2007 All-Ireland crown.

By comparison, Harry O’Neill’s track record is positively underwhelming, training Dr Crokes to a mere three Kerry football championships in 2000 (Gaeltacht), 2010 (Austin Stacks), and 2011 (Mid Kerry). And yet, it was his role in Pat O’Shea’s management roster this season that intrigued most. Two championship-winning managers in the same dressing room? It could only end in somebody’s eye scratched out.