From a football heartland to hurling final day - a closer look at Treaty boss John Kiely
The manager of a team in the All-Ireland senior hurling final saying he doesn’t come from a hurling background?
Surely some mistake, as they say in Private Eye.
But Limerick manager John Kiely is open about his hinterland. His family had a pub in Galbally, where a sliotar might die of loneliness.
There wouldn’t have been hurling in our family,” he said last week. “Galbally is a football heartland. Our lads would have played hurling with Garryspillane, and I would have gone on to play with Garryspillane afterwards.
Growing up, he had the GAA fan’s usual heroes, stars who are both near and distant at the same time. As Kiely grew up, Limerick were challenging for All-Irelands in 1980: “Every generation looks to the players at the time. I suppose it was the advent of The Sunday Game in those days.
“It kind of brought hurling into the sitting room and pubs. The Sunday evening, watching The Sunday Game.
“I remember crowds of people from Thurles stopping (in the pub) on their way back to Cork — stopping in pretty much every village on the way home — huge crowds of Cork people spending the evening watching The Sunday Game after a Munster final in Thurles.” And often watching local heroes. Limerick mainstays Jimmy Carroll and Mossie Carroll were “only back the road from me,” he says.
At club level with Garryspilane Kiely won a county senior title in 2005. Tony Considine was the manager, and the former Clare boss was impressed with the canny defender.
John was always a good guy in the dressing room. He’d have always appeared to me to be a good mentor because he has the right credentials — by that, I mean the right attitude.
"When I was with Garryspillane he was 31, 32 but he was always a player you could depend on — you knew he’d always do the right thing. He was very dependable on and off the field, and would always say the right thing at the right time, which isn’t surprising given his professional life, he’s the principal of a great school. He’s done great work with hurling in the school too, by the way.”
Kiely’s own inter-county career had formidable roadblocks in its way, players such as Declan Nash and Stephen McDonagh. The two corner-backs barred the way to goal for some of the most dangerous forwards in hurling but also occupied the places Kiely had his eye on.
Still, his dedication was never in question. For Henry Martin’s history of Limerick hurling, Unlimited Heartbreak, Damien Quigley recalled Kiely’s commitment while the two of them were studying in UCC: “John Kiely was on the Limerick panel and I was living with him in Cork at the time. He was going up and down to Limerick the whole time for training and I was laughing at him. I thought he was fucking mad, up and down training all the time with both Limerick and UCC and he loved it.
I was captain of UCC and training so much with the college that I couldn’t even get my head around it. When the Limerick selectors asked me, I didn’t even join them straight away, I told them I would wait until the Fitzgibbon Cup was over.
"We were training so hard for that, combining it would have been madness anyway. I don’t know how Kiely managed to combine them, he was mad anyway, but he loved it in fairness, loved going up and down. I couldn’t have done what he did anyway. I really couldn’t.”
The football background is probably why Kiely says that the county board might have been “possibly taking a bit of a punt” on him as manager, but he’s unnecessarily modest on that front. He’s been involved with Limerick since the 2009-10 season at various grades.
“Intermediate, U21, senior with John Allen,” says Kiely.
“I knew the scene, knew what was involved. And I enjoy it. I got to know the lads well in the U21 campaign of 2015, knew some of the other lads from the U21 campaign of 2011, the senior campaigns of 2012, 2013 so I knew what I was dealing with. I knew the players very, very well.
“It wasn’t like I was going into a group I didn’t know at all, where you’d have to start from scratch.”
That outlook strikes a chord with some of those who’ve worked with him. Donach O’Donnell was the Limerick coach when they won the Munster senior title in 2013, with Kiely a selector under Allen.
“He’s funny at matches. He can be very deep, a quiet guy, before a game. I remember before matches he’d often have a strange enough concoction, a banana mashed in with cream — he said it was great for him, I never tried it myself — but he’s very good.
“For instance, I saw a headline somewhere recently quoting him, and he was saying something along the lines of ‘it’s 90% us and 10% about them’, meaning the opposition.
“When we were with Limerick back then it was almost the opposite — there was almost an inferiority complex, of worrying about the opposition too much. We’d be playing Laois and there’d be a sense around the place of ‘oh we’ll have to do this with Willie Hyland or that’, or whoever the player was. I’d have been more on the page John was on, in terms of getting yourself right, then you’d be fine. Keep an eye on the opposition, obviously, but we’ll worry about ourselves first.”
With that in mind Kiely’s familiarity with the talent on offer was invaluable to the management team.
Because he’d been with the Limerick U21s and intermediates and then in with us, the seniors, he knew the players very well,” says O’Donnell.
“There’d be 50 or 60 players involved, that you’d have your eye on, and he’d know them all. We’d have had our list, say the previous two panels and the intermediate team, and he’d know each one of them.
“If you were having a trial and you said, ‘what’s this guy like’, he’d have some story about him — ‘we played Cork and such-and-such happened’ or whatever.
“He had a very good sense of the players, which obviously is a help.”
The original plan was for Allen to pick his successor, and Kiely was intended to come in after the Corkman.
“When John (Allen) was there the roles were very defined. I was doing the coaching, Eamonn was a selector and he had certain duties, and John was a selector and he had certain duties.
“Everyone knew their role, we all got on very well, and anything John (Kiely) had to do, he did 100%. He would look after the goalkeepers, for instance — Christy O’Connor (goalkeeping coach) would come in to the keepers maybe three or four times a month, but John would do the other sessions with them.
“When John Allen left he (Kiely) was to get the manager’s job but he took up the school principal’s job so he didn’t have the time.
He’s very Limerick, 100%. He was on panels and extended panels with Limerick going back to the 90s, and he’d talk about it — he said he loved the training, loved the harshness of it, the winter training.
“That real honesty is always there with him. Obviously he’d have loved to break through to the senior team as a player in his own time, but even though that didn’t happen it’s very deep with him, the feeling for Limerick.”
That’s clear. After the All-Ireland semi-final win over Cork, Kiely didn’t hesitate to put the press on notice that he’d impose a media ban if he didn’t get cooperation in the run-in to the decider. Some interpreted that as the move of an inexperienced manager, but Considine disagrees.
“He expects high standards. He expected high standards of himself when he was playing the game and I’m sure he expects the same now with Limerick, which they have given him. He’s involved himself with guys with high standards as well (in management), the likes of Paul Kinnerk and Joe O’Connor. Paul was involved with Clare in 2013 so he’ll be able to share his experience. He also has one of the great servants of Limerick hurling, Brian Geary — he played centre-back for them in the 2007 All-Ireland and is a fine cool man, someone you’d love to have with you in any set-up.
“John’s not an overnight success, in the sense that he’s served his time with the Limerick U21s and the seniors (as a selector). Because of all that he has great experience — maybe not of All-Ireland final day itself, but he’s been around. He’s not a beginner by any means.”
Tomorrow is the biggest finishing school there is.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
