Paul Kinnerk not ready to swap coaching for management

By Brendan O’Brien

Two All-Ireland titles with different counties inside six seasons have made Paul Kinnerk hot property on the inter-county scene, but the Limerick coach has no desire to make the leap into management.

A former Limerick footballer, Kinnerk has made his name as a hurling coach, first with Clare, with whom he tasted All-Ireland success in 2013, and now with his native county, who claimed the Liam MacCarthy Cup for the first time in 45 years back in August.

Highly regarded by players and managers he has worked with, Kinnerk would be a highly-prized asset on the managerial merry-go-round if he were keen to clamber on board.

However, it’s not for him at the moment.

Being honest, right now it doesn’t. Whether it does in the future I don’t know, I couldn’t say for certain. Absolutely, at the moment, my passion and my level of focus and where I like to be are in coaching and, in order for me to do that role to the level I want to do it at, that needs to be my sole focus and I’m quite happy in that position at the moment.

An ESRI report stated last month that inter-county managers clock in for over 50 hours a week. Kinnerk has seen the work put in by Wexford manager Davy Fitzgerald and Limerick manager John Kiely and agrees wholeheartedly that the role of county manager is not all that different to that of a chief executive officer.

“Yeah, that’s a great description, a CEO, they’re managing the equivalent of a small business. They’re managing a big group of people and then there’s a different layer and another different layer and it’s relentless.

“My interactions with John on a daily basis are frequent and I can just imagine on top of that, outside of my dealings with him, what he has to deal with, from a physio perspective, a county board perspective and a players’ perspective. Everything goes through the manager, any injuries or anything like that, so they have so much to deal with these days that if I was ever to go into management I’d have to sacrifice the coaching side of things and that would be something I wouldn’t be prepared to do.”

Kinnerk is busy enough as is. His role with the Limerick hurlers is complemented by another with the county football academy programme. Muiris Gavin, Stephen Lavin and Seanie Buckley are among the other ex-county players involved in that department. It is, Kinnerk admits, a “challenging” task, what with the seniors languishing near the foot of Division Four last term and with the shadows of Cork and Kerry always looming over the horizon, though the quality of people involved is, he believes, second to none.

Other sports also have his attention. Aussie Rules, soccer, and basketball are all fair game, but he has been particularly taken by how tactically fluid Dublin have become under Jim Gavin and how they are able to combat various systems.

Would he like a crack at the big ball himself some day?

“Who’s to say?” he said, laughing. “I don’t know.”

He never set out to take the hurling road. He first dipped his toe in the coaching waters with Sean Stack in Sixmilebridge about 10 years ago when he was an injured Limerick footballer. Then came stints with the Clare minors, the U21s, and finally the seniors.

Unplanned it may have been, but it was perfectly natural for a man with a degree in physical education and a mathematics degree from the University of Limerick and the success enjoyed has given him no reason to branch off in a different direction.

He knew when he went back in with Clare in 2016 that it would only be for one more year and Limerick was the right gig at the right time. He already knew Joe O’Connor, the strength-and-conditioning coach, from their time together in the Banner.

However, Kiely, who he didn’t know, was the clincher when they met.

John is a proper leader, he’s a fantastic organiser and he’s brilliant with people. An X-factor he has is his ability to read situations and then control it in such a way. Then, he’s very in tune with the way hurling is being played, from a tactical standpoint.

“The biggest thing is that John is a person that is able to inspire those around him. The players all want to play for him and there’s full buy-in. I would have gotten that from my initial meetings with John as well: That gut feeling that this was a very capable man.”

Limerick would be loathe to lose either of them.