One winner and sore losers in Kerry GAA’s managerial manoeuvres
The loud and rancorous process culminating in Jack O’Connor’s third coming as the Kingdom boss leaves in its wake plenty of fractured relations. Picture: Ray McManus/Sportsfile
Lining up adjacent columns of winners and losers from the bloody battle to be the next Kerry manager is a pretty sobering exercise.
The loud and rancorous process culminating in Jack O’Connor’s third coming as the Kingdom boss leaves in its wake plenty of fractured relations and folk wondering whether GAA volunteerism and the native shore are all they’re cracked up to be.
Peter Keane may have diluted sympathy towards his efforts to return for a second term with an ill-timed statement that formed the basis of a testy debate over O’Connor’s ratification Monday night, but it served to underline his desperation to stay in a gig that is 90% grief. That goes too for his outgoing management ticket, some of whom have suffered and celebrated together for half a dozen years.
No-one is sure whether Maurice Fitzgerald’s job as principal of Coláiste na Sceilge would have permitted him to continue as a selector in 2022 but there is no Kerry man prouder to serve his county. The same can be said for Dingle’s Tommy Griffin who has now coached successfully at schools, under-age and senior inter-county grades and would consider himself a candidate in his own right in a few years’ time. Ditto in terms of loyalty for Keane’s close compadre, James Foley from Kilcummin. Keane is the first Kerry manager in 18 years not to leave of his own volition and a sense of unrequited passion will surely remain for a while on their side.
Theirs was a passion shared by each of the three groups vying to take charge of Kerry’s footballers next year and beyond. The Stephen Stack group only came together on the basis that returning to a former manager for a third time was the only viable alternative to incumbent Keane. Ask not what your county can do for you etc.
On reflection now, as with instinct then, it had a lot to recommend it. The entire group – Stack, Donie Buckley, Seamus Moynihan, Dara Ó Cinnéide, Mickey Ned O’Sullivan and Joe O’Connor – laid out their comprehensive proposal over the course of three hours in the relative privacy of chairman Tim Murphy’s business offices in Castleisland, the five-person committee giving as good as they got.
By contrast, both O’Connor and Peter Keane elected to meet the sub-committee on their own in the same location. One wonders would Keane’s case have been enhanced had he been flanked by a pair of All-Ireland winners, his fellow Caherciveen man Fitzgerald a true footballing deity.
Stack, Moynihan and Ó Cinnéide are certainly young enough to go again but one must wonder has Donie Buckley finally had his fill of his native county? Three times now he has been sought out to bring his renowned coaching nous to a Kerry management ticket and on each occasion, it has ended really badly for him and ended up bringing his bag of innovations elsewhere.
There are only so many times you can kick someone before he walks away for good. The rights and wrongs of pairing Buckley alongside Keane are no longer worth revisiting here but no-one can honestly dispute that his 2020 exit was a blow to the players. That they were still demanding a new voice on Keane’s management team says as much.
The Kerry chairman Tim Murphy won’t deliver an All-Ireland football title on his watch, the first not to do so, but he will earnestly hope that his sub-committee’s legacy appointment of O’Connor provides a winning foundation in 2022 for the future.
Ultimately the Dromid man’s proven track record of delivering success and the knowledge that he would go to the devil’s parlour to do so, made him a very persuasive option for the selection group. For Kerry supporters who like the pure drop, bringing Paddy Tally on board might as well be the equivalent of a hellish appointment but O’Connor will have no compunction in bringing the Tyrone man on board. It is also understood that Jason McGahan, the Kerry director of Athletic Performance, will be a part of O’Connor’s team. The Armagh man has overseen a comprehensive and identifiable overhaul of Kerry’s strength and conditioning and will continue that program under the new management.
The chairman’s handling of Monday’s meeting was disarming and impressive, more so when he deviated off-script to lay waste to the erroneous piffle regarding the timeline of O’Connor’s appointment as well as defending the integrity of his sub-committee colleagues against charges of vested interest. Over 100 delegates and members of the executive logged into Monday’s meeting, with around eight expressing reservations with the process or the ‘treatment’ of Peter Keane.
Most of the club delegates involved – the likes of Kilcummin, Laune Rangers, Listry and St Mary’s – are strongly connected with Peter Keane or James Foley but it was manifestly clear from Murphy’s timeline of events that Keane was kept appraised of developments.
The notion that the Kerry County Board was tardy in expressing their gratitude to the outgoing manager was a red herring too for the fact that it would have been unfair to both O’Connor and Stack to be lauding a rival candidate while the competition process was still in play. Perhaps a line in the terse confirmation of O’Connor’s candidacy for ratification last Friday week could have helped but no-one could gainsay Keane’s commitment to Kerry GAA.
Complicating all these issues is the fact that a member of the executive, treasurer Tom Keane, is a brother of the outgoing manager — and will be in the role for the next three years, where he will likely sit alongside current vice-chairman Eamonn Whelan (one of Murphy’s selection sub-committee). It won’t have been an easy process for Kilcummin-based Keane, watching executive colleagues remove his brother as Kerry manager.
For the time being, there is one obvious winner from all this and O’Connor has shown before he has the constitution to overcome bumps in the road.
For the remainder so deeply invested in a successful future for Kerry football, it is a time to pause and take stock, to carry prejudice and hurt along or to set it down where it lies. This hasn’t left the scars of the Cork strikes or any such, but there’s fence-fixing and bridge-building to be considered for sure.
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