So what does Paddy Tally bring to the Kerry party?
BIG ADDITION: Kerry's coach Paddy Tally
LET’S get the big reveal out of the way, first.
If Jack O’Connor was still the Kildare manager, he would have had Paddy Tally there alongside him this season. He had been making plans for 2022 when the Jungle Drums around Kerry began beating out a rhythm that Peter Keane would have to reapply for his own job.
A few contortions later, and Jack was back holding the Keys of the Kingdom.
He was still sweet on Tally and as the picture shifted entirely, so too did the possibilities.
A spell coaching Kerry? The first Ulster man to do so? With a real chance of an All-Ireland title at the end of it?
In the final reckoning, it coincided with a year’s sabbatical from his long involvement with St Mary’s College in Belfast. Circumstances just aligned.
Galbally to Killarney? A 600 mile round trip. Yet it says plenty about Tally that he was prepared to do it.
And O’Connor, too. Back when he was in his first coming as Kerry manager, he went to meet the late John Morrison of Armagh to pick his brains on defensive structures and pored over the Ulster Council website for drills, feeling all the while that some would see the very act as a betrayal of culture.
A figure like Tally coming to Kerry is merely a logical extension of that curiosity.
And yet people still misunderstand him. Tally is not just a ‘defensive coach’, but by insider reports, the ‘head coach,’ just as he was when Mickey Harte brought him in to the Tyrone set up in 2003 at just 29 years of age.
“That Tyrone team was labelled by some as defensive,” explains Enda McGinley, “yet in reality it was simply a product of Harte’s core belief that every player in the team should be able to tackle and work like a corner back when the team didn’t have the ball. Tally’s training sessions reflected that. They were pure football with mini-games and tackling grids on a perpetual loop and the intensity level always dialled right to the top.”
At the time, Tally had been floating around the panel in 1995 that reached the All-Ireland final but had drifted away from playing, finding himself fascinated by physical and tactical preparation and given a perfect role in St Mary’s.
He was younger than a few influential players on that Tyrone team, such as Peter Canavan and Chris Lawn. How he coped with that was the key.
“He always appeared completely on-top of his game and at ease in his surroundings, his sessions were clean and precise,” adds McGinley.
“His feedback and advice to players was equally so. He was able to give straight forward, blunt advice without it seeming neither critical nor condescending. It just was what it was. His entire aim was about improving the team and the individuals within it and it was clear he loved that challenge particularly when he saw a group eager to take it on. He also was at that time, and ever since, hungry to learn and critique his own work, seeing ways that things can be improved.”
After he and Tyrone parted ways, Tally popped up in a number of roles. His most famous triumph was that Sigerson Cup with St Mary’s in 2017, but he also coached Down to the All-Ireland final in 2010 and spent years in Derry, a season as Galway coach under Kevin Walsh before managing Down.
His track record of improving players is awesome. It was Tally who first came up with the idea of converting athletic ball carrying midfielder Cathal McShane into a full-forward. Two of last year’s Footballer of the Year candidates; Conor Meyler and eventual winner Kieran McGeary, played for him for years.
Trace a line back through history, and pragmatism trumps everything else in securing All-Irelands for Kerry.
Think of Antrim coming in 1946 with a slick hand-passing game, and Kerry unapologetically taking out the man receiving the return pass.
Or Mick O’Dwyer reshaping the team and tuning into the various coaching courses around the country to quell various uprisings when they threatened to erupt.
But defensively, Kerry’s 2021 was an ever-unfolding horror show.
After getting a Mark Keane sucker punch in November 2020 that knocked them out of the Munster Championship, they became progressively worse the following year.
Although they grabbed a draw against Dublin in the league, they conceded 4-9. In the first half alone, Con O’Callaghan had five goal chances himself, converting two of them and fisting one off the post.
Blowing teams out of the water allowed them to become blasé about the systems failures at the back. They conceded a goal to David Tubridy against Clare and Brian Hurley of Cork in the Munster final, Conor Sweeney netting a penalty for Tipp in the semi-final.
But it was against Tyrone where the full scale of their social loafing unfolded.
Let’s itemise the three goals that did for them.
Goal #1 came from Peter Harte carrying the ball upfield. Niall Sludden appeared completely unmarked on the left flank, drifting towards the centre. Harte passes to Sludden who looks up and sees Conor McKenna in front of goal, entirely unmarked. A quick hand pass, and goal.
Goal #2 was a backdoor cut from Darragh Canavan, played in for a shot that Kerry goalkeeper Shane Ryan parried and, while full-back Jason Foley was best-placed to deal with the danger, it is Cathal McShane who punches home.
Goal #3 was a Kieran McGeary shot that was drifting wide, before Jack Barry swung a hopeful boot at the ball. It broke to the unmarked McKenna, who again drills to the net.
So what has changed about Kerry since Jack came back and brought Tally?
Well, they have conceded two goals from play in 12 games.
One of those was two pieces of brilliance in the blink of an eye; a Darragh Canavan through ball followed by an incredible Darren McCurry finish in the final league game with Kerry already though to a final, the other from Cormac Costello in the All-Ireland semi-final.
In overall points conceded, they had their best defensive showing since 2013.
“If Kerry turn around and win this year’s All-Ireland, nobody would be complaining down there,” says Brian McIver who was a selector along with Tally in Down and later brought him into his Derry set-up.
He continued, “There are certain games where they are putting 15 men behind the ball. Nobody complained one bit about that and they wouldn’t care less if they did it to win an All-Ireland.
“While Kerry were absolutely flying up front, they were equally vulnerable at the back.
“So Jack would have felt that they needed to improve at the back and they would still have the talent up front. ‘We will get enough ball around midfield, but this is an area that needs to be tackled.’
“I have no doubt that they looked at that and Paddy Tally would have come to mind for sure.”
And here he is. 19 years after helping Tyrone to their first All-Ireland success. Getting ready for his third senior All-Ireland final. As a coach in Kerry, an unthinkable scenario not so long ago.
Against Galway, a side he is intimately familiar with, having coached them for a season under Kevin Walsh.
“It was no surprise to see him head to Galway and, despite the travel, even to Kerry,” adds McGinley.
“Kerry, even or especially for Tyrone men, remain the blue bloods of our game. To work with them directly, to see inside their culture and their mindset, to get to work with the David Cliffords, Sean O’Sheas and Tom O’Sullivans, to work alongside Jack O’Connor, all of that would be just too good a chance to turn down.”
And maybe a gamble that pays out.
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