Miles down the road, Kieran Donaghy delights in the Armagh journey

DOFF ME CAP: Armagh selector Kieran Donaghy celebrates after his side's victory in the All-Ireland SFC semi final against his native Kerry. Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile

It was only supposed to be a year. That was the agreement with his wife Hilary, with his boss in PST Sports, Colin Teahon.

Kieran Donaghy would help out his old International Rules mate Kieran McGeeney for a season and that would be that. But when 2022 came around, he had more explaining to do although he offered improved terms.

He would be home more. It would require more drives back to Tralee late at night but he conditioned himself so that he would get to bring his daughters to school and present more at PST’s main office in Tralee.

Both, especially Teahon, had to be convinced.

“When I went back the second year, he was a bit like ‘Jeez no, we have too much growth going here in the company and you’re gone’. And that has probably been the change. I would have stayed up more in my first year and found once I got used to driving and the tiredness wasn’t setting into the eyes.

“I’m like a truck driver now, I don’t get tired at all. I just sit there for four and a half hours make sure I’m full with fuel before I leave, don’t need coffee or Red Bull.

"I just need a bottle of water and off I go and the brain and momentum and buzz off training will get me down past Kill where I have a family member that’s close-by there and once I pass by there, I’m gone over halfway and the head settles into it after then.

“But Hilary’s been brilliant and Colin and when I went in for the third year he was ‘go on, good luck’. Thankfully, I’m sales director and the sales were going the right way and I said, ‘You can’t really say much’ and he said ‘I can’t, go on away’, and it’s not bad that Armagh are involved in all these dramatic penalty shoot-outs so he looks at it from that side of things.”

PST’s reach has indeed expanded in Ulster thanks in part to Donaghy’s presence in Armagh. They’ve built a pitch in Scotstown and have plans to do others in Shane O’Neill’s in Armagh and Kinawley in Fermanagh.

It's a nice by-product to Donaghy’s relationship with McGeeney that began as foes in the 2006 All-Ireland quarter-final before becoming International Rules team-mates later that year.

Five years later, McGeeney was asked by Anthony Tohill to be a coach for the trip to Australia where Donaghy was the fine collector.

“We were fining him at the time because he had the long hair. I was fining him daily for that then one day we came in and I looked around and couldn’t see Geezer at all. We didn’t know where he was. But he’d actually gone down to the barber and he’d cut all the hair off because he said it was annoying him, but I say I was probably annoying him.”

After the flight home, it was McGeeney who came to Donaghy’s aid when his car went kaput and he had to roll it off the road.

“There was no-one seriously hurt or anything but it was a big incident on the M50 and I remember Geezer came past, put down the window (and said), ‘Are you okay?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m okay’ but it was chaos. I said, ‘Go on’ and he went off but pulled in down the road and came back up.”

It was in May 2019 after Armagh had pushed Mayo to a point in an All-Ireland qualifier that McGeeney planted the seed in Donaghy’s head about joining him. It was another year before he agreed, hooked by what he knew of McGeeney and his insistence that Armagh wasn’t that far a trip from Tralee.

“He made it all sound so simple, I was agreeing. No bother. And then the first night down the road, I was going, ‘Jesus! This place isn’t close at all!’”

Initially, Donaghy wasn’t able to make the impact he wanted to due to the delay to the season caused by the pandemic. But McGeeney’s sales pitch had worked on him.

”He put it on me that I played like the way he wanted football to be played and just making the fella next to you look like an All-Star and he said, ‘I want you to help with that’.”

McGeeney helped Donaghy too. When he found his overnight hotel accommodation 'lonely', he arranged an apartment for his selector in Tassagh. The pair may not be similar but that’s why they work. 

“He doesn’t sleep that much, I could sleep all day no problem,” laughs Donaghy. “We’re different kind of people but we work together well, I feel, and obviously learned a load off him.”

Facing Kerry 14 days ago wasn’t difficult for Donaghy although the significance of the win hit him afterwards. He was choked when he met his Austin Stacks club-mate and work colleague Dylan Casey afterwards.

“Dylan was very close to me and I am very close to him and he has been in working with us for the last few years. After the game I was quite emotional, for how proud I was of the Armagh boys and the way they played. And I just happened to see Dylan and that side of it is a hard thing about sport.”

Being in the opposite corner won’t change how Donaghy’s pals in Kerry see him. When he rang Eoin Liston to appear at a preview night in Tassagh before the semi-final, Bomber didn’t hesitate. Although, he did pretend to pull out the day before.

Donaghy doesn’t need to be told how long the winter will be in his native county.

“I know how hard the losses are taken in Kerry. We are good losers, we are able to take it, we’re always shake hands with the competition, no matter what has gone on that day.

“Kerry have won 38 finals, but have obviously lost nearly the same and we’re always knocking on the door in semi-finals. In Kerry, it comes kind of almost as part of the tradition, be good winners, but be good losers as well on the day. So many people have been onto me from Kerry.”

Have they been congratulating him? “No, they’re not, but they have been very good, I must say.”

As he cajoled Jarlath Óg Burns to stop going forward in the dying embers of extra-time against Kerry, there was no question that Donaghy was invested in Armagh. He knows his limits – “I wouldn’t be the coach that (Ciarán) McKeever is, or Conleith Gilligan” – but he knows his value too.

“The boys were saying I was getting a bit excited. I was saying, ‘Jesus lads, I’d love to be Jim Gavin, I’d love to sit there and stoically look out, trust my team are going to do all the right things.’” 

McGeeney insists the management team do their own analysis work to know the opposition inside-out but also to have a deeper appreciation of the Armagh squad. Donaghy wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing if he detected any drop-off.

"If you knew these fellas weren’t at it, I’d be long ago but it was never the issue with this group of players. It was always easy to sign up and do that mileage for them.”