Kerry's James Costello: It's all about the big mo now - and how to milk it

At Croke Park on Sunday, the Kingdom will look to continue their attack on the opposition restarts as they look to crack Donegal's Patton code

James Costello joined Jack O'Connor's Kerry management team in the autumn. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Having coffee in Ballyseedy Garden Centre in April, we happened upon new Kerry selector, James Costello. It was shortly after the Munster Championship win over Cork, I indicated Kerry had got lucky and in return got a withering look that approximated to a backhand slap for intemperance and stupidity.

Costello, from Blennerville, was one of Jack O’Connor’s new recruits to a management ticket that was in danger of collapsing around the manager’s heels in the winter recess. He said that football’s new direction had brought primacy to the whole phenomenon of momentum. I wondered what he meant, and asked him again in the last few days.

“You can see it now, after Kerry’s last few games. If you can get a run on a team and get three or four kickouts in a row and do real damage, it has a big bearing in the game,” Costello said. “So your ability to milk momentum and get your hands on ball and break the other team's momentum is absolutely crucial because when the tide starts turning against you, it's a lot more difficult now to turn it around than it used to be.

“In the old days, you'd clip a ball to a corner back to get a kickout away and hang on to the ball and bring it up the field slowly. So that's proving a lot more difficult now.” 

Priorities have changed, in that regard, with the seasons. “In the league the kickouts all had to go long, because of wind, conditions and the greasy ball. It was a lot riskier to try and get kickouts away short, but teams have developed that. And you know, Croke Park on a dry day, the kickout percentages are definitely going up. It does seem to be two very distinct games where the league football tends to be quite agricultural, I suppose, for want of a better word. Whether it's the real quality of the summer football is definitely a lot better.” 

Costello took a winter call from Jack O’Connor, and welcomed the approach wholeheartedly. Having brought the Kerry minors to an All-Ireland final in 2021, the year spent in 2024 with Mark Fitzgerald and the Clare seniors bridged the gap nicely to the senior cycle. With the FRC’s intervention creating fresh debate and opinion, those spring Kerry management meetings must have been interesting.

“I wouldn’t call it arguing (over how to implement the rules), it was more learning as we went. In the Dublin (league) game in Tralee, we sat in too deeply against the wind in the second half and didn't push out. We allowed Dublin to get a run on us. That gave Dublin a lot of the ball and they caused us a lot of trouble. So that was one learning about how to manage the wind and all that goes with playing with and without the wind. The kickouts are an ongoing thing, so we were really learning game to game as we were going along and trying to put fixes in and get plans in place for all the different aspects of the game.” 

A different Jack O'Connor

Costello is working with a very different Jack O’Connor to the one who first piloted Kerry to an All-Ireland twenty one years ago. Then the Dromid man micro-managed. Now, he’s a delegator.

“He's very good like that. Jack he says himself a lot more hands off than he was in the early days. He likes to let people add their tuppence worth in, and we have good debates and good ideas. And as I said, this year has been a great opportunity for that, for fermenting ideas. And we never got too carried away with two pointers early in the league, or we never got too hung up on different things. We kind of let it come to us in a lot of situations. 

"There was no major structural things, apart from after the Meath game obviously, which we did a fairly hefty review of that in terms of things that were going wrong for us. But apart from that, we've been tipping along nicely and quite happy.” 

Word on the streets in Tralee is that Kerry could soon be facing another tug of love with the AFL around one of their burgeoning under age talents. Costello, as Kerry minor manager for four campaigns, has seen them leave, not least Cillian Burke last year. He coached the Milltown-Castlemaine powerhouse at minor level.

“It's a very, attractive card for a young fella to go down and try it. I think all we can do in Kerry is have good systems, good structures in place here, and get into All-Ireland finals. Winning big games is as good a carrot as any.

“The best thing we can do in Kerry is keep having good systems, good structures, keep the Kerry team up near in and around the top table, and, hopefully it's an attractive proposition for them to stay at home and wear the green and gold. So, hopefully, our lads can get the job done at the weekend.”