Mature reflections on the Kildare house that Jack O'Connor built 

With a year left on the agreement in Kildare, Kerry came calling, in no small part because Jack O’Connor let everyone know of the allure of coaching 'the Man Utd' of Gaelic football. It seriously irked Kildare supporters, though not all those on the inside

Then Kildare manager Jack O'Connor during the Leinster GAA Football Senior Championship Final match between Dublin and Kildare at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

SOME outside managerial adventures will be remembered forever. Think Johnno in Leitrim and Galway. Micko in Kildare and Laois. Eugene McGee in Offaly, Maughan in Clare, Páidí and now Mark McHugh in Westmeath. The stuff of dreams, Disney movies, or in Páidí’s and Johnno’s case, documentaries.

Then there are those which you can barely remember and the parties involved would maybe want everyone to forget: more Jordan with the Wizards than with the Bulls. Like Maughan in Fermanagh. McGee in Cavan. Harte in Derry. Kernan in Galway. Páidí and then Micko in Clare. Marriages that seemed a good idea at the time but proved to be closer to the Vegas variety than Rome.

Somewhere then between those extremes lies another category. Brian Mullins with his farmer’s hat above in Derry. Coleman in Longford. Maughan in Offaly. And Jack O’Connor in Kildare. Ah that’s right, forgot that! He didn’t do that badly there actually – though maybe not that great either.

Now that we’ve jogged your memory, you probably remember that episode for how he finished up there after two years rather than how he actually managed and fared there over those two years. The interview on the Irish Examiner football pod when he issued Kerry the most blatant come-get-me overture days after his native county were ambushed by Tyrone in the 2021 All-Ireland semi-final.

But that’s not how David Hyland David Hyland primarily looks back on the Jack chapter of his book or the Kildare chapter in Jack’s. Hyland was O’Connor’s captain during O’Connor’s time there and five years on has only good things to say about the man.

When O’Connor assumed the position in September 2019, taking over from his now Kerry field coach Cian O’Neill, Kildare were coming off a season in which all the momentum from the previous year’s Newbridge or Nowhere stand and run to the inaugural Super 8s had evaporated. 

They finished mid-table in Division Two behind Fermanagh, the Dubs trounced them by 15 points in Leinster, before Tyrone rolled them over by 10 points in Newbridge. Jack was just the appointment and lift they needed.

“It brought a real breath of air to the scene,” says Hyland. “Some of the best players in Kildare weren’t playing for the county at the time but he managed to make sure the best players were available for him.” Things didn’t start that well though. Kildare lost three of their opening four league games. Then Covid hit, inconveniencing everyone but particularly uncondusive to a manger in his first season over a team.

Daniel Flynn, an All-Star nomination in O’Connor’s second year, has spoken about just how. “I think the first year, ‘struggled’ is the wrong word for him, but he was more distant in his management style,” he’d tell the BBC GAA Social podcast. “But in his second year I thought he was better with the players. There was more of a bond with lads.”

Kildare manager Jack O'Connor celebrates with Neil Flynn after their side's victory in the Leinster Quarter-Final against Offaly. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Hyland would echo that. “He was very much a people’s person, wanting to get know the individual so they could then trust him and play for him. It wasn’t a hierarchical management style. He would bounce things off the leaders. ‘Johnny’s going very well in training, what would you think him of playing wing forward this weekend?’” 

Things considerably picked up when the team reassembled the autumn of 2020. They won four consecutive games between league and championship, meaning they entered their Leinster semi-final against Meath having kept a clean sheet in seven of their eight games on his beat. But ultimately the lack of time together caught up with them; against Meath, as O’Connor would characteristically and colourfully put it, “the Suez Canal opened up” and they were raided for five goals.

That game would prove to be a total outlier. In total O’Connor would oversee 16 league and championship games in his time with Kildare and in 12 of those they managed to keep a clean sheet, including a 2021 league promotion playoff win against Meath and a subsequent eight-point Leinster final defeat to Dublin. The players though remember O’Connor for primarily encouraging attacking football.

“You’ve to remember in that Dublin game we’d lost a few key players. Kevin Feeley had been dominating but then both broke his leg and did his cruciate in the one tackle. We were also without Eoin Doyle who had been manning the middle of our defence. So facing Dublin who were rampant at the time we had to change our tactics to make sure we didn’t concede a big score which came at a price.

“One of his biggest things and something he dropped lads on the back of it was making sure everyone on the field was a footballer. That they were a threat and good on the ball. 

If you’re an opposing team and spot that someone isn’t good carrying ball, you can generate a sweeper. He wanted everyone being a threat on the ball. You look at it now with Kerry; his corner backs are getting up, taking scores. In the All-Ireland final you had Seán O’Brien scoring a couple of points.

“In Kildare he was initially very hard on Kevin Flynn, an outstanding athlete but who wasn’t kicking the ball. Jack dropped him because of that but then Kevin went away and worked on that and played his way back into the team. That wouldn’t have happened if Jack hadn’t been willing to go to those lengths and make sure that everyone is a threat on the ball.” 

But then, with a year still left on the agreement he had with the board, Kerry came calling, in no small part because O’Connor let everyone know of the allure of coaching “the Manchester United” of Gaelic football. It seriously irked Kildare supporters who felt after that Examiner podcast they should have been the ones to have the dignity and satisfaction of breaking the romance off.

Flynn though understood. “I took no umbrage with [his podcast remarks] at all. Maybe some of the other lads did but I think the consensus was ‘If he wants to go, fair enough.’ It’s not as if he was going, ‘I want to manage Dublin.’ He said he wanted to go home and manage lads he had [coached] underage. We would have wanted to him to stay but I had no issue with him going there. 

 “It was very disappointing but purely from a selfish point of view that were going to lose someone of that expertise. Subsequent years show he was right to go home. 

"The man as he said himself was coming from one of the most southerly points in Ireland, making a nine-hour round-trip, and that takes a toll on a man in his 60s, as fresh and all as he is. Kildare people would have been annoyed mostly out of a jealousy of Kerry rather than any spite or hatred for Jack. And amongst the players there’d be no hard feelings at all for Jack, only gratitude.” 

As O’Connor’s successor, Glenn Ryan, would say himself, “He left Kildare in a very good position.” 

Where are they now? Well, after Sunday, out of the championship, if O’Connor again has his way.

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