'He’s like a life counsellor': Keith Ricken from those who know him

Glowing and selfless anecdotes. Win or lose in Sunday's All-Ireland football final, the Cork minor class of 2026 will tell theirs in time.

LIFE COACH: Keith Ricken and management on the sideline during the Clare V Cork Munster U17 Football Championship. Pic: Eamon Ward.

Blake Murphy obliges from Boston. It is 10.10am local time on Thursday morning. The thermostat is already reading 33 degrees Celsius. The construction site he’s working on is not at all generous with shade. This Irish sparky is “struggling, melting, boiling”.

The purpose of the call is Keith Ricken. One Vincent’s clubman asked to give his take on another. On this particular subject, Blake couldn’t be keener to speak up.

Cork haven’t been involved in an underage All-Ireland football final since the seven-week spell in 2019 when the county toasted minor and U20 titles in quick succession. Blake was at centre-forward for the sensational come-from-behind U20 success, Ricken again the manager.

He fired home a best wishes message earlier this week. He also told his old manager that even if silverware wasn’t brought back down the road on Sunday, he was in no doubt that the memories and friendships the class of 2026 have already stockpiled will stay with them for a lifetime such is the environment Ricken creates.

The reply of his old manager, as is always the case, focused nothing on himself. He asked how Blake was and how Boston was treating him.

Blake has worked under Ricken at club and county level. It was Ricken who handed him his Cork senior debut in 2022.

Manager, though, is a term or description he never saw fit for Keith. That wasn’t their relationship. That’s not the relationship he has with lads who come into his dressing room.

“He’s like a life counsellor, or a life coach,” says Blake.

“He just has this way with people. Obviously, he's a good football coach and obviously he knows what he's doing football-wise, but I think the bigger thing is his people skills and motivational skills are second to none, to be honest.

“If you had a problem in the morning, he’d be the first one I’d ring, still. And if I did ring him, no matter how busy he’d be, he’d say, call up to my office, or he’d call out to the house, and he’d always have some sort of solution to whatever problem you have.

“That feeds out onto the field then because any team he is involved with ends up winning something. If you have someone like him that you can go to with an issue, well then when the shit hits the fan in a game, you’re going to go the extra mile for them.”

Different memories flood black from the all-conquering 2019 campaign where Ricken came on board late in the day.

After each training session the players had to send him a message of what they felt they did well and did poorly, areas for improvement and areas where they have improved. The teenagers thrived on this self-accountability. They didn’t want to be spoon-fed.

And then there was the tea and toast mentality he instilled in them.

“He was telling us how after a recent surgery, his wife and kids were standing over him asking how he was and how the surgery had gone, but all he was thinking about was getting tea and toast. He kept reiterating that story throughout the year and so tea and toast became our attitude with regards to next ball, next ball.

“When Dublin goaled to go 1-6 to 0-0 up at the beginning of the All-Ireland final, Seán Meehan ran into our goalkeeper Josh O’Keeffe, who’d made a mistake for the goal and probably knew he’d made a mistake too, and he just said to Josh, tea and toast.

“We won the kickout and went up and got two goals one after the other. All year, it was just tea and toast. It might sound stupid, but it just meant that no matter what is going wrong, you can fix it.”

Yours truly and Ricken grabbed a friendly coffee before the minor campaign threw in. He was told how Jamie Wall had waxed lyrically about him during an Irish Examiner interview, but that the praise had wound up on the cutting room floor.

“That’s the place for it,” Ricken modestly quipped.

This latest All-Ireland final run has provided an avenue to salvage from the cutting room floor.

Wall never played under Keith, they were instead third-level contemporaries. The relationship progressed from there. The then CIT GAA development officer became a mentor to the Mary I Fitzgibbon manager.

“Keith just decided to be a good mentor to me because we had no link other than just literally going against each other in colleges. Keith is Keith, a really good person,” said Wall last February.

“We lost a county final with Kilbrittain in 2021 at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, and it was tough going. I remember coming into the tunnel immediately after just to compose myself. Keith was there.

“He came down to see me and I remember him saying, ‘I know this is probably upsetting you more than what happened to you eight years ago because that is the way you are, but what you do in the next two, three hours is part of being a manger. You behave yourself in a certain way, you conduct yourself with dignity’.

“I remember thinking, 'Jesus, that was fucking brilliant'. Right when I needed it, real practical, and from a fella who had been through all of that 10 times over.”

Glowing and selfless anecdotes. Win or lose on Sunday, the Cork minor class of 2026 will tell theirs in time.