Kerry boss Jack O'Connor keeps hammering that 'bee in my bonnet'

Kerry manager Jack O'Connor, left, and Seán O'Shea. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

IT'S hard to argue with Jack O’Connor’s contention that Dublin have timed their run to perfection.

Part of football’s last-four line-up is a side that very nearly slipped on a Wicklow banana skin on the opening day out in Leinster. 

Their response to losing the provincial final was to concede 4-18 when falling to the Louth side they’d comfortably overcome just four weeks earlier.

And yet here they still stand, Sam Maguire contenders Donegal and Galway dumped out by the rejuvenated Blues over the past three weeks.

So whatever mind games are at play ahead of Sunday's All-Ireland SFC semi-final, Jack O'Connor stating the obvious regarding the timing of Dublin’s run ain’t nothing of that sort.

Of course, no county in recent times has succeeded in timing their run better than Kerry did last summer.

The outstanding factor in getting that right, according to Jack, is availability of players. But in a title-defending season where a dominant Kerry theme has been the unavailability of first-team figures, the manager reckons that in some strange, roundabout way, the clean slate of Paudie Clifford, Seán O’Shea, Gavin White, Paul Geaney, Diarmuid O’Connor, Graham O’Sullivan, Joe O’Connor, Seán O’Brien, Paul Murphy, and Tom O’Sullivan could work to Kerry’s advantage as players are so ravenous to compensate for the large swathes of the season they spent sidelined.

Kerry footballers Joe O'Connor and Seán O'Shea. Pics: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

O’Shea, for example, got 24 minutes last Saturday week to go with the first 16 minutes of championship 2026 he banked against Armagh the weekend previous.

Gavin White, meanwhile, made his first start of the year against Tyrone. That he was able to last the 70 minutes was deemed “remarkable” by his boss.

The “calculated gamble” of throwing in “undercooked” players and hoping the games will bring them on has not yet backfired.

Having claimed following the win in Newbridge that Kerry had spent a section of the summer on life support such was the state of their injury crisis, the reflection now is that flatline period might be to their favour.

“The one thing that is probably standing to us is that players are fresh now because they were out for so long,” surmised Jack.

“Our medical and S&C team make sure they get a lot of work into them on their way back from injuries and in a perverse way it is working for us because we think the players are now mad for road having missed so much of the season. If that is timing your run, I don’t know what you would call it.” 

O’Connor has spoken previously on where he believes their spate of 2026 injuries emanated from. On Monday, he went further. He labelled their earlier-in-the-season mass unavailability as “an absolute epidemic of injuries”.

Kerry’s manager Jack O'Connor during the Tyrone win. Pic: James Crombie/Inpho

“I keep going on about the amount of football that the boys are playing. It has to be something to do with it.

“We’re not doing anything extraordinary. We’re not flogging the boys and haven’t been for the last couple of years. It’s a case of managing them. I’ve thought this was going to be a massive problem from a long way back, especially with the split-season, and the lack of off-season for players. It’s going to get progressively worse by the way because it becomes cumulative.

“For a long time, I have said that Kerry can’t continue to play three championships and expect inter-county players to play three championships. It is crazy. No one else is doing it and why do Kerry think they can do it and survive unscathed. It is not going to happen.

“Do I have the solution to it? I don’t, but something is going to have to give somewhere. You are going to have to throw the National League or do something. You just can’t continue to play championships into the end of November, give them four weeks off and then sail in during January and prepare for a National League three weeks (later), it doesn’t work like that.

“I don’t want this to turn into a moan, but it is something I have a real bee in my bonnet about. Something fairly substantial is going to have to change because it is not good practice what is going on.” 

His plea is that November would be a match-free zone for Kerry players, outside of those involved with the county championship-winning junior, intermediate, and senior clubs. 

His call is to the GPA to enforce their stance for that month to be a no-go zone for inter-county players.

Back to the present. After three games in 14 days, the weekend free of knockout championship fare was a boon.

“We all needed it because it’s tough going when you’re flat out every weekend. For a while there, you can’t even enjoy one game, and you’re into the next game.

“It’s very frenetic, and that takes it out of you. So it was great to get, I won’t say a weekend off because we trained, but at least the boys had Sunday off, and you can get some bit of recuperation, mentally and physically.”