Kieran Shannon: How the Kerry and Mayo cast of 2006 final still looms over this All-Ireland

There is cause for Mayo hope against Kerry. They have Andy Moran. In his backroom he has Keith Higgins, possibly the best one-to-one defender of his generation, and judging by Mayo’s improvement in recent weeks, one of the finest coaches in that art as well.

20 years on from Kerry beating Mayo in the All-Ireland final, the sides meet against with Jack O'Connor back as manager, and Kieran Donaghy - one of the Kingdom's stars of 2006 - a key lieutenant. Pic: Brian Lawless / SPORTSFILE

‘Before we go into the press room I give about five minutes’ media coaching to the lads. Simple stuff. We can use this to our advantage. Turn up the heat on the Mayo fellas. Ye know much more about football than most of the fellas down there with pens and recorders. Say nothing stupid. Any Mayo players you want to talk about, choose the fellas with blond hair.’ 

Jack O’Connor, Keys to the Kingdom 

So much has changed since then, including Jack. Twenty years ago when Kerry and Mayo last played in an All-Ireland final, he was, by his own admission, “a very different Jack” which his book that came out the following year both reflected and exorcised – “the frustration, the chip on the shoulder, things like that.” 

“I was too tense, the fists were clenched, the teeth were gritted,” he’d elaborate in a sitdown with Tony Leen days after bringing the 2022 All-Ireland title back to Kerry, the fourth on his watch. “I’ve learned that you don’t need to be like that all the time.” 

Last Saturday at the Kerry press day he radiated that sense of ease with himself and everyone and everything else. Again he talked up a couple of Mayo forwards as he did Conor Mortimer and Ciarán McDonald back in 2006, but he conveyed with no little class and authority his respect for Mayo and their manager with his disapproval of a distasteful roadside sign an opportunistic local business had briefly put up.

The O’Connor of 20 years ago though was already a shrewd judge of football and people, as epitomised by his handling and deployment of Kerry’s eventual number 14 that season.

At the start of 2006 no one could have envisaged Kieran Donaghy being a future member of the Kerry management or the face of a bank’s advertising campaign. Although he’d matured considerably a couple of years earlier under the tutelage of Rus Bradburd as chronicled in the American basketball coach’s fantastic Paddy on the Hardwood, Donaghy still had a scattered, wayward streak.

Mayo's Andy Moran celebrates after scoring a goal against Dublin in the 2006 All-Ireland semi-final. Pic: Brian Lawless / SPORTSFILE

At half-time in the McGrath Cup final in Páirc Uí Rinn both himself and corner back Tom O’Sullivan were both substituted. After the team filed out of the dressing room, O’Sullivan breezily declared he was off home. Donaghy duly joined him out the door only to cop the folly of his ways. O’Sullivan was a veteran, stationed in Cork. Donaghy was an unproven fringe player, now stranded 75 miles from home.

The following night O’Connor had some questions for him. First: does this mean every time I take a fella off, he’s going to feck off down the town. Two: You’ve been fecking around on this panel for two years, only getting bits and pieces. You’re still half this and half that. What are you going to do about it?

That September, after O’Connor had fully empowered him, Mayo and the whole country knew.

Another member of the Kerry management was also just starting off on a personal journey back in 2006. That season Cian O’Neill took his first step onto the inter-county coaching carousel as the coach and trainer of Mickey Ned O’Sullivan’s Limerick footballers who he’d instantly help win promotion to Division One. He’s never stepped off that merry-go-round since, though he’s often swapped horses – Tipperary hurling, Mayo football, Kerry, Kildare, Cork, Galway, now Kerry again. Add up all those rides and this will be the 10th All-Ireland final he's taken in, one more than even O’Connor.

Back in 2006 Andy Moran could also have had it said about him that he was only getting bits and pieces after a couple of years on the county panel but no one could doubt his application or dedication. “A manager’s dream,” is how Conor Mortimer would describe him in his own book, One Sunday, which curiously and almost perversely is anchored around that year’s All-Ireland final.

In that year’s All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin, Moran was a sub warming up when he famously remarked to team coach John Morrison, “Stick me in and I’ll get you a goal.” (“It wasn’t like me to say something like that,” he’d later reflect, “but I just thought, ‘F*** it, what we have to lose?’”) Which he duly would, though he’d come on at wing back.

He’d come on again in the All-Ireland final, but only with 10 minutes to go. The game was already essentially over with 10 minutes gone. For the following five years he’d start in every consecutive championship game, illustrating and developing one of the finest football brains his county has known.

Crucial in that growth has been willingness to pick the brains of others. Twelve years after smilingly wagging his finger to Morrison upon scoring that goal into the Hill, Moran was still in touch with the genial Armagh man, looking for tips on how he could improve on being the reigning Footballer of the Year. Morrison has since passed away, as has Johnny Culloty, another sideline figure back in 2006, but it’s obvious from Moran’s 2022 book and a reference O’Connor made at last weekend’s presser (“I was brought up in the Johnny Culloty school of Kerry football. Johnny always said you have to carry yourself with a certain style in Kerry”) that the wisdom of both men lives on through the managers they each mentored.

Ciaran McDonald, Mayo, in action against Mike Frank Russell, Aidan O'Mahony and Seamus Moynihan during the 2006 All-Ireland football final against Kerry. Pic: Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE

Yet probably the thing that has changed the most and yet the least since 2006 is Mayo. Moran, by playing alongside talents like Keith Higgins who was the Young Player of the Year and U21 All-Ireland winning captain that year, would go on to either captain or star on a succession of Mayo teams that would not countenance or tolerate losing an All-Ireland final or any other game in the manner their countymen did in 2004 and 2006. In 2012 Mayo would suffer a start almost as horrendous as that of 2006 yet would fight back to get within three of Donegal by halftime. From 2013 to 2017 any time they lost to the eventual All-Ireland champions by more than a point it was after a replay. You didn’t know if they would win but you’d know they’d always show and scrap, justifying their presence on All-Ireland final day.

That sequence though was discontinued in 2021, not by the margin of their defeat but the identity of their opponents: while that group of Tyrone players had also suffered their share of big-day defeats, they were the one team that Mayo had lost to in a 21st-century All-Ireland final that were not a historically exceptional side.

Keith Duggan’s classic House of Pain begins with recounting how devastating Kerry and that day both were.

“Mayo people had dared to hope that this day would transport them back to the bonfire nights of 1951 when their team were last champions,” he’d write. “Instead they were treated to a frightening exposition of the inherent desire and ambition, the carnivorous need, that drives Kerry football men and the shocking depth of paralysis and capacity for big-day misadventure that have haunted Mayo football teams for too long.” 

That is the fear about next Sunday. That Kerry, with O’Connor steeled in the Culloty school of being merciless as well as respectful in the handling of opponents, will overpower Mayo, and outwit them too now that he can call on the football intelligence both O’Neill and Donaghy will have garnered from two decades in the inter-county game.

And yet Mayo have cause for hope. They have Moran. In his backroom he has Higgins, possibly the best one-to-one defender of his generation, and judging by Mayo’s improvement in recent weeks, one of the finest coaches in that art as well.

And they have another blond fella upfront called McDonald who plays just like the father Ciarán did circa 2006.

What was Kobe McDonald at 20 years ago? He wasn’t even born. 2006 is as immaterial to him as it was formative and transformational for so many other members of next Sunday’s cast.

And that could be what makes all the difference.