Jack O'Connor interview: 'I'm more of an overseer, more of a kind of a director now'
LAKESIDE CALM: Kerry manager Jack O'Connor at the Hotel Europe in Killarney: 'I don’t have any pretentious opinions about myself, I really don’t'. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
The inevitability of these things is such that Jack O’Connor had no sooner agreed last autumn to a new two-year term as Kerry manager than an assumption floated that it would be one more campaign and done. The second one was just for insurance. And the optics.
By this autumn he’ll be 66 and either the satisfied owner of an All-Ireland back to back or the crestfallen subject of a winter of bitter native discontent. With a couple of grandchildren to be cherishing, who needs that?
Actually, Jack might.
The Kerry manager has found a contented centrepoint on his compass these past couple of years. Asked what he discovered about O’Connor once he joined the Kerry set up, selector James Costello said ‘he’s a lot better craic than I thought he was’.
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If losing to Armagh in 2024 didn’t break O’Connor, trying to piece together a new management group last year nearly did after the departures of Paddy Tally, Mike Quirke and Diarmuid Murphy. He doesn’t need another such dissolution over the next few weeks and if he can retain a harmonious core, he’s in a good place to keep the balls in the air.
Even at 66.
“I try to stay fit,” he says. “I think physical fitness is really important for your mental state, as well as your physical state. I mind my energy by having a good routine. I'm an early riser. I get up very early and I head off with the dog and I do my thinking early in the morning. I’d go for a jog, a cycle, a walk, a few holes of golf. Depends on the day.”
This day, Sunday, will be his ninth All-Ireland final as manager, who two earlier ones in 1997 and 2000 as a selector alongside Páidí Ó Sé. That’s irretrievable institutional memory. Invaluable. The case for anyone but the manager himself exiting stage left come 2027 is fundamentally weak.
After last year’s 39th All-Ireland, he sat down for a considered reflective with this paper and wondered aloud what precisely he brings to the show.
“I don’t have any pretentious opinions about myself, I really don’t,” O’Connor said then. “I have good judgement, good instincts. I often ask myself, what am I bringing to the whole thing? It’s a question I would have asked a couple of players in quiet moments. I am not actually 100% sure what I do bring to the thing. What I probably do bring is a bit of common sense. Experience teaches you what to do and what not to do in certain situations. I think I’ve a good feel for certain situations. Especially coming up to big games. It’s those type of big games that get me going. I come alive for those games, my senses become sharper and focused.”
He revisited the question again at the weekend at the Europe Hotel in Killarney, his intervention in having a sign along the same road, half-sniggering at Mayo, removed a testament to his finely-honed antennae.
"I did an interview (today) with Dara Ó Cinnéide as gaeilge. He was captain the first year, in 2004, and he was just asking me how different it is now. It's night and day. At the time, I was doing most of the coaching and Pat Flanagan was doing the training. That was more or less it. I had two selectors – Ger O'Keeffe and Johnny Culloty – but the backroom team was a lot smaller. The world seemed a bit simpler.
"Now I kind of have two teams. I have a team on the field and a team off the field, so my role has changed. I'm more of an overseer, more of a kind of a director now, whereas at the time I was very hands on. The game itself has changed obviously – changed for the better, I think – in the last while. It's very different. (Twenty odd years ago) I was doing most of the coaching myself and that requires huge energy – hence after three years and reaching three finals, I had to have a bit of a sabbatical. I think the way I'm doing it now is more sustainable."
He said something else last autumn that made the sort of sense only a veteran can make. Around and about less is more. It will lighten their steps heading to Sunday.
"Funnily enough, I think the thing you need to get right is the build-up to the day, more than on the day itself. We felt last year that we had a really good day. We had the players very fresh, full of energy, full of enthusiasm, and I'm racking my brains trying to think what exactly did we do again - and what did we not do, which is more important.
“Sometimes you have a tendency coming up to finals to overdo it, that you think you have to do extra. Sometimes that's not the right thing to do. Freshness is key, because All-Ireland finals take a lot of emotional energy out of you. And if you have players tired going into an All-Ireland final, you're in trouble. They need to be fresh, they need to be energetic, so if anything you have to pull back a bit and make sure freshness is key.
“It's almost like what you don't. Every team prepares well for the final but sometimes there's a tendency maybe to over-analyse and overdo it."
Kerry’s pair of Pauls, Geaney and Murphy, are counting down to their seventh All-Ireland final, not that either will be expending much energy doing so this week. They’re part of the cadre keeping it all nice and low.
“They'd set the tone and they'd say, 'Lads, stay away from this or stay away from that' or whatever. But they have to enjoy it as well. You can't lock them away and pretend there's nothing happening out in the big bad world. But they kind of have to mind their emotional energy because everyone wants to talk about the game, everyone wants to pull you aside and give you advice or ask you for tickets or whatever. You have to avoid situations where people are draining your energy. There'll be plenty of time afterwards for talking to people if you win the game. But you don't want to talk to anyone if you lose. But it's the senior players really that dictate that."
He added: “You'd have to say that both Kerry and Mayo are kind of coming pretty right at a good time. Mayo seem to be developing and progressing and getting better game by game. Someone asked me the other day, 'What's the secret formula?' For us, there is no secret formula. Everyone seems to think we have this kind of a master plan. A lot of our timing had to do with the fact that we had a lot of players injured and they're only now in the last couple of games finding their feet. Almost by accident – it's not by design anyway – they're fresh and they're hopefully improving coming towards the final.
"Mayo have a very exciting forward line, particularly those young lads. And Ryan O'Donoghue is obviously in Player of the Year form. But those young fellas, like Darragh Beirne and Kobe McDonald, they've given the Mayo followers real hope. Kobe McDonald is the nearest we've seen to David Clifford. He's the Mayo version of David Clifford. You'll remember all the hype about David when he started off with Kerry after his exploits underage. They've really latched onto this team, the Mayo followers, and they've given them great hope. The manager has backed youth and they've backed him. That's a potent mix."
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