Paul Geaney now getting his kicks after growing sick of football

Paul Geaney is absolutely certain that he would not be here were it not for the rewritten rulebook.

Paul Geaney during the Kerry GAA Football Pre-All-Ireland Senior Final media conference at Gleneagle Hotel in Killarney. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

Sick of football. Should have taken a year out. Would have left altogether was it not for change.

Paul Geaney was the last of the Kerry players to come in for a chat at the stunning Europe Hotel on Saturday afternoon. He was a picture of honesty and deep reflection. He closed off no area of exploration with couched responses. At times, he even led the exploration himself.

His misbehaving calf aside, these are boon times for the 35-year-old. A year that began with storybook success in local colours. An inter-county year that could conclude with him first up the Hogan steps.

Silverware and potential further silverware offer sustenance. Silverware, though, can only be touched by the fortunate every few months. Geaney's week-to-week sustenance is enjoyment from a game that for a period brought none.

His neat assessment of the new rules is that they’ve delivered a game that is far more position based. The inside forward no longer has to do the job of a corner-back. And not that Geaney is opposed to or above occasionally mucking in on the defensive front, but if he wanted to play at corner-back or carry out the functions of a corner-back, well then that’s the position and shirt he would have gone after when starting out at Páirc an Ághasaigh many, many years ago.

The Kerry captain turns 36 in November. Pushing on. In age that is, not ability or influence.

He is absolutely certain that he would not be here - fulfilling media duties at the top of the Mangerton Room, with a wedding day two for a backdrop - were it not for the rewritten rulebook.

“There's a good chance I wouldn't have [stayed playing], no. There were a lot of years there where you're in the system of it. In 2018, I should have taken a year out, really. Looking back, I was pretty much sick of it. Sick of football,” he said of a season where Kerry floundered in the Super 8s.

“In hindsight, I probably should have taken a year out and I would have been fresher again then if I was to come back. Soldiered on through it. I don't think I'd be here if the rules didn't change because it's just so enjoyable. It really is, and club football is so enjoyable as well.

“Club football had gone the other way as well even though it wasn't completely mimicking [inter-county] but there were aspects of it. Club football, and I hope it stays that way, has not really gone to the more professional side of what I see could become with inter-county at some stage, with possibly no more shooting ones and not going for goals because percentages will come into it and stats people will take over the game.

“I hope it doesn't go that way, but that's possibly why it went that way in the first place because the stats were showing you can only shoot from here and more bodies and all that sort of stuff. I hope coaches develop on coaching forwards and coaching backs better techniques, rather than cheating with stats and all that kind of thing.” 

Kerry's Paul Geaney during the quarter-final win over Tyrone in Croke Park. Pic: ©INPHO/Bryan Keane

Growing up, the Geaney boys never bothered with cheating or stats or percentage shots. Their approach was disinterested in science and schemes.

A bag of balls, the local field, and a group of cousins gathered around the D for a kicking competition.

Dylan’s lack of an orange flag against Dublin last time out broke a three-game run of two-pointers. Across the Tyrone, Armagh, and Kildare wins, he registered four two-pointers. What we marveled at over the winter in white and red has become his summer standard.

“Practice,” Paul shoots back when asked about the long-range pedigree of his cousin.

“David [Geaney] was the first of us, he was a forward, and watching David as a kid, he was five years older than me, he was a free-taker and a very good free-taker, so he'd probably be going up to the sportsfield and you'd be kicking and practicing with him.

“Then afterwards the three lads were born and their father Colm just had Dylan out in the garden since they were hoppers. Niall is capable of being a forward as well. He's wing forward/midfield and probably started out at wing back but has huge ability to kick as well.

“So two-footedness and kicking are probably always our thing. Growing up, going up to the sportsfield even with those three lads, we used to have kicking competitions and Dylan probably won most of them even though he was the youngest, ten years younger than me.

“We either did the competition around the arc or everybody got to pick where they wanted to kick it from. Dylan was just unbelievably accurate off left and right.

“Dylan was 14 I'd say when Tommy Griffin wrote a piece in the Examiner about looking out his window, which looks down on the sportsfield in Dingle, and just commented on Dylan Geaney practising his kicking and how it was a regular occurrence.

“That was probably it with all of us, we just went up to the sportsfield with a bag of balls and kicked all throughout our childhood and kicked left and right and that's what it's down to really.” 

Simple. Effective. And now with license to thrive in a new football world that Paul Geaney doesn't want to step away from.