Gavin Cummiskeypulls up a seat as Kerry's poster boy fields schoolchildren's questions with the same aplomb as he brings to his football

JOURNALISTS EXITING the Croke Park museum yesterday could have informed the stream of school children they were in for a serious treat.

Since gate-crashing the 2006 championship summer Kieran Donaghy has become the poster boy for Gaelic football so it made perfect sense that he launched the School tour with your GAA hero at headquarters yesterday.

Beforehand, Donaghy broke the 20-minute mark enthusiastically fielding questions on the many topics to have dominated the Kerry scene over the tumultuous past 12 months.

On the positive dope test of Aidan O’Mahony for Salbutamol – the asthmatic defender was admonished but cleared of doping – Donaghy expressed dismay with the length of the three-month process.

“We all know it was handled badly, in the way his name came out first and for a thing he has suffered with since he was a kid. I remember him telling me before the game, ‘I’m dying, chest infection’.

“It was a big story and it was going to be in the papers every day. Some fella says this and some fella says that. It is a killer of a thing. There is a man there who took an inhaler for his chest and he is in the paper every day.

“His family are opening the paper. It was definitely hard to handle for him and his family. If they could just speed it up, keep the name in-house until there is a guilty or not guilty.

“In his profession as a guard it wasn’t good for the man. In fairness, he handled it well. He didn’t say much. He just kept his head down and left it up to the (legal) team that was behind him.”

The whole affair has sparked greater awareness amongst the players.

“The last few weeks you see Kerry guys going ‘hold on now a minute, Uniflu, can I take that?’. You would be ringing doctors and checking what is in it, reading out the back of it.”

The return of Tadhg Kennelly and the ongoing mystery surrounding Darragh Ó Sé continue to captivate the chattering class in football’s Kingdom.

“To be 100 percent honest, lads, nobody knows what Darragh is doing except Darragh. He’s a funny man, he’s a gas man. He’ll keep it to himself. We don’t know. I do think he’ll be back but that’s me being greedy wanting him back. He has a full-time job, he’s working hard, he has a baby now and that brings its own challenges in life. We’ll just wait on Darragh.

“We all hope he’ll be back because he’s such a presence, not only on the pitch but in the lead up to games, in meetings and stuff. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Donaghy’s relationship with Kennelly began in 2006 when Seán Boylan brought the International Rules squad down to Trevor Brennan’s Toulouse in preparation for the touring Australians.

“There was an aura about him even then. I followed the Aussie rules a lot when I was young, more than just him and the Swans. To get to play with him and watch his career and talk to him a few times a year you could tell the man was, I won’t say getting sick of it, but you could tell he had his fill of it for the time being.

“He felt like he needed to get out of there because it wasn’t working and he was picking up injuries. He wasn’t enjoying himself and we all know you have to be enjoying life to be successful.

“He’s like a kid around the place. He’s loving the whole thing. People were saying he won’t be used to Bellaghy and these sort of places and the cold. But he’s training in the muck and gutter with us on Wednesday and Friday nights in Kerry. He’s after bringing a good bit of enthusiasm to the place.”

Donaghy’s ruptured posterior knee ligament has healed; he baulks at criticism of his partnership with Tommy Walsh last summer (“Leading up to the All-Ireland final it was the “Twin Towers” are great, everything is super. In the end I didn’t have a good game.”); and he won’t hear a bad word about Paul Galvin.

After quizzing Donaghy on everything besides the expulsion of Aid agencies from Sudan he hails the new, improved Jack O’Connor: “He’s back, he’s hungry and he’s just enjoying it that bit more. It’s hard to explain. Jack used to come into training and he might be a bit cranky but he’s come in every training session now, I mean he’ll still straighten us out if we’re not performing in training like we should be, but he’s coming in with a smile and is going around the place with a bit of enthusiasm.

“He’s been great for us. It’s like a new face again even though he was only there two years ago. Two years is a long time in Gaelic football, fellas come and go.”

Some things stay the same.