Jack O’Connor has managed Kerry to four National Football League titles but he says that expectations of a fifth one in 2023 might be a little wide of the mark.
The National League has been very good to O’Connor – each of his four All-Ireland title wins has been prefaced in those years by League silverware – but without a hint of cute hoorism, the Kerry manager maintains another double could be an overreach this time.
Kerry head north to Ballybofey to start their League title defence against Donegal on Sunday, with O’Connor saying he will probably only have four or five of the 15 players who started last July’s All-Ireland final against Galway available for the game.
The Clifford brothers, David and Paudie, will be rested after the club exertions with Fossa, while Gavin White, Diarmuid O’Connor, Stephen O’Brien, Sean O’Shea and Paul Geaney are rehabbing injuries that will keep them sidelined for a few weeks.
Rathmore’s All-Ireland winners Shane Ryan and Paul Murphy may or may not be on the flight north; the now retired David Moran and his Dubai-bound club mate Jack Savage definitely won’t. Suffice to say, the Kerry manager isn’t expecting his team to pull up many trees for much of the League.
Would a mid-table finish in Division One be a reasonable expectation?
“That’s a fair enough assessment, yeah. Last year we kind of set out our stall, we had a new management, we were trying to do a few new things with the players, and we set out our stall to be very competitive from the off last year,” O’Connor said.
“I think this year we recognise that we are probably a bit behind the curve training-wise, so it might be that we have to temper our expectations a bit. Doesn’t mean that we won’t be going out to try and win every game. We’ll be going flat out to win every game and be as competitive as we can but the fact that we will have to train pretty hard through the League might affect some of our performances.”
On the matter of David Moran’s decision earlier Monday to call time on his 15-year inter-county career, O’Connor said the 34-year-old would be a big loss “from a football point of view and also from a morale and leadership point of view ... He was very important to us last year at different times. Look, he’s 34, he’s at it a long time and he has to make the decision that’s right for him.”
With Moran hanging up the Kerry boots, the manager in O’Connor must look forward, and he sees the Moran-shaped gap in the Kerry as an opportunity for others.
“The way it’s panning out at the moment we’ll basically be going to Ballybofey, and probably for the first couple of league games, with probably just a fifth of the starters from the All-Ireland final, which is a big turnaround in players. You can look at that in two ways, negatively or positively, but I’d rather say it’s a big opportunity for players who were around the set-up last year, and a couple of new players who’ve come in this year, to put their hand up and stake a claim for later. That’s what you’re hoping and that’s what we will need as well.”
In 2005 and 2010 O’Connor managed Kerry as All-Ireland champions to try and retain the Sam Maguire, and both years they came up short. Looking down the line to this year’s Championship, O’Connor is well placed to appreciate what is required to go back-to-back, and the pitfalls in getting there.
“The big thing is trying to replicate the hunger you had the year before. It’s the nature of the beats that you want to fast-forward back to the big days and you tend to forget the steps that took you to the big days, and that’s the biggest challenge,” he says.
“And then you’ll lose players along the way, and just trying to incorporate new players into the team and whatever so, yeah, that’s the big one, just replicating the hunger. And then you’ve a target on your back the year after you win an All-Ireland because everyone raises their game.”
Donegal it is then who are first up to take a shot at the double champions. The Kerry manager is just hoping his team live to fight another day.
