O Se expected to accept his reign is over

GAELIC GAMES: It appears Páidí Ó Sé has accepted the end of his reign as Kerry football manager after a lengthy meeting last night with county board chairman Seán Walsh.

A press conference has been organised for Killarney later this afternoon, where it is expected Ó Sé will announce his intention not to pursue another term in charge.

Behind-the-scenes negotiations for most of yesterday ended with Ó Sé agreeing to meet Walsh at a hotel in Dingle. The two spent over an hour discussing the stand-off which had developed since Thursday when Walsh first informed Ó Sé of the county board's intention to put in place an entirely new management team.

Afterwards the meeting was described as cordial and fruitful, but that no further comment would be made before this afternoon's press conference in Killarney. A brief statement from Ó Sé confirmed he would be addressing matters related to the Kerry senior football management at the press conference, set for 3 p.m. at the Gleneagle Hotel.

Earlier yesterday, Walsh had reiterated his intention of heading the search for a new manager, despite the statement from several notable members of the current team expressing their disapproval at how the eight-year reign of Ó Sé was ended.

The players' views, said Walsh, "doesn't change the situation in any way".

The statement had added that the players didn't want their views to be interpreted as interfering with the process of appointing a new management. Ó Sé, it appears, had interpreted Thursday's phone call as an ultimatum to "resign or be fired", despite his eagerness to hold on to the position for another year.

The players' statement was initially released anonymously, although yesterday eight members of the team put their names to it, including former captains Séamus Moynihan and Darragh Ó Sé and current captain Mike McCarthy.

There was "disapproval and disappointment", they said, at the treatment of Ó Sé, and how he was informed by telephone of the plans of the county board executive to appoint an entirely new management. The remaining five names on the statement were those of Declan O'Keeffe, Tomás Ó Sé, Eamonn Fitzmaurice, Dara Ó Cinnéide and Liam Hassett.

Those players deliberately didn't canvass the opinions of the younger or fringe members on the panel, who might have felt under undue pressure to offer similar disapproval. But the statement then noted that the players would go on to work with whoever took over as manager and that the desire to originally remain anonymous was merely to avoid any potential division in the camp in the future.

While Walsh appeared sympathetic to the players, he had again stressed that Ó Sé had been neither fired nor asked to resign, but that now his term was up it had been decided to seek a new management.

"There is an overwhelming mood in the county for change and it's our responsibility as a county board to do what we feel is best for Kerry football," he said. "And I don't see the players' statement as any sort of stumbling block.

"We have been given a mandate to come up with a person whom we feel is best qualified and capable of managing the team, and over the next couple of weeks we will be interviewing various candidates. I'd be confident that there are people out there well equipped and experienced enough and with the qualifications to bring about the change which the public wish to see in place for the future management of the Kerry football team."

Assisting Walsh in that process will be the other members of the special committee, Kerry secretary Eamonn O'Sullivan and vice-chairman Jerome Conway.

Already, then, the question of the most likely replacement for Ó Sé has arisen, although Walsh had insisted that no candidate had yet been approached.

"I wanted to clear things up with Páidí first," he had added, "and that's why I think the whole thing could have been handled differently if Páidí had sat down with me last Friday, rather than ending the conversation on the telephone."

Team trainer John O'Keeffe has already ruled out any involvement in the next management set-up, and Walsh stressed the two main candidates being mooted outside the county - Liam Kearns and Mick O'Dwyer - wouldn't be approached either as Kerry wasn't in the business of "poaching" from other counties. Kearns is currently in charge of Limerick, and O'Dwyer of Laois.

For the time being, three names have been widely floated: Jack O'Connor, Séamus Mac Gearailt and John Evans.

It also emerged yesterday that the original date of October 28th set by Walsh as the county's election meeting for the candidates could be brought forward, as the chairman is due to be out of the country on business at the time.

Elsewhere, viewing figures released by TG4 have shown that Sunday's live broadcast of the All-Ireland women's football final drew the highest ever audience for the station. The average audience for the Mayo-Dublin final was 187,000, representing 21 per cent of all people watching television in the Republic at that time.

It means that for the third year in a row the record for the highest-rated TG4 programme has been achieved by coverage of the All-Ireland women's football final.