O'Shea welcomes the pressure

All-Ireland Football Championship:  If it's 16 days before the first game, over four months before the final, and a fairly quiet Thursday anyway, then it must be time for the launch of the 2007 football championship. Four managers were in Croke Park yesterday on behalf of sponsors Bank of Ireland and all four expect to be back there on September 16th to win the thing outright, no matter how hard they tried to pretend otherwise.

Two of the four have won All-Irelands twice before: Tyrone's Mickey Harte and Mayo's John O'Mahony, previously successful with Galway. Dublin's Paul Caffrey is still looking to make his first final and yet there was no denying who is facing the greatest pressure - Kerry's new manager Pat O'Shea.

No team have won back-to-back football titles since Cork did so in 1989-1990, and Kerry themselves haven't done it since 1985-1986. The reality is Kerry are expected to win every year, and that's the first challenge facing O'Shea.

"Of course winning two back-to-back is a very difficult thing to do," he said.

"And the key really is the hunger. And you really won't know how much of that is there until the white heat of a championship battle.

"A lot of these Kerry players do have what you'd call a lot of GAA mileage, but they are very motivated, and they want to give it a really good go.

"But to be honest, every game will be treated on its own merits. Cork, in my opinion, are one of the teams ready to make a breakthrough, and have threatened to do it over the last number of years.

"They have good strength in depth now, and that will be a very intriguing game if we come across each other at some stage. But we'll treat the first championship match with the same respect as every other one after that."

Kerry meet the winners of Clare-Waterford on June 3rd, and should resemble their familiar championship line-up by then. Kieran Donaghy was tried at midfield during the league, with Colm Cooper also playing a deeper role, but O'Shea knows it's not easy to change a winning formula.

"Kieran Donaghy's success at full forward has been well documented, and I don't envisage changing that. Colm Cooper has proved he's a versatile player, and I think every intercounty player has to be comfortable in different positions.

"He's still more potent closer to goal, and we'd probably be foolish if we didn't play him more in there.

"We were conscious as well about trying to keep everyone fresh during the league, and give players like Séamus Scanlon more time this year; the league gave us a good opportunity.

"It's important to stay in Division One, but the manner of the performance, and some of the individual performances, was very pleasing.

"But I look at three distinct competitions, the league, the Munster championship, then the All-Ireland.

"Our main focus in the league was to look at new players, because obviously we had some vacancies from last year."

Despite the pressure O'Shea has no doubt he's taken on the Kerry job at the right time: "You're asked to become Kerry manager once in your lifetime, if you're lucky. There's never the right time or the wrong time.

"But I feel the team is still good enough to win again, that we definitely have the individual players, and can perform on big days.

"So once I was offered the job there was only going to be one answer."