Why Do Kerry Keep Winning?

There have been two great Kerry generations in the past thirty years. There was the Golden Years team of the 1970s and 80s, featuring men so famous in the game they are known by one name only –Jacko, Ogie, Páidí, Bomber. And there is the Darragh Ó Sé generation, where that great man had the likes of Paul Galvin, Colm Cooper and, of course, his brothers Tomás and Marc to help him out.

But it is mistaken analysis to think that that Kerry rack up All-Irelands the way they do because they enjoy golden generations the way the hurlers of Cork, Kilkenny or Tipp enjoy golden generations. No. Kerry lead the pack in terms of football All-Irelands won, thirty-seven titles in comparison to Dublin’s twenty-four in second place, because whenever a year looks like being below average, when a title is there to be picked up a team that is not outstanding, it’s generally Kerry that do the picking-up.

Above anything, Kerry are hungry for titles. Hungry in a way that’s hard to describe to those who have never experienced such a combination of want and obligation. If Kerry have a choice of playing to tradition or playing to win, they will play to win one hundred per cent of the time, because winning is the only thing. And what’s more, Kerry are dead right in doing so.

All-Irelands are won against teams in the here-and-now. They are not won against some mythical standard, existing pristine and immaculate in the collective Gaelic imagination.

Kerry go into every game knowing what it is they have to do and grim-set and determined to do it. You often hear of lesser teams that “have no Plan B” when they are dumped out of the Championship. You never hear that of Kerry.

Kerry have more plans than the alphabet has letters. Science-fiction fans may remember the second Terminator movie, that featured a virtually-indestructible robot that could adapt itself to its environment, that could be whatever it needed to be in any situation. Reader, that is Kerry football in a nutshell.

You want to play fancy? Kerry will play fancy, and win 3-18 to your 1-22. You want to box? Kerry will box, and win 0-9 to 0-8. It’s all the same to them. There are no asterisks on the roll of honour. All that’s there is a list of years. Thirty-seven of them in Kerry’s case, with room for plenty more.

And that’s exactly what Kerry did yesterday. Instead of being too proud to play Donegal’s game, they played Donegal’s game better than Donegal themselves. You dance with the girls in the hall and nobody, but nobody, does that better than Kerry.

In recent year, the nation outside of the Kingdom has been given a precious insight into just how Kerry look at things, thanks to Darragh Ó Sé’s column in the Irish Times every Wednesday, and Jack O’Connor’s before him. They are invaluable insights into a GAA football county that is like no other, and help us to understand how exactly it is that Kerry maintain standards in their Kingdom, year after year, generation after generation.

For instance: it is a thing in some counties to protect players from reading criticism on social media. The idea is that the players will retire to their bedrooms, weeping at the hurt, and won’t come out in play football anymore. In Kerry, they think a little differently about how to make up-and-coming aware of what life in the big time is like.

Billy Keane recounted a story about David Moran, one of this year’s All-Star midfielders, during his first time on the Kerry panel, when Darragh Ó Sé was still the old bull in the field. Ó Sé hit Moran a slap that left Moran with a badly-cut mouth. Keane asked Ó Sé what the hell he did that for.

“David is too nice,” said Darragh. “I was trying to put a bit of fire in him. He doesn't get it yet just how hard it is.” That’s what it’s like at the top. A bit more severe than some randomer saying that you’re smelly on Twitter.

But Kerry have one other incredible asset that no other county has, or is likely to have anytime soon. Kerry has the richest football tradition in Ireland.

One difference between playing Kerry in Croke Park and playing them in Limerick is that you can hear what the Kerry support are saying. And the amazing thing is, they all say the same thing.

In Mayo, if Aidan O’Shea has possession and is travelling towards goal, from the half-forward to the full-forward line, one-third of the Mayo support will urge him to go on and bury it, one third will implore him to pass, for God’s sake, and the remaining third will beg O’Shea, on their mothers’ lives, to take his bloody point.

In Kerry, they all shout the same thing. Kerry football people know exactly the right thing to do at any particular point in the game. That’s how deep football is in their marrow. And what they don’t know, they learn quickly.

Another county might have folded their tents after the infamous “puke football” semi-final of 2003. Kerry didn’t. Kerry learned how to play the new system, and have won five titles in the eleven years since. What they couldn’t beat, they joined.

And that’s the lesson for all the other counties in Ireland, now that the 2014 season is over. If you want to beat them, you have to join them. You must do as the best does if you’re to live with them and hope to beat them.

But that’s for another year. In the meantime, hard luck Donegal, and well done Kerry, deserving All-Ireland winners of 2014.

Jack O'Connor and His Mysterious Legacy

The attitude of Mr Jack O’Connor, former manager of the Kerry football team, and Professor Henry Jones, father of Indy, the heroic archaeologist, seem at odds with regard to the worth or otherwise of the written word. Currently, Jack is backtracking furiously on recently published extracts from his about to be published autobiography, relying as heavily on the “misquoted” line as his teams did on the grandeur and might of Daragh Ó Sé in the middle of the pitch. How exactly one can be misquoted in one’s own autobiography remains a mystery.

Professor Henry Jones is a horse of a different colour. You will remember when the venerable Professor, as portrayed by Sean Connery in the motion picture, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, was being mistreated so badly by the evil Colonel Vogel in that schloss somewhere on a mountain in Austria. Colonel Vogel wants to know what the Professor’s diary would tell the Professor that it would not tell the Nazis. The Professor takes a few shots, to show he’s hard, and then spits out that the diary “tellsh me that gooshe-shtepping moronsh like yourshelf should trying reading booksh inshtead of burning them.”

Take that, kraut! Pow! Sigh. If only we had someone to answer Jack as bravely.

The GAA is ill-served by its histories. There has been a traditional distrust of putting words on paper to record great men, deeds and movements – how odd it was that Val Dorgan felt he had to ask Christy Ring’s brother, after the death of Christy himself, for the family’s permission before even thinking of writing the only biography we have of the greatest hurler who ever lived. Jack Lynch said in his noble graveside oration that Ring’s story would be told as long as hurling is played, which will be forever. Well, not if the story isn’t written down Jack. Nobody will be able to remember it. Who would know anything of the death of the Republic and the rise of Octavian if Cicero hadn’t been such a scribbler?

Your correspondent has been daring to hope lately that the relative torrent of new GAA books would help tear down the old “tell them nothin’!” edifice. That when people saw how marvellously Denis Walsh chronicled hurling in the 90s in his definitive Hurling: The Revolution Years they’d be more willing to go on the record with what they thought and felt about the things they’d done and seen.

Sadly, like the man who believed Cork bet and the hay saved, it seems your correspondent hoped too soon. Jack O’Connor won two All-Irelands in three years; it’d be interesting to see what he thinks about the events of those three years – the rise of the Gooch, Moynihan and the Ó Sés in their pomp, the Ulster revolution, even if he felt any little stir of pity for those poor helpless eejits from my own part of the world. Instead, the extracts in the Irish Times last Saturday were worrying, as it seems like the book would only be an exercise in point-scoring and cough-softening by a man that holds grudges with a steely grip. Now, in the light of yesterday’s interview on Radio Kerry, as reported by Colm Keys in this morning’s Irish Independent, it isn’t even that much.

What are we to believe? When future generations come to sit in judgement on the O’Connor era in football, where and to whom can they look for the truth?

Not this book, it seems. If Jack O’Connor isn’t willing to stand behind what’s in his book then it seems optimistic on his part to expect people to buy it. What is possibly more distressing is the notion that the book isn’t what books should be, a testament to history for the generations to come, but a grubby exercise in cashing-in on O’Connor’s part. That in this greedy generation, he’s breasting up to Dessie Farrell and the boys of the GPA in the where’s mine, boss? queue for lucre.

John Milton wrote in 1637 that rewards were only to be judged by the pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging Jove – An Spailpín knows this because he read it in a book, and he’s pretty dang sure that Milton, contrarian that he was, didn’t go on telly the week after Lycidas was published to say it was all hype, need the few shillings, you know yourself. I hope whatever scores Jack O’Connor has to settle he has settled by the publication of this book. It’s hard to see anything else coming of it. Such a pity.





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