IN THE END, Jack O’Connor hunted down some back-to-back history this year, just not the kind he wanted.
Cian O’Neill’s departure from the Kerry set-up has meant he has lost his last two All-Ireland winning coaches and all inside two seasons.
In truth, that stroke of misfortune was not entirely by accident.
Paddy Tally, who played such a key role in Kerry’s 2022 triumph, had his hand partially forced when he was demoted from head coach to performance coach as a result of O’Neill’s arrival in the autumn of 2024 – albeit, the subsequent offer of becoming Derry’s number one was just too good to turn down for the Tyrone man.
However, the suggestion was O’Connor’s own hand was forced by his board amid demands for a beefed-up management team in the aftermath of the All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Armagh earlier that summer, and when it comes to a head-turning coaching CV, O’Neill’s takes some beating.
Cian O'Neill's departure will prompt a backroom reshuffle in Kerry for next season. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
The expectation is that a door even closer to his Cork base is expected to open shortly for O’Neill, amid intense speculation that he will be invited in a senior role onto Ben O’Connor’s hurling management team.
Outside of logistics, the appeal for the Kildare native is obvious: to be on an All-Ireland winning sideline when a dam of near unprecedented emotion bursts.
He got to see how special that can be, up close and personal, as he watched his Kerry predecessor Tally swallowed up in a tidal wave of Mayo emotion last month.
Winning any All-Ireland is special, but when you are wearing the Kerry bib, that is where the bar is set, whereas with the Mayo footballers, and latterly the Cork hurlers, whose All-Ireland famine is heading into a 22nd year, there is a glass ceiling waiting to be shattered.
Kieran Donaghy could be handed an enhanced role in O'Connor's management team. Tom Maher / INPHO
Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO
As his former coaches reach for the stars, O’Connor is expected to once more press his shoulder against a boulder to try and roll it to the summit for a 40th time.
For a man in his 66th year, it is a formidable challenge made all the harder by tweaking his management team, albeit it will be something of a surprise if another All-Ireland winning coach in Kieran Donaghy is not officially installed as his right-hand man.
When that happens, it might be perceived as some kind of closure for O’Connor as Kerry shut the door on their own house of pain and eyeball 2027.
The reality is likely to be somewhat different. Only getting their hands on the canister and parading it down Denny Street on a summer’s Monday evening qualifies as closure.
Sometimes, even that is not enough.
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Back in the noughties, this column attended a Sam Maguire homecoming in Caherciveen on a wet Friday night and took shelter in a hostelry while we waited.
When eventually the cup was paraded up the town on the back of a lorry, we moved as far as the door to acknowledge, while another pub patron craned his head over our shoulder and offered his own jaundiced commentary.
“Hah, will you look at them there now, and not a word about the All-Ireland they fucked away last year,” declared the chairperson of the high-stool welcoming committee, whose focus was still on the previous September’s loss to Tyrone.
It is fair to suggest the fallout this time has been tinged with a little more acceptance and a lot more perspective.
Mayo winning took care of the former and the fact that they did so by being clearly the better team, the latter.
Kerry's All-Ireland final defeat to Mayo has been tinged with acceptance. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
O’Connor set the tone for that within minutes of the final whistle last month.
“I thought they had more energy than us, more legs, more hunger. In general, I just thought they had more energy than us,” he lamented.
It wasn’t just that all season that “energy”, and more often the lack thereof, peppered O’Connor’s post-match interviews to explain why his team could not reach the pitch of performance in the defence of their title, as they had the previous season in winning it.
Energy has always been his thing.
In the build-up to his first All-Ireland final in 2004, at a team meeting he offered the staple advice to his players to stay in their bubble and ignore the outside noise of their public.
What made it stick in the players’ heads was how he labelled those who would be seeking their attention “energy vampires”.
His decision to twice leave the Kerry post in the past was for a multitude of reasons, but central was an admission of the draining demands of the job.
When he left Kildare in 2021, he cited the physical toll of the journey from South Kerry as having “taken its toll”.
His anticipated decision to go again answers one question; even at 66, he knows he has the energy for it.
But the energy that matters most which O’Connor needs to create, preserve and weaponise is that which was missing between the white lines at critical stages over the past six months.
Kerry have lost Sean O'Brien to an ACL injury. Tom Maher / INPHO
Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO
He has not been shy about fingering the source of that energy loss, an unprecedented injury crisis which left a legacy of players chasing fitness as much as medals.
And he has not been shy either as to why that was, pointing to Kerry’s complex and multi-tiered club championship structures delivering a schedule which prevents inevitable welfare threats to county players who are not allowed off the treadmill.
The loss of his midfielder Sean O’Brien to an ACL injury, and news that Meath pair Sean Coffey and Conor Gray have also suffered similar season-ending injuries in recent weeks, should provide some focus on competition schedules, both inter-county and club, that have become too demanding for their own good.
But that conversation, which O’Connor has started, is for the long-term. How he finds a way to get a bounce back in Kerry legs next season will be fascinating but challenging.
His strength as a manager has always been an almost unrivalled capacity to learn and adapt to circumstances and fashion.
In one sense, there is a danger of over-reacting. After all, for all their woes, they came within a kick of the ball of winning back-to-back All-Irelands, they still possess the best footballer the game has arguably ever seen, and several others, not least Seanie O’Shea, Gavin White, Tom O’Sullivan and Brian O’Beaglaoich, can be the players they were with a season of good health.
Tactically, they will hardly do a complete U-turn, given their gameplan is based on the sound logic that if they can win the kick-out battle, they retain the undoubted quality to turn possession into scores.
Losing an All-Ireland final does not flip that truth on its head.
However, it will need tweaking. The emphasis on winning kick-outs effectively saw them play with four orthodox midfielders for much of last summer, raising the concerns that what they won in the air, they lost on the ground in terms of snappiness and speed.
That will demand a review, as will the fact that while not every team has the capacity to press as aggressively as Mayo, Kerry’s vulnerability on that front was not just in that game, as evidenced in how Tyrone targeted turnovers in the quarter-final, winning three times as many.
That comes back to the energy issue which O’Connor obsesses about.
Gearoid White, left, may step up from the Kerry U20s next season. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
He will need to find new sources. This year’s U20 winning team are likely to get some game-time, not least the likes of Evan Boyle, Daniel Kirby, Aodhna O’Beaglaoich, Gearoid Evens and the undoubted jewel in that pack, Gearoid White, along with the already established Tomas Kennedy.
However, a few changes in personnel will not alter the profile of an ageing group.
The average age of the Mayo team that started the All-Ireland final was 23.4, Kerry’s was 28. That is not a gap, it is a chasm, and that age profile will only climb next year.
In defiance of that, O’Connor will have to source new energy from ageing legs.
If he manages that, it will, most likely, not just be his final trick but also his greatest one.
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Obsessed with 'energy': Kerry's 2027 reboot could be Jack O'Connor's greatest trick yet
IN THE END, Jack O’Connor hunted down some back-to-back history this year, just not the kind he wanted.
Cian O’Neill’s departure from the Kerry set-up has meant he has lost his last two All-Ireland winning coaches and all inside two seasons.
In truth, that stroke of misfortune was not entirely by accident.
Paddy Tally, who played such a key role in Kerry’s 2022 triumph, had his hand partially forced when he was demoted from head coach to performance coach as a result of O’Neill’s arrival in the autumn of 2024 – albeit, the subsequent offer of becoming Derry’s number one was just too good to turn down for the Tyrone man.
However, the suggestion was O’Connor’s own hand was forced by his board amid demands for a beefed-up management team in the aftermath of the All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Armagh earlier that summer, and when it comes to a head-turning coaching CV, O’Neill’s takes some beating.
The expectation is that a door even closer to his Cork base is expected to open shortly for O’Neill, amid intense speculation that he will be invited in a senior role onto Ben O’Connor’s hurling management team.
Outside of logistics, the appeal for the Kildare native is obvious: to be on an All-Ireland winning sideline when a dam of near unprecedented emotion bursts.
He got to see how special that can be, up close and personal, as he watched his Kerry predecessor Tally swallowed up in a tidal wave of Mayo emotion last month.
Winning any All-Ireland is special, but when you are wearing the Kerry bib, that is where the bar is set, whereas with the Mayo footballers, and latterly the Cork hurlers, whose All-Ireland famine is heading into a 22nd year, there is a glass ceiling waiting to be shattered.
As his former coaches reach for the stars, O’Connor is expected to once more press his shoulder against a boulder to try and roll it to the summit for a 40th time.
For a man in his 66th year, it is a formidable challenge made all the harder by tweaking his management team, albeit it will be something of a surprise if another All-Ireland winning coach in Kieran Donaghy is not officially installed as his right-hand man.
When that happens, it might be perceived as some kind of closure for O’Connor as Kerry shut the door on their own house of pain and eyeball 2027.
The reality is likely to be somewhat different. Only getting their hands on the canister and parading it down Denny Street on a summer’s Monday evening qualifies as closure.
Sometimes, even that is not enough.
Back in the noughties, this column attended a Sam Maguire homecoming in Caherciveen on a wet Friday night and took shelter in a hostelry while we waited.
When eventually the cup was paraded up the town on the back of a lorry, we moved as far as the door to acknowledge, while another pub patron craned his head over our shoulder and offered his own jaundiced commentary.
“Hah, will you look at them there now, and not a word about the All-Ireland they fucked away last year,” declared the chairperson of the high-stool welcoming committee, whose focus was still on the previous September’s loss to Tyrone.
It is fair to suggest the fallout this time has been tinged with a little more acceptance and a lot more perspective.
Mayo winning took care of the former and the fact that they did so by being clearly the better team, the latter.
O’Connor set the tone for that within minutes of the final whistle last month.
“I thought they had more energy than us, more legs, more hunger. In general, I just thought they had more energy than us,” he lamented.
It wasn’t just that all season that “energy”, and more often the lack thereof, peppered O’Connor’s post-match interviews to explain why his team could not reach the pitch of performance in the defence of their title, as they had the previous season in winning it.
Energy has always been his thing.
In the build-up to his first All-Ireland final in 2004, at a team meeting he offered the staple advice to his players to stay in their bubble and ignore the outside noise of their public.
What made it stick in the players’ heads was how he labelled those who would be seeking their attention “energy vampires”.
His decision to twice leave the Kerry post in the past was for a multitude of reasons, but central was an admission of the draining demands of the job.
When he left Kildare in 2021, he cited the physical toll of the journey from South Kerry as having “taken its toll”.
His anticipated decision to go again answers one question; even at 66, he knows he has the energy for it.
But the energy that matters most which O’Connor needs to create, preserve and weaponise is that which was missing between the white lines at critical stages over the past six months.
He has not been shy about fingering the source of that energy loss, an unprecedented injury crisis which left a legacy of players chasing fitness as much as medals.
And he has not been shy either as to why that was, pointing to Kerry’s complex and multi-tiered club championship structures delivering a schedule which prevents inevitable welfare threats to county players who are not allowed off the treadmill.
The loss of his midfielder Sean O’Brien to an ACL injury, and news that Meath pair Sean Coffey and Conor Gray have also suffered similar season-ending injuries in recent weeks, should provide some focus on competition schedules, both inter-county and club, that have become too demanding for their own good.
But that conversation, which O’Connor has started, is for the long-term. How he finds a way to get a bounce back in Kerry legs next season will be fascinating but challenging.
His strength as a manager has always been an almost unrivalled capacity to learn and adapt to circumstances and fashion.
In one sense, there is a danger of over-reacting. After all, for all their woes, they came within a kick of the ball of winning back-to-back All-Irelands, they still possess the best footballer the game has arguably ever seen, and several others, not least Seanie O’Shea, Gavin White, Tom O’Sullivan and Brian O’Beaglaoich, can be the players they were with a season of good health.
Tactically, they will hardly do a complete U-turn, given their gameplan is based on the sound logic that if they can win the kick-out battle, they retain the undoubted quality to turn possession into scores.
Losing an All-Ireland final does not flip that truth on its head.
However, it will need tweaking. The emphasis on winning kick-outs effectively saw them play with four orthodox midfielders for much of last summer, raising the concerns that what they won in the air, they lost on the ground in terms of snappiness and speed.
That will demand a review, as will the fact that while not every team has the capacity to press as aggressively as Mayo, Kerry’s vulnerability on that front was not just in that game, as evidenced in how Tyrone targeted turnovers in the quarter-final, winning three times as many.
That comes back to the energy issue which O’Connor obsesses about.
He will need to find new sources. This year’s U20 winning team are likely to get some game-time, not least the likes of Evan Boyle, Daniel Kirby, Aodhna O’Beaglaoich, Gearoid Evens and the undoubted jewel in that pack, Gearoid White, along with the already established Tomas Kennedy.
However, a few changes in personnel will not alter the profile of an ageing group.
The average age of the Mayo team that started the All-Ireland final was 23.4, Kerry’s was 28. That is not a gap, it is a chasm, and that age profile will only climb next year.
In defiance of that, O’Connor will have to source new energy from ageing legs.
If he manages that, it will, most likely, not just be his final trick but also his greatest one.
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Cliff notes GAA Gaelic Football Jack O'Connor Kerry GAA