IN THE TIMES we live in, one man and his bib facing his own in a football final has long lost its novelty.
And yet it is the obvious hook which Sunday’s Munster football decider in Killarney will hang what intrigue it can muster.
After all, the market is offering less of a return on backing Kerry – who are 1/100 to win their 86th Munster title – than a bank deposit account.
It is not that Kerry have not been here before; given its status as the province’s behemoth it has always boasted a strong trade surplus when it has come to exporting managerial talent to its neighbours.
The obvious exception to that being next door, where it is likely there is a better chance of Donald Trump emerging through a fog of white smoke to wave to his new faithful from the balcony in St Peter’s Basilica while promising to make the Vatican Great Again, than a Kerry man ever getting to sit in the home dug-out at Pairc Ui Chaoimh.
Peter Keane is the fifth from the county to face his own Kingdom in the Munster final, following in the footsteps of John O’Keeffe (Limerick, 1991 & Clare, 1997), Liam Kearns (Limerick 2003, 04 & Tipperary, 2016), Mickey Ned O’Sullivan (Limerick, 2010) and Mark Fitzgerald, the Clare manager who he succeeded in the close season.
There is enough in that short potted history to make Jack O’Connor shift uneasily in his seat.
In each of those finals which Kerry naturally went into as overwhelming favourites, they have struggled to beat the bookies handicap when faced by a team guided by one of their own.
Kerry boss Jack O'Connor. Bryan Keane / INPHO
Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO
Their 10-point win over the late Liam Kearns’ Tipperary in 2016 was the only time that they have won by a double digit margin and the flip side to that was that the Tralee native came within Darragh Ó Se’s over the crossbar catch in 2004 from leading Limerick to a first Munster title in 108 years.
There have been other scares too, like back in 1991 when John O’Keeffe’s Limerick side hit Kerry for three goals as the Kingdom scraped to a two-point win.
Of greater relevance, Kerry’s seven-point winning margin last summer would hardly have been as substantial had Clare not scuppered clear goal chances either side of half time.
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And that was a Clare team devoid of Eoin Cleary and Keelan Sexton. Above all, that was a Clare team without Peter Keane in charge.
What Keane brings, unlike the others who preceded him, is the visceral sense that he has got a bone to pick.
Of the others, only Mickey Ned O’Sullivan had previously served as Kerry manager and even the significance of that had been eroded by the fact that he served in that role a generation earlier.
Instead, this is Keane’s first Munster final since only four summers ago when his Kerry team dished out a 22-point hammering to Cork, which served only to cement the conviction that they were champions elect.
Five fatally protracted weeks later, their race was run and so was Keane’s three-year reign as Kingdom boss.
He did not go without a fight, leaving his name in the mix for a new term but his world was flipped upside down in the days after Tyrone took Kerry down in the All-Ireland semi-final.
O’Connor had a change of heart about staying with Kildare for a third season, citing travel commitments for his decision to leave, but his appearance on an Irish Examiner podcast a week earlier invited others to suggest it may not have been the only factor at play.
“The Kerry gig is a fantastic job. It’s a very challenging job, but would you want to be anywhere else,” chimed O’Connor, which to Keane’s ears may have well sounded as the punch line to a sales pitch for his old job.
In the end, the board chose to twist and go back to their, then, three-time All-Ireland winning manager rather than stick with O’Connor’s South Kerry neighbour.
It is hard not to believe that on a personal level that that did not cut deep with Keane.
Ultimately, he paid the price for failing to win the Sam Maguire and the fact that O’Connor would win his fourth All-Ireland within 12 months with a game-plan anchored in the kind of structured defence that was not in place when Tyrone hit Kerry for three goals in that 2021 semi-final made it all feel like an open and shut case.
Yet, it can be argued that Keane was perhaps the unluckiest of Kerry managers.
Dublin manager Jim Gavin with Kerry manager Peter Keane after the 2019 All-Ireland final. Tommy Dickson / INPHO
Tommy Dickson / INPHO / INPHO
In his first season in 2019, he took a team that had failed to qualify from the Super 8’s the previous summer to leading football’s greatest team at the death in the All-Ireland final, but failing to close the deal in that drawn game would cost them dearly.
The following season, in a championship reduced to old time knock-out football and in weather conditions that reduced a match to a lottery, they got sucker-punched by a last minute Cork hay-maker.
That winter, with Mayo in decline and Dublin sated – albeit not completely as they would prove – they looked the most likely by a distance and yet they were gone before they even got started.
And the following summer, the pandemic played one last cruel trick on Keane, forcing his team to park-up after Tyrone threatened to withdraw from the semi-final because of an infection in their camp, which saw the fixture postponed twice.
They were those that argued that Kerry should have played hard-ball, but GAA politics may well have trumped Keane’s preference.
Even then, Kerry did enough in play – their 22 scores to Tyrone’s 17 an indicator of that – but the concession of a late goal at the end of regulation time and a freak one at the start of extra-time was compounded by the absence of the injured David Clifford for the extra period.
Kerry’s David Clifford and manager Peter Keane after the 2019 All-Ireland semi-final. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
That is a lot of bad luck to roll the wrong way and unlike those other Kerry men who have faced the Kingdom in past Munster finals, Keane really is facing his own this time.
In all, eight of the current panel – Mike Breen, David Clifford, Dara Moynihan, Sean O’Shea, Graham O’Sullivan, Diarmuid O’Connor, Donal O’Sullivan and Dylan Geaney – were part of the three All-Ireland winning minor teams which he steered to success between 2016-18.
And if you include his time as a minor selector under Mickey Ned, Killian Spillane, Micheal Burns, Barry Dan O’Sullivan, Tony Brosnan, Tom O’Sullivan and Shane Ryan all played in 2013, in what would be the final year of their term.
Twelve months later all those players would get their All-Ireland medal with O’Connor at the helm.
There should be little surprise if Keane is tempted to think that changing colours might just change his luck.
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The unluckiest of Kerry managers? Keane returns with Clare to face his native county
IN THE TIMES we live in, one man and his bib facing his own in a football final has long lost its novelty.
And yet it is the obvious hook which Sunday’s Munster football decider in Killarney will hang what intrigue it can muster.
After all, the market is offering less of a return on backing Kerry – who are 1/100 to win their 86th Munster title – than a bank deposit account.
It is not that Kerry have not been here before; given its status as the province’s behemoth it has always boasted a strong trade surplus when it has come to exporting managerial talent to its neighbours.
The obvious exception to that being next door, where it is likely there is a better chance of Donald Trump emerging through a fog of white smoke to wave to his new faithful from the balcony in St Peter’s Basilica while promising to make the Vatican Great Again, than a Kerry man ever getting to sit in the home dug-out at Pairc Ui Chaoimh.
Peter Keane is the fifth from the county to face his own Kingdom in the Munster final, following in the footsteps of John O’Keeffe (Limerick, 1991 & Clare, 1997), Liam Kearns (Limerick 2003, 04 & Tipperary, 2016), Mickey Ned O’Sullivan (Limerick, 2010) and Mark Fitzgerald, the Clare manager who he succeeded in the close season.
There is enough in that short potted history to make Jack O’Connor shift uneasily in his seat.
In each of those finals which Kerry naturally went into as overwhelming favourites, they have struggled to beat the bookies handicap when faced by a team guided by one of their own.
Their 10-point win over the late Liam Kearns’ Tipperary in 2016 was the only time that they have won by a double digit margin and the flip side to that was that the Tralee native came within Darragh Ó Se’s over the crossbar catch in 2004 from leading Limerick to a first Munster title in 108 years.
There have been other scares too, like back in 1991 when John O’Keeffe’s Limerick side hit Kerry for three goals as the Kingdom scraped to a two-point win.
Of greater relevance, Kerry’s seven-point winning margin last summer would hardly have been as substantial had Clare not scuppered clear goal chances either side of half time.
And that was a Clare team devoid of Eoin Cleary and Keelan Sexton. Above all, that was a Clare team without Peter Keane in charge.
What Keane brings, unlike the others who preceded him, is the visceral sense that he has got a bone to pick.
Of the others, only Mickey Ned O’Sullivan had previously served as Kerry manager and even the significance of that had been eroded by the fact that he served in that role a generation earlier.
Instead, this is Keane’s first Munster final since only four summers ago when his Kerry team dished out a 22-point hammering to Cork, which served only to cement the conviction that they were champions elect.
Five fatally protracted weeks later, their race was run and so was Keane’s three-year reign as Kingdom boss.
He did not go without a fight, leaving his name in the mix for a new term but his world was flipped upside down in the days after Tyrone took Kerry down in the All-Ireland semi-final.
O’Connor had a change of heart about staying with Kildare for a third season, citing travel commitments for his decision to leave, but his appearance on an Irish Examiner podcast a week earlier invited others to suggest it may not have been the only factor at play.
“The Kerry gig is a fantastic job. It’s a very challenging job, but would you want to be anywhere else,” chimed O’Connor, which to Keane’s ears may have well sounded as the punch line to a sales pitch for his old job.
In the end, the board chose to twist and go back to their, then, three-time All-Ireland winning manager rather than stick with O’Connor’s South Kerry neighbour.
It is hard not to believe that on a personal level that that did not cut deep with Keane.
Ultimately, he paid the price for failing to win the Sam Maguire and the fact that O’Connor would win his fourth All-Ireland within 12 months with a game-plan anchored in the kind of structured defence that was not in place when Tyrone hit Kerry for three goals in that 2021 semi-final made it all feel like an open and shut case.
Yet, it can be argued that Keane was perhaps the unluckiest of Kerry managers.
In his first season in 2019, he took a team that had failed to qualify from the Super 8’s the previous summer to leading football’s greatest team at the death in the All-Ireland final, but failing to close the deal in that drawn game would cost them dearly.
The following season, in a championship reduced to old time knock-out football and in weather conditions that reduced a match to a lottery, they got sucker-punched by a last minute Cork hay-maker.
That winter, with Mayo in decline and Dublin sated – albeit not completely as they would prove – they looked the most likely by a distance and yet they were gone before they even got started.
And the following summer, the pandemic played one last cruel trick on Keane, forcing his team to park-up after Tyrone threatened to withdraw from the semi-final because of an infection in their camp, which saw the fixture postponed twice.
They were those that argued that Kerry should have played hard-ball, but GAA politics may well have trumped Keane’s preference.
Even then, Kerry did enough in play – their 22 scores to Tyrone’s 17 an indicator of that – but the concession of a late goal at the end of regulation time and a freak one at the start of extra-time was compounded by the absence of the injured David Clifford for the extra period.
That is a lot of bad luck to roll the wrong way and unlike those other Kerry men who have faced the Kingdom in past Munster finals, Keane really is facing his own this time.
In all, eight of the current panel – Mike Breen, David Clifford, Dara Moynihan, Sean O’Shea, Graham O’Sullivan, Diarmuid O’Connor, Donal O’Sullivan and Dylan Geaney – were part of the three All-Ireland winning minor teams which he steered to success between 2016-18.
And if you include his time as a minor selector under Mickey Ned, Killian Spillane, Micheal Burns, Barry Dan O’Sullivan, Tony Brosnan, Tom O’Sullivan and Shane Ryan all played in 2013, in what would be the final year of their term.
Twelve months later all those players would get their All-Ireland medal with O’Connor at the helm.
There should be little surprise if Keane is tempted to think that changing colours might just change his luck.
Kerry might even think that too.
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Clare GAA Kingdom Ruler Peter Keane