David Sneyd

STEPHEN KENNY HAS spoken of the “great privilege” and “pride” that he feels as he prepares to take charge of his 1,000th match in club management this Friday.

Reflecting on a career that he says has made him “really search inside myself”, the St Patrick’s Athletic boss has opened up on more than three decades in the game.

Tallaght Town was the start, even if the figures don’t contribute to the running tally of 999 as they never did break the glass ceiling into the professional ranks.

Kenny recalled how, even before holding open trials, he invited the area’s best players to his home so he could lay out his vision in his sitting room.

“If I do anything it’s absolutely with 100% and nothing less. I’d only go in life and body into the job. I’d never cut a corner or compromise in any way,” Kenny says.

From Tallaght Town to the senior Republic of Ireland job, the Dubliner scaled the heights on his own terms while being supported by an army of trusted lieutenants. Kenny speaks of the late Christy ‘Junior’ Campbell with great fondness, his first assistant at Longford, and later at Bohemians, who was a tremendous influence on him.

Captains like Wesley Byrne, Kevin Hunt, Peter Hutton, Greg Shields, Ken Oman, Stephen O’Donnell, Andy Boyle, Jayson Molumby, Dara O’Shea, Seamus Coleman, John Egan and Shane Duffy are name checked.

Former Meath manager Sean Boylan has also become a confidant, of sorts. “He said to me ‘Stephen, you always seem to be able to brush anything aside and move on, that’s a quality’, and I said ‘No, that’s not true at all, Sean, it isn’t’. The reason you’re able to move on is you take the disappointments you have, and they have such an effect on you as a human being and take so much out of you.

“It can be such a negative experience when you have a setback that it fuels an absolute hunger and desire to back yourself and to back yourself in different circumstances. People struggle with longevity, in the game, because inevitably there’s setbacks and setbacks can have a big impact on people’s families, and that can be difficult.

“Do people want to evolve with the times as well? Not always, but I think you have to constantly try and evolve, but, one of the things I’m very conscious of is that I’ve never ever compromised on my principles. Never, and never will.”

Kenny racked up the numbers – just shy of 1,000 going into Friday’s FAI Cup semi-final with Cork City at Turner’s Cross – with six League of Ireland clubs and Dunfermline in Scotland.

He brought Longford Town into the Premier Division, took them into a FAI Cup final and then into Europe. There was a league title with Bohemians, and the sack, before two spells in charge of Derry City with his time across the water in Dunfermline sandwiched in between.

A nadir on the domestic front was hit at Shamrock Rovers before a beguiling period of success at Dundalk between 2013-18. Four more league titles, with two FAI Cup triumphs as part of doubles in 2015 and 2018, assured his legacy. The inspirational Europa League group stage campaign of 2016 was the catalyst for him to eventually become Ireland manager.

“It was the time of my life. It was a transitional period for the country, for football in Ireland. I think, ideologically, I was absolutely right to do what I did, and I still stand over that it was the right method. I’m not complaining about being replaced, I accepted it. I understood the realities of the situation.”

His willingness to sit down for an hour of reminiscing this week was not borne out of ego. More an acceptance and appreciation for the sacrifices those closest to him have made to inspire his own fervent desire to dedicate his life to the game.

“I know there are other things in life, and it does take over your life. It does take over all facets of your life, because it’s so intense, you know,” Kenny says.

He talks of the regret that he feels for missing communions and confirmations of some his four children. Of living away from the family for time on end and also taking them to different parts of Ireland with him, including changing schools five times, when it was required.

“But I’m very lucky. I thought that it would…” he pauses. “As a parent I was never comfortable with it but those [are] sacrifices. But I’m very lucky that the children are healthy, and they’re well-adjusted and adaptable, so I’m very lucky.”

Kenny speaks with a depth of love and respect for his wife, Siobhán, and that feels even more pronounced given he came so close to losing her in January of last year when her car was involved in a horrific collision with a lorry on the M50.

“It was very traumatic at that time and it still is from that,” he says.

There were struggles in those early years, a financial uncertainty while trying to maintain some semblance of normal family life.

“There were periods in that time where we’ve had nothing as a family, and it’s periods that we’ve, you know, obviously in the Ireland job you’re paid excessively,” he says.

Lighter moments come with those memories of days that adhere to the ironic “Greatest League in the World” moniker. Like in his first League of Ireland job at Longford, aged just 26, when paying fees for players was more commonplace than in recent years.

Kenny and Siobhán, who was pregnant at time, had not long bought a house in Lucan that was only affordable because of his day job running a cooked meats business and her management job in IT.

They were in the process of picking out wooden floors and it just so happened this was at a time when he felt Richie Parsons and Robbie Coyle would be crucial signings from Bray Wanderers. He remembers meeting Bray boss Pat Devlin in the Shelbourne hotel to do the deal, and paid a £3,000 fee out of his own pocket.

“With the money that we were supposed to put the wooden floors in with,” Kenny says.

When the kids arrived and family holidays were cherished, Kenny still found a way of satisfying his inner professional drive.

This time the players he wanted were Waterford United duo Alan Reynolds and Alan Kirby, so Siobhán was sold on a week in a chalet in Dungarvan. “[She said] ‘why are we going to Dungarvan?’ It’s a brilliant place, blah blah. I spent the week down there having various meetings to sign them and bring them to Longford. It was two or three meetings each. It was the only way I could do it.”

Of course, his current job with St Pat’s was preceded by managing Ireland. Even when he knew his contract was not going to be renewed with a couple of games to play, Kenny turned down the chance to take a job in League One after representatives from the club visited his home twice for talks.

“I wasn’t willing to walk out on my country for that. You don’t do that. You don’t leave your country. So I wasn’t willing to do that,” he says.

Anthony Barry, one of his former assistants, reached out to him about the vacant positions at Barnsley and Plymouth Argyle.

“But my reputation had taken a….the negativity towards me after the Ireland job, that was tough to take, that was a very tough time to be honest, if you’re asking me, a very tough time,” Kenny says, revealing that he turned down one other national job in Europe and at least two in Asia.”

The St Pat’s owner, Garrett Kelleher, enticed Kenny back to the League of Ireland last season and also urged him to return to the Aviva Stadium to watch Ireland for the first time last month in that World Cup qualifier with Hungary.

“Yeah, initially, when you come from the national team back into the league, it was a big transition for me, a big transition. You’re selling out stadiums and that. It is a transition, and it took me a little bit of time to get my head around it, and get into it.

“It didn’t happen straight away like I needed to…because I was still adapting to sort of finishing what I had [with Ireland] in a way.”

Kenny’s his first game in LOI management was a League Cup tie against Dundalk, a side managed by the great Jim McLaughlin.

His name will hold similar reverence with a new generation but, turning 54 at the of this month, he’s quick to point out that there is more to come as he bids to make St Pat’s a force capable of challenging Rovers for the title, not to mention getting the better of Cork on Friday for another shot at glory at Aviva Stadium in November’s final.

“I don’t want to be in the pack either, so I have to fight with that, struggle with it, make sure we’re better going forward, the club is, to do everything we can to try and win the cup, but that won’t be easy getting through the semi final,” Kenny says.

“I think I’ve plenty more to give, I feel that. I’m not going to relax or I don’t go into it in a lesser way than I ever did.”