At the end of August 2013, Jack O’Connor was appointed manager of the Kerry minors on a two-year term. As the candidate recommended by an executive sub-committee of the county board, O’Connor was expected to be ratified on the nod. Instead, there was resistance. Two club delegates expressed their support for Mickey “Ned” O’Sullivan, the outgoing manager, and their intervention lit a fuse of dissent.
The process was queried from the floor of the meeting. Some delegates wanted the appointment paused so they could take guidance from their clubs. According to local reports, the appointment of a minor manager in Kerry had never before been put to a vote, but there was no choice. O’Connor was ratified by 44 votes to 28, with 20 delegates abstaining.
It was only a year since O’Connor had stepped down after his second spell as manager of the senior team. On his resumé were three senior All-Irelands and one showing as manager of the under-21s. In all, between schools teams and Kerry teams, he had been involved in close to 20 All-Ireland finals as a manager or selector.
Over the previous few weeks, he had been heavily linked to the managerial vacancy in Kildare, where his appointment would have been greeted with acclaim if he had chosen that path. Instead, he was dragged into a dogfight for the Kerry minor job.
In Kerry football, O’Connor has always portrayed himself as an outsider. In the beginning it was indisputable. He hailed from Dromid, a tiny club in South Kerry, and as a player, he didn’t make it to Broadway. He didn’t have pedigree or political clout.
“When you grow up in Toorsaleen you’ll be an outsider everywhere you go except your own parlour,” he wrote in his autobiography, Keys To The Kingdom. “Even within Dromid, our dark mountain of Toorsaleen wouldn’t be football country. We’re the outsiders' outsiders! I nourish myself on that.”
Over the course of three decades, though, his status changed, in conflict with his self-image. Along the way, he was anointed as a trusted solution. Without breaking into the golden circle of Kerry football, he was embraced by the establishment.
When O’Connor went for the senior manager’s job for the third time in 2021, he was opposed by the outgoing manager Peter Keane and by a glittering ticket assembled by Stephen Stack. Among his proposed selectors were Seamus Moynihan, Dara Ó Cinnéide and Mickey “Ned” O’Sullivan, all of whom had captained Kerry to win All-Irelands; Stack’s coach was Donie Buckley, another All-Ireland winner.
But Kerry hadn’t won an All-Ireland in eight years – the third-longest drought in their history. The board had no appetite for risk.
“There was a lot of pressure on the county board to pick us,” says Ó Cinnéide, “because Moynihan would be so respected and Donie Buckley would have a great reputation, and we thought we had a good ticket. But they gave the job to Jack, and I totally understand it. If you’re in the county board’s shoes, Jack is a proven deliverer. He has the track record.”
Kerry is the octagon of Gaelic football. No holds are barred. Everyone bleeds. “I’m not bragging, I’m just giving you facts,” O’Connor said in 2021 podcast. “In my first four years coaching Kerry – ’04, ’05, ’06, ’09 – I won three leagues, three Munster championships and three All-Irelands. I got the height of abuse. That’s a fact.”
O’Connor’s career has been a monument to endurance and nimbleness. It is a staggering 33 years since he first appeared as a selector with Kerry’s under-21s. His sons, Cian and Eanna, used to accompany him to training as toddlers. He was in his early 30s then; he turned 64 in October. Half a lifetime.
“Jack was a young hotshot from South Kerry at the time,” says Ó Cinnéide. “He wasn’t a hands-in-the-pocket kind of selector, he would have challenged Páidí a bit. He wouldn’t have been quiet to voice an opinion.”
To prosper, he needed a sharp instinct for self-preservation. Experience schooled him. After Ó Sé moved on to the senior job, O’Connor joined him as a selector for a couple of years and he was there when Kerry won the 1997 All-Ireland. But in 1999, he writes in the book, Ó Sé “screwed” him.
Kerry had won the under-21 All-Ireland in 1998 under O’Connor’s management and were in the final again in May 1999; five of his players, though, were also on the Kerry senior panel, and Ó Sé commandeered them for training. O’Connor reared up at the county chairman, but Ó Sé had pulled rank. Westmeath beat them in the All-Ireland final.
“I thought at the time if we had won the under-21 final I might have got the senior job in 2000,” wrote O’Connor. “Losing it removed me as a threat. Páidí didn’t spend all that time above in Kinsealy and learn nothing at Charlie Haughey’s knee.”
But a year later he held his nose and returned to the senior set-up as a selector with Ó Sé. It was an act of political expediency and careerism. “I decided that the seniors were the only show in town,” he wrote. “I watched my back as I went about my business.”
O’Connor’s career has been fertilised by pragmatism. His devotion to the kind of football that satisfied local tastes and vanities was limited by his overwhelming desire to win. Each time he took the senior job, Kerry had been eliminated from the championship by Tyrone in the previous season. Each time he flew in the face of the style police.
His latest coming was another example. In 2021, Kerry conceded six goals in four championship matches – three of them against Tyrone in the All-Ireland semi-final. A year later O’Connor led Kerry to the All-Ireland, conceding just one goal in six championship matches. The remedy was imported.
“That was the biggest, ballsiest move of all,” says Ó Cinnéide. “He brings in Paddy Tally and you have everyone in the local pub telling you, ‘It’s the death of Kerry football, bringing in a Tyrone man, telling us how to defend.’ And he puts the gun to his head from the word go. Whether you like him or not you have to give him credit.”
By the end of last season, the natives were restless again. The football was lumpy, like porridge; in the absence of an All-Ireland, they could no longer swallow it.
“The leading lights in the group weren’t happy with the style of play last year,” says Sylvester Hennessy, sports editor of Kerry’s Eye. “I think Jack fell out of love with the whole thing himself. He kept telling everyone that this is the way we need to play and, ultimately, if we win, everyone will be happy. He was right. We weren’t happy because we didn’t win.”
In all his years with Kerry there had been very little churn in his management teams; at the end of last season, for various reasons, everyone stepped away. He struggled to find replacements. O’Connor’s share price had fallen again. There was no heave against him and no clamour for him to stay. He had a year left. In Kerry, every All-Ireland is eaten bread.
With the forwards at their disposal, and Cian O’Neill on board as lead coach, the new rules should energise them. In an open year, they are the bookie’s favourites, almost by default. Naturally, they could win it. Halfway through the summers of 2006 and 2009, Kerry and O’Connor were written off; they ended those years as champions. He overcame that stuff too.
