Jack O’Connor insists he did not ‘run out on Kildare’

Jack O’Connor has been around long enough to appreciate the demands of a situation like this. In late afternoon in the Kerry GAA’s offices in Austin Stack Park, Tralee, the once and future manager had completed the preliminaries with photographers and broadcasters before walking into the press conference.

For variety, there were some outstanding matters to deal with – not quite a speech from the dock but a targeted message to clear up the whole Kildare business and why he had rejected a third year with the county and hopped into the Kerry selection process within a week or so of the now celebrated Irish Examiner podcast.

First things first, however, and asked for his account of how he had got the job, O’Connor was direct.

“There was a five-man committee that deemed me the best candidate.”

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There was an amount of diffidence in the recurring questions but still they recurred as well as the inferences. Had he not advertised himself on the podcast, while still Kildare manager?

“There’s too much made of that. It was a question I was asked at the end of the podcast. I think Paul Rouse [presenter of the podcast] asked me something along the lines of – to compare managing Kerry to managing Kildare.

“I think that was the question. I said, ‘Sure of course there’s an attraction in managing Kerry but you’d better be prepared for plenty flak because there’s huge pressure in the job.

“I said managing in a place like Kildare is an easier job because the expectations are lower. But sure look people take what they want out of your comments. I wasn’t overly happy the way it was portrayed in the paper.”

Although anxious himself to move on to his plans for a third tour of duty, O’Connor was emphatic about two things: he hadn’t angled for anything nor had he ‘run out on Kildare’ despite the latter’s county board saying that preparations for 2022 season “were at an advanced stage of planning”.

This was something with which he wanted to take issue. The lengthy commute between Kildare and South Kerry and the decision of his sons, Cian and Éanna, who had been living in Kildare to return home during the pandemic, had made him question the position but he also revealed that things hadn’t been quite that advanced in Kildare.

“The other thing that people don’t realise actually is, and this hasn’t come out, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to bring it out, I didn’t have a management team any more up there. Virtually the whole management team had broken up and if you want me to go into specifics I can.”

So he did.

"Ross Dunphy, the S&C guy, was going abroad with the Army for three years. Brian Murphy was going abroad three days a week due to work with Dawn Meats. My coach Emmet McDonnell had just got a principal job in [St] Mary's Edenderry. Even my physio was opting out because of family reasons. So I literally didn't have a management left except for Tom Cribbin, one of my selectors."

He also wanted to put on record how “appreciative” he was to “get the opportunity to manage Kildare” and the “fond memories” he would have of the county and his “dealings with players and county board”.

Would he still be in charge of Kildare had there been no vacancy in Kerry?

“I’d have been down in Waterville playing golf and walking my dog on Ballinskelligs beach, and I was 100 per cent reconciled to doing that because the toll that that driving was taking on me was just too much.”

Looking to the future he confirmed that former Tyrone and Galway coach and Down manager Paddy Tally would be joining Kerry. His reputation for the 'darkness' of defensive systems had caused a fluttering in the dovecotes at Monday's county board meeting.

“I would have admired Paddy for a while,” countered O’Connor. “I have got to know him better over the past couple of years because we [Kildare] played Down about four times.

“Paddy is just a very clever coach and he has a lot of experience. He has been to three or four different counties and just happens to be available because he on a work sabbatical.

“I think we are very lucky to have him on board because he is just a very intelligent clever, organised guy who will bring something to Kerry that we haven’t got.”

There is of course only one thing that Kerry haven’t got that matters and O’Connor is turning his attention to that for 2022.