John O' Keeffe Profile: Seán Moran explains why Kerry football will be the biggest loser should the county side's physical coach John O'Keeffe decide to walk.

Like many a crisis before it, the controversy that hit Kerry football last week was triggered by an apparently trivial event. RTÉ's Marty Morrissey happened to be in South Africa at the same time as the Kerry footballers were on holiday.

Figuring it would be a good opportunity to get Páidí Ó Sé's reaction to the rumpus that had been generated by the newspaper interview of the previous week, Morrissey grabbed a local TV crew and arranged to meet the Kerry manager in Cape Town.

Whatever he said to RTÉ, Ó Sé's comments failed to impress the one man who he needed to placate. Dismissing any suggestion of a row between himself and the team's physical coach John O'Keeffe, Ó Sé also evaded a question about whether he had apologised to his selector and registered irritation at the ongoing speculation.

"I've already spoken to John O'Keeffe. He's already organising training for Banna Strand next Saturday morning. I don't know what all this bloody thing is about at all."

The interview was broadcast on Tuesday evening and, that night, O'Keeffe decided to contact the media himself to deny that he would be taking training.

Anyone who even vaguely knows O'Keeffe will appreciate how hard this must have been for him. A quiet man who gives articulate and perceptive interviews when engaged with a subject, he has been associated with this newspaper for 10 years as an analyst.

He nonetheless feels uneasy talking about teams with whom he is involved and is clearly more comfortable doing newspaper work when those teams no longer have a direct interest in the championship.

As someone who doesn't court public attention, he must have agonised over the decision to go public on this issue. He was also conscious that his actions might appear overly sensitive - after all, Ó Sé's comments in Cape Town sounded more thoughtless than confrontational. But to O'Keeffe they were the last straw coming after a very difficult year for him and Kerry football in general.

This weekend, it is expected that O'Keeffe will walk away from his involvement with the county team. To say that he will be hard for the county to replace is an understatement because there isn't anyone in the country who combines the gravitas of O'Keeffe's playing career, his coaching expertise and his management experience.

He spent four years managing Limerick and Clare, making an impact with both. The resumption of the International Rules series in 1998 saw him assume a central role with the Ireland team, as a selector and fitness coach with Colm O'Rourke and Brian McEniff before being named manager last year.

It was in 1998 that he became involved with Kerry, taking charge of fitness for the 1999 championship before being appointed a selector from then until now.

One respected voice in the county who has played and worked closely with O'Keeffe said that he was originally sceptical about the prospects of the latter managing to work in tandem with Ó Sé.

"Johnno is very professional and low profile. I said at the time I'd give him a year. I'm not saying Páidí's all wrong, but if the ego is a bottomless pit, you're not getting recognition. Everyone has some ego and will feel, 'I'm not being appreciated'."

This is familiar territory. Just after Christmas 1997 Séamus MacGearailt announced that he was stepping down as coach of the Kerry footballers.

He had been a joint appointment with Ó Sé in 1995 and their management was intended to be an equal arrangement. Ó Sé's ebullient, extrovert personality was always going to create problems for the partnership, but, after Kerry won the All-Ireland in 1997, MacGearailt felt a lack of recognition of his role with the team.

There doesn't appear to have been major problems in the relationship between Ó Sé and O'Keeffe up until last year and if there were they were kept in-house. Last summer, the Kerry camp was stunned by the sudden death of Micheál Ó Sé, Páidí's brother and the father of county players Darragh, Tomás and Marc.

It was a very difficult time for the Kerry manager and his extended family and, if required, O'Keeffe willingly stepped into the breach during what became Kerry's busiest championship in history, a nine-match campaign.

In the aftermath of the one-point All-Ireland final defeat, Ó Sé's normally cautious demeanour with the media was cast to the winds and he made bizarre comments about Armagh's victory being inspired by years of occupation and oppression. Towards the end of the year he began to get certain issues off his chest.

The first public inkling was the publicity surrounding Maurice Fitzgerald's putative comeback from retirement. Ó Sé let it be known that he would be flexible about the intensity of training that Fitzgerald would have to undertake should he return.

The player, with a young family and new business, was more interested in cutting back on the quantity rather the quality of training sessions, but the message was clear: Ó Sé would be very accommodating.

O'Keeffe felt that this was a shot across his bows, suggesting that he was to blame for the player's retirement. This was followed by the interview which the coach again felt was aimed at him.

"I have my own new ideas for the team in the New Year," said Ó Sé. "I want to bring in a bit of creativity. I believe there needs to be a new freshness there, but then again I'm not going to divulge any of that publicly. I don't want any of the country to know what I'm doing."

He went on to say he would discuss this with the other selectors "in South Africa. We'll be having a meeting about that." O'Keeffe wasn't on the team holiday, as his teaching commitments prevented him from travelling.

There was disquiet in Kerry about the tone of the interview and the comments about supporters being "f***ing animals" provoked disapproval, as did the use of foul language in general. If there was a prudish element to all of this one fact remained - there was a certain unease in the county at the erratic behaviour of the manager.

Last Tuesday's interview in Cape Town didn't allay that feeling. Ó Sé was in belligerent mood and rounded off by mentioning in the same context his 30 years with Kerry football and Nelson Mandela's 26-year incarceration at the hands of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

There is the additional issue that a strong body of opinion in the county disapproves of the breach of selector confidentiality inherent in Ó Sé's strongly implied complaints that he didn't get his own way on the inclusion of Tadgh Kennelly in the All-Ireland panel.

Despite the undoubted frustration of watching a meltdown in the half forwards and centrefield - the areas where Kennelly could have made an impact - the manager should, in the view of some, have bit his lip and accepted the situation as his predecessors have had to do in similar circumstances.

What happens now is anyone's guess. O'Keeffe's quiet demeanour doesn't mean that he lacks single-mindedness and if he has decided to walk away it will be a fair job for county chairman Seán Walsh to dissuade him.

Should he go who will be able - and willing - to replace him? Páidi Ó Sé may get the opportunity to implement his "innovative ideas" in rather more pressurised circumstances than he originally had in mind.

So the week that began with talk of Mandela concludes with echoes of Roger Casement who arrived on Banna Strand to find that exercises had, like today, been cancelled.