DONAGHY: Iconic giant who revolutionised Kerry
Donaghy calls it quits after a revolutionary and decorated playing career
HIS aversion to being bland saw Kieran Donaghy kick convention to touch one final time. He pulled down the curtain on his 14-year inter-county career yesterday by choosing to bid farewell in verse, which hummed of roguery and honesty.
‘I played right on the edge, no backward step taken/ Will I ever apologise? You must be mistaken,’ he chimed.
In an age where the game has sought to sanitise itself of personality, he was perhaps the GAA star more than any other who railed against the notion that football should be played poker-faced.
His other gift was timing, taking his leave as the vehicle which launched him to national prominence just pulled back into the station after spending a decade side-tracked.
In a way, he was everything you might expect from the GAA’s first and only reality TV star; the most successful graduate of TG4’s
Underdogs which premiered in 2004 and which has returned to our living rooms this month.
It is tempting to suggest that it was forced into hiding for a decade in the realisation that it could never, in these academy-orientated times, deliver to the game anyone that could ever come close again to a man named Star.
That good? His career stats would suggest as much but the four All-Irelands and three AllStar awards he garnered in his 69game Championship career hardly distinguished him in a county with such a rich sense of entitlement that they are only impressed when you use both hands to count.
His player-of-the-year season in 2006 at least hints at his impact, but hardly measures its depth over the 12 years that followed.
He was one of the rare few in the modern game who trail-blazed a new way.
In much the same way that Jack O’Shea opened eyes to the idea that midfielders did not just have to stand in the middle of the field and that Stephen Cluxton buried for good the notion that goalkeepers just tended goal, Donaghy redefined full-forward play.
The two All-Ireland wins which bookended his four triumphs would not have happened without him.
In 2006, Kerry were infected by doubt when Jack O’Connor unleashed his Austin Stacks fullforward on Longford in a fourth round qualifier, and the havoc he wreaked would point them in a new way.
In that year’s quarter-final his torching of Armagh’s Francie Bellew and the manner in which he roared his glee in the face of Paul Hearty, as he celebrated scoring a crucial goal, ensured he became a Kerry favourite and pantomime villain in an instant.
He was an unstoppable force for the bones of three summers and he spawned a whole new generation of imitations, where big men were sent to the edge of opposition squares in the assumption they would wreak havoc. It never worked out that way.
It was, on top of his fielding ability, Donaghy’s razor sharp brain and quick hands — instincts honed on the basketball hardcourts where he continued to excel this spring as a 35-year-old with Tralee Warriors — which set him apart.
That is not to say that he didn’t hit the buffers along the way, most notably when his partnership with Tommy Walsh in a ‘twin towers’ attacking strategy backfired against Tyrone in the 2008 final.
That was, in part, down to Mickey Harte’s decision to fight fire with fire by deploying the McMahon brothers, Joe and Justin, but it was also down to a laziness which often saw team-mates opt to pepper Donaghy with ball that was richer in quantity than quality.
That played, literally, into the hands of defensive systems which were anchored by sweepers, and so it was assumed that his time had come and gone, not least when his former team-mate Éamonn Fitzmaurice assumed the reigns in 2013. Fitzmaurice dropped him for that year’s Munster final — it was the first time he had failed to make the cut when fit since he established himself on the team — and when he was an unused sub in the following year’s quarter-final win over Galway, Donaghy had privately resolved to retire at the end of the summer.
Instead, he ended it with another medal and AllStar award, his late cameo against Mayo instrumental in wiping out a five-point deficit and providing Kerry
with a route back to the most unexpected of All-Ireland triumphs.
He had a superb final in 2014, and while the goal he scored came gift-wrapped by goalkeeper Paul Durcan, there was much to admire in the manner he opened it.
It gave him four more years where he remained an invigorating presence and Fitzmaurice’s decision not to play him in this year’s opening round Super 8s defeat to Galway was arguably a tipping point in Kerry’s season. Even then, he almost saved Kerry and Fitzmaurice with the assist of the season, somehow getting a hand to direct a ball into the path of David Clifford for his brilliant goal against Monaghan.
He claimed in an interview that it had been a privilege to get one season where he could say he had shared a pitch with Clifford.
The latter, if given the right to reply, is likely to counter that the privilege was all his.
But this is unlikely to be the end of the affair, with Fitzmaurice yesterday tipping Donaghy to become a future Kerry manager — a view which would be widely shared by former team-mates who marvelled at the keen football brain behind that funsplashed visage.
As ever, though, he will know if, and when, the time is right.