IT’S MARE POWER TO OUR ELBOW
MICKEY Ned O’sullivan noticed something unusual last Saturday – two cars leaving from Kenmare carrying Kerry footballers.
The Kenmare district has never had such a presence on the Kerry team, with six of them split across the two vehicles heading to link up with the rest of the panel before journeying north to play Cavan the following day.
Five of them saw action at Breffni Park: Tadhg Morley, Adrian and Killian Spillane, Sean O’shea and Stephen O’brien, while Gavin Crowley had featured the previous week against Tyrone.
O’shea and O’brien come from the Kenmare Shamrocks club, like O’sullivan, the other four from Templenoe.
O’sullivan captained Kerry to the 1975 All-ireland and played with Pat and Mick Spillane for Kenmare district and Kerry. He had finished by the time Tom Spillane made the county team so the district’s numbers with Kerry had never been higher than three – before now.
“Traditionally it was hurling up until the late 60s/ early 70s,” says O’sullivan. “Then Kenmare had a good run, we won a county championship in ‘74 and ‘87.”
With the Shamrocks having won the intermediate title in 2016, O’shea and O’brien are no longer eligible to represent the district in the senior grade. When the district reached the senior final the same year, 14 of the 15 players were drawn from Shamrocks and Templenoe.
A significant driver behind their current Kerry representation, says O’sullivan, has been Tom Connor, who began coaching in Scoil Inbhear Sceine.
O’sullivan explains: “About 10 years ago he went in and took over football there, a man that had retired and he wasn’t a teacher or anything, he just went in, got it going and they started winning things and they started doing things right and they have been successful.”
O’sullivan retired from his teaching post in Ballyvourney two years ago and has since got involved in the school as well, with O’shea also drafted in to ensure that the current supply lines are sustained.
“What we do is, we coach the coaches and we all sing off the same hymn sheet.
“We have a certain way of playing football and developing football.
“We take the coaches with the underage teams once a week and give them a series of practices that they could use but we bring all their teams and, we’ll say, I’d show them what to do and they’d go away and do it.
“But all the same things we do would be documented and they’d be given a little booklet at the end of the winter and they’d be left on their own then so there’s a very good structure in Kenmare, especially underage.”
O’shea’s emergence hasn’t been celebrated as loudly as that of David Clifford, but he’s enjoying increasing prominence – especially on the back of his 12-point haul against Cavan – as Dublin come to Tralee this evening.
“His feet are on the ground and he knows he’s a grafter and he doesn’t have an ego so that hype won’t affect him,” O’sullivan claims.
“He’ll be targeted by the opposition because of the hype but it won’t affect his approach to the game or his hunger or his attitude because he’s a very mentally strong young man.”
O’sullivan managed Kerry through a transitional period in the aftermath of the Mick O’dwyer reign, though Peter Keane has greater riches at his disposal some three decades later.
“They have a defensive strategy and this time last year they probably had five goals conceded. They have no goals conceded this year. That’s where I would judge them this year at the start.
“Have they closed up? Have they a defensive strategy? Are they closing down the D and breaking with pace? I think they are. That’s what they need to do and it is progress.”