Keane: ‘We’ve put a fantastic management team together’
Peter Keane had big boots to fill, but has continually raised the bar during his tenure as Kerry minor boss, writes Damian Stack
HOW do you top that? A question that’s followed Peter Keane around for the past two seasons. A question that’s going to follow him around for a little longer. When he took the job the question was how could he top what Jack O’Connor had done.
His fellow South Kerry man had led the Kingdom to their first minor crown in twenty years and followed it up a year later with a second. Big boots to fill, no question about that. Keane simply took it in his stride.
Pressure, what pressure seemed to be his attitude. By the end of the first season he’d led Kerry to their third crown in-a-row. Now he’s repeated the trick, creating a big chunk of history along the way. No county has ever won four minor titles in-a-row before... how do you top that?
He didn’t address his future after the game on Sunday – he wasn’t asked – but surely the County Board must move heaven and earth to keep this guy on board in some form or other. As we write elsewhere on these pages, he’s an obvious candidate to succeed Eamonn Fitzmaurice.
Leaning against a wall in a narrow corridor in the bowels of Croke Park beneath the Cusack Stand – ten or fifteen press men and women huddled around him, dictaphones thrust in his direction from every direction – Keane took stock.
“Very satisfying. It was slightly different [than last year],” he said.
“You have to start, as we did at the start of this year and I think if I’ve done anything in the two years I’ve been here I’ve put a tremendous management team around me with Tommy Griffin and James Foley, Podge Murphy and Chris Flannery doing the strength and conditioning.
“We’ve had loads of other help around there with Colm Whelan and John Dillon. Christy Kileen who of course was our liaison has won his fourth All Ireland in-a-row. Katie Purtill and Michael Hallissey and Jacinta McCarthy looking after all the players physio needs.
“Dave Geaney helps out. Sylvester Hennessy helps us with stats. Deirdre Kelly with nutrition. If I’m going to take any credit here... we’ve put a fantastic management team together.”
The quality of performance Kerry put in on Sunday was plain for all to see. It wasn’t necessarily all about the shock and awe of David Clifford and the set of shock-troopers in the Kerry forward line, it was in the defence and the midfield as much as anywhere that this game was won. And, indeed, it was won on the training ground.
“I think we’ve done a lot of good work with them,” the Kerry boss commented.
“We wouldn’t want to be getting carried away. I think we did a lot of good work, but obviously they’ve got talent, they’ve come through development squads, they’ve come through good clubs and a good schools scene, but they’ve got to go and deliver themselves.
“Look I think we’re in a rich vein of form over the last couple of years in Kerry... will it continue? Who knows? All we can do is make the most of it. I’ve said already I think Dublin are going out here in the senior game and they lost an All Ireland minor final in 2011, they won it in 2012, yet I think they’ve more out of the 2011 team than they have out of the 2012 team.
“That happens, can we bring them through I don’t know?”
Kerry’s level of performance throughout the year has been nothing short of remarkable. Their winning margin over the six games has been sixteen points. In the two finals they played – Munster and All Ireland – they triumphed both times by twenty four points.
“We’ve had a good run throughout the year,” Keane said.
“We worked very hard, I think we got a lot of confidence out of the Munster final. Our defence was fantastic in that Munster final, we only conceded three or four points and that was the bedrock of where we were going.
“Midfield was fantastic too Barry Mahony and Diarmuid O’Connor are great workers. Adam Donoghue a guy who wouldn’t have played much football before, a guy we found this year he’d an awesome year covering the ground.
“Brian Friel who was there last year had a fantastic year.
Fiachra Clifford came in and he covered acres of ground for us. David
[Clifford] we’ve mentioned already.
Jack [Griffin] did very well. Donnchadh
O’Sullivan was a player who was very, very unlucky to have lost out today, sometimes that’s the way it goes and those are the small things.”
Clifford, of course, was the name on everybody’s lips after the match. That’s understandable. Plenty others contributed to this performance as Keane alluded to, butwhen a guy scores 4-4 from play in an All Ireland minor final and assists and additional 1-4 interest is going to be piqued.
“Absolutely he’s a fantastic player,” Keane said.
“He’s a good right, he’s a good left, he’s a great team player and he’s a good, very solid individual. Do you know what I’ve been conscious of all year is to try to down play him to maybe the expense of some of the other players, which was very difficult.
“He’s a fantastic player, but in the midst of all that and he would acknowledge that there’s fantastic other players around him that create the room for him, that stop in the defence, we did we conceded today? 1-7 was it? 1-8?
“Even if you got just twelve points you’d have won the game by a point, so the rock here was the defence, but he was a fantastic player no doubt about it.”
There will be loud calls now to fast-track him into senior football next summer.
“I don’t think he’s far away from it and that’s not trying to put pressure on him, or pressure on anybody else, but I do think he’s no a million miles away from it. He has size, he has physique and there’s been media pushing about him all year, but at the end of the day he is what he is,” Keane commented.
As for talk linking the big man with a move to a land Down Under?
“That’s only talk that’s going on by the media,” Keane said. “I don’t know where they get all this talk. This guy is embedded into Kerry GAA. If there’s a trial there will he go? How do I know? He may, but as far as I can see he’ll be there. There’s fellas getting carried away with that.”