‘Jack’s back, but things are different now’

JACK’S back, but things are different now. The atmosphere feels skewed. He knows it, we know it. He’s written a book and there’s stuff in those pages that some feel flew just a little too close to the bone. He’s been tiptoeing around some of the boys like someone who’s just not sure what bad weather might be rolling around inside their heads. We win our 19th League title, beating Derry in the final, but the truth? I remember none of it.

I won’t say it means nothing, but it’s just not what we’re after. Tyrone are still on our clothes, still in our heads. There’s a contrariness in the group and I’m just not sure it’s a healthy one.

‘Keys To The Kingdom – The Story of the Outsider who led Kerry back to glory’ has been more than a year on the shelves now so every smidgin in it has been dissected and analysed. Some lads probably read more than they wanted.

So was Jack ever going to be accepted by the group the way he was the first time? Questionable.

I wouldn’t call it a stand-off as such, but there’s definitely a sense that the chemistry here needs a bucket and some suds. Everything feels forced. Are fellas buying totally into what the manager’s now telling us? Not sure.

I suspect when Jack did the book he didn’t imagine he’d be walking back into a Kerry dressing-room so soon again. Probably reckoned he had a bit of licence. Now he’s carrying it around in his body language. ‘F**k it, we’re sound lads aren’t we?

‘Lads?’

Anyway, we’re absolutely haunted to get out of Tralee. Now I’m a closed enough person and, if I’m honest, I’m just bottling up all the bad stuff in my head now. I get back to my house in Killarney and I’ve cabin fever. No way can I just sit here tonight, staring at the walls. I’m depressed with this and I just know I need to switch off. Things just feel all over the place.

‘F**k this,’ I say. ‘I’m going for a few pints.’

Just me and a high stool. That’s the only relationship I want now. No talk, no bulls**t. I don’t ring anyone. I don’t want to be getting anyone else in trouble but my head is like a ticking bomb here. And, if I don’t switch off, I know I’ll have a sleepless night. So I take myself in to Jade’s on New Street. Find a spot where I can watch the golf from America on TV. I’ve always been quite happy with my own company in a pub and now that’s the only company that appeals to me.

***********************

I knew the rules, of course. No pints. We had Antrim in a week and, well, Jack wouldn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to hear if one of his better-known players was supping Guinness on a Saturday night in Killarney.

We’ve training the following Tuesday and the call I’m half expecting comes that morning. ‘Gooch, I want you to come into training early!’ F**k, bad news travels fast. Next thing, Darragh Ó Sé is on the line. ‘Just to mark your card, my man knows that yourself and Tomás had pints at the weekend.’

Darragh might think he’s just made my heart sink, but all I’m thinking is, ‘Hallelujah. Tomás was on the beer too? There might be safety in numbers here.’

Still, I’m probably bolshie on the phone with him. All I’m feeling is frustration.

‘I don’t give a f **k’ I say. ‘I have to go in and talk to him this evening anyway.’

‘I don’t know,’ says Darragh, ‘but there’s talk about him not playing ye at the weekend.’

‘Darragh, does it f**king matter who he plays? We’re all over the f **king shop!’

‘Look, I’m just marking your card.’

‘Yeah, sound!’

I thought Tomás and I would be called before the court together, but Jack decides to deal with us individually. So I arrive into Fitzgerald Stadium, toss my bag in a corner and because there are other lads in there early too, doing their stretches, Jack calls me outside. ‘Come out here, I want to talk to you!’

Now what follows is fairly one-sided because I put up no defence. ‘Were you drinking at the weekend?’ ‘I was yeah!’

‘Well f**k it Gooch, we’re finding things hard enough...’

‘I know...’

‘I’d expect you to show some example...’ ‘I know..’

‘I need you to be a f **king leader in this group and...’ ‘I know Jack, I know...’ Then he finishes up by saying we’re going to have a meeting and ‘I don’t f**king know if you’re going to be playing at the weekend now.’ Call it stubborn, ignorant or whatever, that’d be Jack’s way. I was alright with it. I’d been in the wrong, end of story.

But next thing the meeting is called upstairs and Jack’s nowhere to be seen. None of the management are. Jack’s called the meeting, sent up Declan O’Sullivan and Micheál Quirke to chair it and decided to leave us at it. Ah Jesus. I’m fit to be tied now. To me, he had to be chairing that meeting. If we were going to be talking about leadership and why things were going so bad, should management not have been part of that conversation? But the meeting was only about Tomás and me. About drink and the bold boys we were. Nothing else on the agenda. Lord Christ, we’d come clean. We hadn’t lied about it. We were taking whatever punishment came our way on the chin. The dogs in the street could see Kerry were all over the shop, but it was as if Jack and the management have decided that Tomás and I were the only problem.

He should have been there in that room and he should have given it to the two of us between the eyes. ‘Lads ye were f**king out of line and the two of ye have been around long enough to know better. We’re all really f**king disappointed in ye. Ye’re not starting at the weekend!’

Bang. Done and dusted. Trouble is he’s still tip-toeing.