The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Sugrue ready to lead Under-20s in Munster
Damian Stack The lure of Kerry and of Kerry football has John Sugrue back in the thick of it with the Kingdom
KERRY isn’t somewhere you ever truly leave. It’s a part of you and you a part of it. There are ties that bind – family, friends, people and place – but there’s more to it than that. There’s football, of course there is. Beyond even that though there’s that intangible something special.
There’s something about the place and the people that draws you back. People living in other parts of the country and other parts of the world feel as much a part of it on fleeting visits home as the rest of us do living here all year round and they’re right, they are as we are. We all are Kerry and Kerry is us.
Naturally it’s through football that we commune. It’s bound up in how we view ourselves and our place in the world, it’s how we express and project ourselves to the outside world. It’s more simply than sport. It’s more simply than fifteen fellas in green and gold trying to beat fifteen fellas from another part of the country.
For John Sugrue the draw of Kerry and of Kerry football is as strong now clearly as it was when he was living here and working here and training Kerry teams to All Ireland titles under the guidance of the manager at the time, Pat O’Shea.
Work took the physio to the midlands and to Portlaoise, but even before he assumed the Laois senior job he was back in the Kingdom working with his native South Kerry and helping them to their tenth (and as of now last) county senior football championship title in 2015.
After two hugely successful years with Laois, he finds himself back once again in the bosom of Kerry football, back in a Bainisteoir’s bib, back in the thick of it, back in the Kingdom and loving every minute of it... even the commute.
For a lot of us the idea of a trip up and down the M7 a couple of times a week would fill us with dread. For Sugrue though it’s not wasted time mindlessly powering up and down the spine of the country.
“Personally I find the drive great,” he explains.
“It gives you a great time to think about your session and think about and almost review your session on your way home and maybe come up with your couple of points that you really need to clarify or get across so I find the drive good in that sense.
“It’s probably not good in terms of family life in that you’re gone for a substantial period of time, but I was living in Laois and managing a Laois team and it didn’t bother me either way.”
The commute isn’t the only difference between his time with the O’Moore county and his current gig back home. The Renard man has gone from coaching a senior team to an underage team with this his first appointment as manager of an underage side at inter-county level. There have to have been significant differences between the two roles.
“Not a hell of a lot in terms of you’re still dealing with guys who have the same kind of traits and characteristics about them individually,” he suggests.
“I suppose communication-wise there’s probably almost a slight taper as in these guys have to develop comunicationally a little yet and then I would say the other aspect of it is logistically it’s far more difficult as in generally club season ends in October, November, whenever.
“Then you have almost sole access to the players at senior level bar the colleges to some degree, but here you find there’s a lot more drag with colleges and schools and stuff like that, so logistically it’s a bit different definitely.”
Speaking of logistics the start to the season was a bit hectic with Sugure and co having to juggle two competitions concurrently and, while at the time it might have felt a bit much, in hindsight it worked out really well.
“We got a lot of game time into guys,” Sugrue says.
“Some fellas who needed a bit more physicality maybe applied to them or who were better physically able played in the McGrath Cup and other guys who just needed a bit of football played in the Kerins Cup and between the two we’ve merged together as one now since the second round of the Kerins Cup.
“I suppose the big anomaly is that we played one out of three games in the Kerins Cup and we were out of the competition after the first game. It’s a thing the GAA might look at. It made our last two games... it kind of turned them into glorified challenge games.
“Now they were still good games and we really got a good bit out of them, but to lose your first league game and be out of the league is interesting for sure.”
Sugue won’t know until later today (Wednedsay) who his men are going to be facing in their first game this day week, but whoever comes through – either Jerry O’Sullivan’s Limerick or Tipperary – the Kerry boss has utmost respect.
“Both of them teams have been doing their own thing,” he says.
“It’s one of those things, we’re going to be playing away from home and certainly I think in the last twenty years Limerick have one or two Under 20 Munster titles, Tipperary have two and Kerry have four in the last twenty years, so it’s not a big difference in terms of the number of titles or dominance at this level certainly.
“We’ve got to be on our game and that’s very much down to how we’ve got to be to compete at this level.”
When it’s put to him that he might have preferred instead to have had a game before the semi-final – the previous year’s finalists were seeded – he’s fairly nonplussed.
“No difference,” he declares. “We’ll play whatever we have to play and that’s it. Would you prefer one extra game for your team? Maybe. Would you prefer to see the opposition play? Definitely. So I mean you can’t have everything.”
People will look at this Kerry squad and think them more than capable of challenging for at least Munster honours. It’s never quite as simple as that though as Kerry have learned over the last number of years under the management of Jack O’Connor.
The former Laois boss isn’t going to set any sort of targets like the fans might. Instead his focus is on developing his bunch of footballers to be the best they can be.
“It’s very much a developing atmosphere inside there at the moment,” he says.
“We’re three or four months at it now, the next hopefully number of weeks will tell us how to rate ourselves. We’re working away hard enough, the application in
[I remember] running around after Jack [O’Connor] in the hills in Killarney in muck up to your knees!
training is good, we’re trying to develop a way of playing and an understanding of how we’re going to play with each other... time will only tell.”
Sugrue, of course, is a former underage star with the Kingdom, lining out at centre-field for both the minors and the Under 21s, so he knows what it’s all about, knows the level of expectation people in this county have of their young footballers, knows that it’s not all plain sailing.
What, then, does he remember of his days as an Under 21 footballer?
“Running around after Jack [O’Connor] in the hills in Killarney
in muck up to your knees!” he says with a chuckle.
“We have a very mixed bag. I think it was ‘98 I broke a bone in my foot and missed out on the campaign. I was very young at the time so I was marginal on that panel I would say. ‘99 we lost to Westmeath in the final, All Ireland final and then 2000 we unfortunately lost to Waterford in a replay in Killarney. Quite a good Waterford side.”
Asked if there was anything of his own experience he could possibly impart to his players, however, and Sugrue is quite definitive.
“No my days are well and truly gone. I don’t believe in harking back too much. I think we have to stay positive and productive and really focus on our team right now as they are and try and squeeze as much out of each other and try and be as demanding of each other and still enjoy it and have a bit of craic along the way.”
A final word on what he expects of his team next week regardless of who they’re playing: “Intensity and intelligence that’s what I’d be hopeful of.”
Having spent a little time in Sugrue’s company that’s hardly a surprise. He’s got both in spades.