REBEL WITH
THE three Gs — gear, grub and games.
Keith Ricken has seen enough young men in his decades immersed in Gaelic football to know what they want.
Now Ricken is no miner but he knows what’s out there in the county: “There is gold in the river — all you have to do is sieve it in the right spot.”
And so his journey continues, with the 2019 All-Ireland winning Under-20 manager’s move on into the top job in Cork football.
This is one spin you’ll want to keep your eye on.
Ricken is a GAA Coaching Officer in Cork IT.
His first major national success came when he managed the college to a shock Sigerson Cup win back in 2009.
Squad
Paul Kerrigan, who would go on to win an All-Ireland with Cork a year later, was in that university squad.
“It was my fourth year in the college,” Kerrigan told Starsport. “We weren’t really going well.
“When Keith took over there were four or five of us on the Cork panel and he made sure we had to play well in every game, and we were up for every game. He made a big push on the Cork players to lead.
“We were out training at six o’clock in the morning just to fit it in. We made sure we led that way. He held us accountable.
“Maybe before, county lads mightn’t have shown up until the Championship.
“You had m yself, Daniel Goulding, Colm O’Neill, Ray Carey, one or two more and a lot of Under-21s. from a traditional working class area up the northside,” explains the former Ireland International Rules player.
“You’d kind of say, looking back ba he was looking out for them th and getting them a good standard st of training there with w other fellas.
Trained
“He always had that. He’s a trained Guidance Counsellor.
“He is a fella I’d be looking to go to if I was in trouble.
“He was a really good coach, very forthright with what he wanted to do and forceful if you weren’t living up to it on the field.
“I would always have considered him a coach more than a manager, but he has changed into a manager now and he definitely has those man management skills — that would definitely be his strength now.
“If someone was sick, he’d know about it. He’d ask you how you are.
“Things like that. His office is more or less like a guidance office.It’s upstairs in the student centre. He just has that w ay about him. He’s caring. He’d help you out if y ou said you were in bother.”
After last year’s Championship quarter-final, Kerrigan was walking out to his car when he met Ricken.
“The next time I looked at my watch, it was two hours and there wasn’t a sinner around Pairc Ui Rinn,” he recalls.
“It was anything and everything. He’d respect your opinion, be asking you about different players and that was the same this year. He text me about a player, ‘What’s his situation like?’
Good
“That’s his way. It’s a really good way to have. A good man for a story, and plenty of bad language as well with the humour.
“He’s from the northside. I’m from the southside. The northsiders are a little bit different. Very quick-witted and that.
“I suppose he’s always looking for positivity,
“He’d be a fella to lay it on the line to you and on the opposite side, give you praise when you deserve it.”