LEADER QUESTIO
A dearth of strong-willed characters leaves Kerry in pessimistic mood ahead of their summer campaign
IT IS four years since I had my Al Pacino moment, but it was such a powerful experience it might as well have been yesterday.
It is a rare thing to be moved and inspired by someone else’s words, to have the hairs standing on the back of your neck just as if you are sitting on that movie set when Pacino is delivering that iconic ‘inches’ speech in Any Given Sunday.
But that’s exactly what it felt like listening to Declan O’Sullivan at a team meeting in the Brehon Hotel the week prior to the 2014 All-Ireland final. This is a synopsis of how it went: ‘I don’t want to be your friend just because we play together; I want to know that you are my friend because you are going to put your body on the line to win this All-Ireland. If you do that, I will cross the street every time and shake your hand.’
I knew in that moment that we were going to do it and I think so did everyone else.
That All-Ireland will always be special not because it was my last, but because it was the first for so many in our group.
It was the start of something new and for the older lads in the panel, the likes of myself, Declan, Aidan O’Mahony, Donnchadh Walsh and Kieran Donaghy, the onus was on us to provide the leadership.
The line is always thrown out about how it is the duty of every player to leave the jersey in a better place – to be a leader when it matters.
It takes more than words to encapsulate leadership, but sometimes talk isn’t cheap when it trips off the right tongue.
That was one such moment but if the speech still feels fresh to me, my fear is it may have fallen on some deaf ears.
Kerry set out on the road again today and expectations, as much as they can be in the Kingdom, are modest.
They really shouldn’t be, because we have it all. We have tradition, an All-Ireland-winning manager, a whirring production line of underage winners dripping with godgiven talent, so what’s missing?
Leaders, that’s what. And that is something which has to be addressed and quickly.
What really disappoints is the failure of those players in 2014, who were at that team meeting and who witnessed at first hand true leadership, to embrace the challenge of taking on that mantle.
Hand on heart, from that group of first-time All-Ireland winners only Paul Murphy and Paul Geaney have made the step-up in providing the leadership.
When things are going pearshaped, they are the two guys you can depend on to dig in and drive on but apart from that no-one else has stepped up.
I don’t want to be sore on anyone here, but the likes of Fionn Fitzgerald, Peter Crowley, Stephen O’Brien and James O’Donoghue have to start leading from the front.
It can’t be left to the two Pauls, or for that matter, expect the likes of Killian Young, Donnchadh, Darran O’Sullivan, David Moran and Donaghy to keep carrying the can.
Those boys that tasted it for the first time in 2014 have to show the way.
Crowley is a powerful player, who brings the kind of physicality which every team needs, but he has got to produce consistently. It is not enough to go out and make one eyecatching hit, one huge crowd-pleasing play. One big hit does not a leader make.
O’Donoghue is a class forward, but he is also one whose impact has been sabotaged by injury, and the bottom line is that he has not had the kind of impact I would have envisaged four years ago.
For all the talk of Kerry’s youthful promise in the likes of Jason Foley, Sean O’Shea and David Clifford, if Kerry are to contend this summer, then the leadership base has to be broadened. And because there is a leadership deficit, manager Éamonn Fitzmaurice has to ensure what little he has is spread around.
That is why Donaghy is so important to Kerry this year.
He needs to be a central figure, and not just in the dressing room but on the team as well where I believe he should be starting today ahead of O’Donoghue for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, there is the leadership aspect; he would offer more to Clifford and O’Shea both in terms of support and in bringing those players into the game, while he would also provide the kind of mean-streets protection they will need this summer. Secondly, he is the only player in the Kerry group who can dictate the terms of how opposing teams set
DONAGHY CAN DICTATE THE TERMS OF HOW OPPONENTS SET UP
up, something Aidan O’Shea will no doubt testify to. That’s a huge advantage which Kerry should not wilfully hand over.
Finally, the impact of Kerry’s bench has been diluted in recent seasons and having a player of O’Donoghue’s calibre primed to come on would go some way to rectifying that.
But here’s the thing as Kerry head out on the summer road, I can’t think of a time when I have had this many doubts about us making the full journey.
Prior to the team being named on Friday night, I tried to pick my own but I reckoned I had about eight definite starters.
That uncertainty is not just shared by the Kerry public, but also by the Kerry management.
Thirty-seven players saw game time in the Allianz League, and that is not including the likes of Young, Walsh, Maher and Donaghy.
And yet after all that, confusion rather than clarity prevails as to what is our best team.
Do you seriously think that Jim Gavin, Kevin Walsh and Stephen Rochford are racked with such doubt when they sit down to pick their starting team?
The most they are looking to fill is a place or two, and they all could probably name a handful of leaders – in Gavin’s case a whole busload – at the tip of a hat.
Kerry will win today but what they really need is to prove they are knitting together a team that is being driven by those who believe and who want to lead. This is their time. And they could do worse than heed those words from four years ago.
In Kerry, you play to win or you don’t play at all.