The Peter Keane interview

Peter Keane is the next man up to manage the Kerry senior football team. Paul Brennan spoke to the Cahersiveen native about what he and we can expect

FROM Peter Keane’s home in Listry to the Centre of Excellence in Currans it’s only about a ten-minute drive, but as he arrives at the new epicentre of Gaelic games in Kerry he has come a very long way. From a happy, if slightly chaotic, upbringing in Cahersiveen where he was reared among the nightly “racket and guff” of the Ringside Rest Hotel that his parents, Tom and Nuala, ran for many years in the town, to his current status as a successful supermarket owner, Keane has packed much into his 47 years.

Steeped in the GAA all his life, Keane was more than a decent half forward with ‘The Marys’ and the Kerry Minors, Under-21s and Juniors, and when the legs gave in he went back outside the whitewash and has been managing teams on and off since. St Marys. Beaufort. Legion. The Kerry minors. And now, nine days ago, Peter Keane has been handed the biggest bainisteoir bib of them all to fill.

From Dr Eamonn O’Sullivan through Micko and Páidí, and on past Jack O’Connor to his immediate predecessor Eamonn Fitzmaurice, Keane has big shoes to fill, and successful ones too. More Kerry senior team managers have won an All-Ireland title than haven’t, but now, perhaps more than at any time in the county’s history, there appears to be less guarantee of an All-Ireland title than ever before. Keane appears unfazed.

Having managed Kerry to the last three All-Ireland Minor Championship titles many felt Keane had earned the right to take charge of the senior team after Fitzmaurice stepped down in August after six years as manager. When did Keane himself start to entertain thoughts of the job?

“I went away home after the Kildare game [in August] and I wasn’t expecting anything. Kerry were beaten and that was it. Next thing two hours later news broke that Eamonn had retired and I’m getting phone calls and text messages and hearing that Paddy Power had me down as a favourite for two days until they copped on to themselves and decided to make someone else favourite,” he says of those initial hours and days after Fitzmaurice stepped down.

“It kind of went on a bit of a roller-coaster after that. I had the Monaghan game [All-Ireland minor semi-final] which was the most important thing in my head at that moment in time. (I) went on to having an All-Ireland Final and then being contacted after the All-Ireland to know was I interested in managing the senior team. When you normally come out of an All-Ireland you’re in a bit of a tailspin, you’re kind of half shagged and you’re mentally stretched and tired from it and you try and get a few days off. But then you’re trying to work towards getting a management and stuff like that and then wondering are you going to get it or will you get or who’ll get it. And then you get it.”

This, by the way, is preamble to a question last Friday evening when Keane chatted amicably and openly with the media for almost two hours in the Centre of Excellence where most of his initial work with his new squad of players will take place.

“To answer the question: what’s success next year? “I haven’t thought about it but it’s probably a very valid question. I haven’t thought of an answer to that question in any way. Obviously my priority now is to sit down as a management and try and put some kind of a panel together and start cracking on from there and creating some bit of a structure to our team, the way we want then to play and see where we go from there.” So what is the Peter Keane way of playing football? “I remember being involved with a team once and some fellas asked me what way are you going to play? I said ‘how would I know ’til I see what I have’. I might want to play a big full-forward and the biggest fella you might have would be 5’2”. I like football and I like seeing football played, an attacking way of playing. We will try to play football. Does that mean I will be allowed to do that at this level? Probably not.”

Keane is from the home town of Jack O’Shea and Maurice Fitzgerald and Bryan Sheehan - three players who married the silky skills of the game with a flinty toughness - and the new manager is a similar blend of velvet and iron.

On his debut for the Kerry minors in 1989 Keane scored 1-3 from right half forward against Waterford. Eleven months later he was in action again against Waterford, this time as a Kerry Junior and he scored two points in the win in Listowel. Two years and 11 months after that first game with the county minors Keane was a starter - and captain - on the Kerry Under-21 team to play Limerick in a Munster quarter-final in Ballybunion. He scored 11 points of Kerry’s 2-23 total.

Two months and three games later Keane’s inter-county football days were behind him - he never played senior with Kerry - but there was enough in that experience to stay involved in the game after injuries brought a premature end to his playing days with St Marys.

FUNDAMENTALLY what are you doing, you’re dealing with people so it’s about man-management. That’s ultimately what it is,” he says of team management, and of the step up from club teams and the county minors to the senior team. “Are you dealing with more expectation? I think yes, there is no doubt about that. Look, we will have to go and see how we get on with it.”

So has he thought about what he will say to the older, experienced players he will encounter in the dressing room this week or next?

“I’d say ‘hello, how are ye doing?’” and that is really the essence of who and what Peter Keane is. There is a directness to him that could be taken as abruptness, but this evening Keane is engaging, witty, refreshingly honest and accommodating to all.

“Come closer,” he says to the assembled press men as we try to gauge what distance keep from the table he sits at. “I want to keep my enemies close,” he adds with a roguish grin.

He’s asked if he has given any thought to not being part of the Kerry ‘golden circle’, to not being an All-Ireland winner, something that Jack O’Connor often mentioned about his time in charge?

Keane considers the question and then, with an actor’s timing, says it’s the first time he’s ever been compared to Jack O’Connor, and lets that hang in the air for everyone to draw their own conclusions.

“I don’t see that as an issue, that is something that goes on in somebody’s head. It’s not an issue for me,” he adds.

He’s asked about the personal criticism and abusive letters his predecessor spoke about a couple of months ago and how the pressures of the job might affect him.

“You would be more conscious of the people around you. When I am doing what I am doing it is me that is doing it and you get a tough skin from that,” he says. “I was reared in a hotel so you can be sure there was plenty of racket going on. Plenty of guff, plenty of rough nights. I would be tough enough because of all that. But you do consider your children, your wife, your parents or your in-laws. I wouldn’t have any worry about it now.”

But the expectation, Peter, there’s always the expectation for success - All-Irelands - in Kerry. Will anything less than an All-Ireland title be considered a failure?

“Wouldn’t an All-Ireland in 2019] be lovely but here we are today and there isn’t much point in I sitting here talking about that. If you look at where we were at in 2018 we’ve been a long way from that so I’ve got to see where we’re at, regroup and see where we go from there,” which he expands on when asked about the size of the panel he expects to work with, and if the wider development (K2) panel Eamonn Fitzmaurice established is something he’s likely to keep on with?

“I think [the panel] will be tighter. I think you’ve job enough working with what you need to work with. We’re

coming in here new and fresh and we need to get our hands on the players who are going to make a difference for us now.

“I would figure if I was working off fifty players at this stage I’d never get a handle on what we have. But I can certainly see the logic of what [Fitzmaurice] was trying to do [with K2 panel] in getting fellas ready. Does that mean I won’t bring in one or two here or there to give them a taste of it or put them on programmes...?

“There’s no fella hiding in a wardrobe in some part of Kerry that we are not aware of at this stage.

“It is probably a big job, there were seven debutants last year, plus a few more going out the door now. And does that mean there will be a couple more introduced again next year? It will only be in the fullness of time when we get everyone in that we will see where we are at.”

To that end Keane brings with him he lieutenants from the Minor team, James Foley - “very knowledgeable, very organised, hugely committed, knows his football” - and Tommy Griffin - “an absolute no-brainer. He’s a top-class coach” - as well as Maurice Fitzgerald and Donie Buckley.

“Maurice was a no-brainer. I grew up with Maurice, we are friends from way back. Having him involved ticked another box from last year that we weren’t all coming in totally new to the players and the players didn’t know us. I didn’t want this management coming in new and cold to the dressing room,” he says of Fitzgerald, who was Keane’s Best Man at his wedding.

On Donie Buckley the new manager said: “I am very cognisant most of us have not been involved at senior inter-county level. I know Donie Buckley a long time. He is a top class coach, ever before he went to Mayo. He is very experienced and he was willing to get on board when I met him the week after the All-Ireland minor final. It was the first of many subsequent chats that we had. We gelled well together.”

On and on the conversation rambles, Keane content to field questions from midfield and left-field until the GAA’s equivalent of the Brexit question comes up: has he thought about Dublin’s quest for an unprecedented five-in-a-row next year and can he and Kerry be the team to stop them?

“I suppose I haven’t even a panel picked so where would I start on that issue? That’s like digging a field and you don’t even have a shovel. We’ll get the shovel first and then we’ll start thinking about that one.”

On that note all we can do is pass on to the new Kerry football manager the advice of another Kerry man, Christie Hennessy: Don’t forget your shovel if you want to go to work.