Keane will take the win but insists he is still just settling in

PETER Keane came into his postmatch press briefing with a cup of tea in hand but on this occasion there was no need for accompanying sympathy.

That prescription will surely be called for some day in Keane’s managerial career but right now he his 3 and 0 with the League champions meeting out of the way. No wonder Keane was seen beaming a smile at the full-time whistle before Jim Gavin reached him for the post-match handshake.

Clearly it was pleasing and significant and even important for a nascent Kerry team to get one over on the all-conquering Dubs?

“You could say it’s significant but I don’t think it’s that significant,” Keane said. “Do you know it’s still a game – we beat Tyrone (and) you could have asked me the same thing two weeks ago, and then they got a bit of a dressing from Mayo last week so you’d wonder did that take the gloss of that victory that we had against them? Look, I don’t know. It sounds like a cliché but every day is a learning day as a new management. The players are getting used to us and there are so many new players coming in the priority for us is to go and learn.”

And the manner of the win? The way Kerry, playing 14 men, saw a five-point lead whittled down to parity before finding a late winner through Peter Crowley?

“It probably is because I would have said to you early on I was not that concerned about the league and you probably wouldn’t have believed me but it wasn’t a big issue for me with the league. But the big thing was to put some bit of structure in place and finding out about fellas.

“I would have mentioned to you much earlier that we had about 37 or 38 players and half of them have come out of the five-in-a-row minor teams so they’re all young fellas and you know we have been a bit hampered with clubs involvement in All-Ireland series and we’ve had injuries and stuff like that so fellas definitely got an opportunity to put up their hand and some of them have taken it.”

Given who the opposition were and what might happen if the teams meet later in the year in the Championship did Keane feel the Kerry players wanted to lay down a bit of a marker?

“No matter what way that you are looking at it you are talking about a team that are going for fivein-a-row this year and I don’t know how many leagues that they have won – are they the defending league champions? – so every fella wants to test himself against whoever he’s playing, whether it’s club football or inter-county or running or basketball or whatever it is. You want to test yourself against whoever is the top dog so I suppose you’re right, these fellas wanted to test themselves and see what is in them.”

What did Keane learn about his squad, in particular the young players, from the game and has he any better sense of the way Kerry are going to play under him?

“I learned that you can throw them in there. There’s very little you can do. If you take the last three games sure we had only one training session so you can’t do anything with the players because you are conscious of where they are at. Even sitting down Wednesday night and picking a team you don’t even know do you have some of these lads because they pick up injuries so it’s only by throwing them in that you will find out about them and some of them have done well and shown legs and shown heart and shown spirit and it’s only from that we will learn.”

“It’s about us and finding out about us and at the end of the day we are a new management and we’re only after stepping into this thing. We got on a train there and the train is rolling along very quickly. We’ve had three games in 13 days which is a huge ask.

“You look at Seánie O’Shea and there’s an expectation that Seanie O’Shea will play seven games in 28 days and that’s a game every four days. There’s so much going on and everyone’s aware of the injuries that we have and the situation with players being involved with their clubs so we have been tight in some ways and we have been trying to get fellas back.

“Jack Sherwood was there before and drifted away but he had a very good county championship, the same with Tommy Walsh so I suppose you have to give guys an opportunity to get back in there. Of the young fellas coming through – Gavin O’Brien had a reasonable county championship last year. He’s a good scopey player with good hands, good legs and he wasn’t overawed out there tonight and interestingly he’s a guy who didn’t come through nay development squad or anything.”