Kerry football manager Peter Keane at the Munster Senior Hurling and Senior Football Championships 2019 Launch, at the Gold Coast Resort Hotel in Dungarvan, Co Waterford.
By John Harrington
Kerry will enter the 2019 Championship race this weekend carrying a familiar weight of expectation on their shoulders.
Regardless of any extenuating circumstances, the Kingdom’s supporters expect their team to be capable of challenging hard for the All-Ireland title every year.
So even though Peter Keane is in his first year as manager of a team largely staffed by young, inexperienced players who have yet to really prove their worth at this level, anything less than stopping Dublin’s drive for five All-Irelands in a row will be regarded by most in the county as a failure.
If that’s a heavy burden to carry, Peter Keane is doing a good job of convincing people it isn’t.
“I wouldn’t consider that pressure,” said the Kerry manager. “If you consider that pressure it would get you down I would think and if you cannot embrace it you would be in trouble.
“I’m enjoying it If you don’t embrace it you are in right trouble because it will get the better of you.”
Kerry supporters probably had mixed feelings after the League campaign.
Their run to the Final included many positives, mostly the manner in which they tightened up a defence that leaked alarmingly last year and the encouraging development of talented young players like Sean O’Shea, and Dara Moynihan.
But the manner in which they then lost that League Final to Mayo proved this young Kerry team still has a lot to learn.
When Keane looks back on the League campaign in its totality, he’s content to view it through the prism of a half-full glass.
“I was a new manager coming in, a brand new management came in there was retirements of senior players, there was a lot of new players that came in last year and this year so you had to throw all them into a pot and stir it up and see how it went,” he said.
“We had to find out about them and they had to fin out about us and there was a huge learning curve throughout the league. Did I plan at the start of the year to get to a league final?
“Not particularly. Did I rule it out at the start of the year that there was no hope we can get to a league final? No I didn’t. I was taking every game as it came and seeing where it brought us.
"Was I gutted after losing a league final?
“No I wasn’t because there was a learning, there was a plus to have gotten to Croke Park and to have gotten the day out, the stay overnight get the bus and another night together so there was a pile of learning throughout the league not just the final.
“Would I have rather won the game? Yeah but sometimes you look more closely and with a tighter eye when you don’t win it.
“So I wasn’t overly bothered either which way and I don’t want to sound like ‘ah he is only saying that because they lost’. I wouldn’t be jumping out of my skin had we won it either.”
Kerry manager Peter Keane during the Allianz Football League Division 1 Final match between Kerry and Mayo at Croke Park in Dublin.
Kerry’s most glaring deficiency in the League Final was the manner in which they struggled to cope with Mayo’s physicality on the day.
They were horsed out of it in the middle third in particular, but Keane is adamant that sort of experience is a necessary stage of any learning curve.
“What I would say is that if you look at us we’re young, we’re slight, we’re light. Is that going to happen? Of course it will.
“Why? Because we’re young. Compare a Kerry Diarmuid O’Connor to an Aidan O’Shea and out the two of them side by side sure Aidan must have ten or 12 years under his belt doing strength and conditioning versus our man so it is going to take that bit of time to get to that physicality.
“So was I shocked by that? No. It is going to take time and the question is how long will it take to get there.”
The problem is that Kerry supporters are so desperate to stop Dublin’s historic bid for a fifth All-Ireland title is that patience may not be their greatest virtue.
We live in an era now where every team is judged on whether they’re capable or not of knocking the Dubs off their perch, but Keane insists moulding a team that could do that particular job isn’t top of his agenda right now.
“I remember learning to drive and I remember going out the main road. It was kind of different then when you were learning to drive.
“I was inside in the car with my father and we were driving out the road from Caherciveen and we were heading out to Valentia Island.
“We were at the Points cross which was only a short bit out and I started asking the question which was about a road that was about two miles out.
“And he chewed me and said ‘We’ll worry about that when we get there, at the moment we’ll worry about this.’
“So there’s about as much point as me worrying about a Dublin or anyone else worrying about a Tyrone or a Mayo or someone else. We have Clare in the first round and we’ll worry about that.”
So what can we expect from Kerry in the Championship under Keane? What are the non-negotiables he demands from his players before he sends them in to battle?
“I’d like us to play football and I’d like us to play the football that if you were on the team you’d enjoy playing it,” said Keane.
“And I want us to have a cut. I don’t want us to go home wondering should we have done this or should we have done that.”
