Ballintubber face Breaffy in the Mayo SFC Final on Saturday evening.
By Cian O’Connell
Coaching and managing was always the path Kevin Johnson wanted to take.
His father Denis steered Eastern Harps to four Sligo senior titles and first cousin Paul Taylor was recently ratified as the new Yeats boss.
Kevin Johnson, though, has quietly, but effectively stitched teams together at various levels of the game in the west.
A Sligo native Johnson has lived in Galway for much of the past two decades playing an important role in the development of a solid Academy structure before flaring to prominence with Ballintubber, who contest a keenly anticipated Mayo decider against Breaffy at Elverys MacHale Park on Saturday evening.
“As a young coach with this being my first big management role it has been brilliant,” the highly regarded Johnson admits.
“I'm really enjoying it, they are a fantastic club. To get a chance to get to work with a club and players like this is brilliant. I am really enjoying it and while it is another challenge on Saturday, it will be a tough one.”
Johnson, a maths teacher at Colaiste Einde, has trained Salthill-Knocknacarra outfits at several grades. “I've been very involved with Salthill, who really gave me my break,” Johnson acknowledges. “I've managed Salthill Under 21 teams and was involved with the seniors getting to a County Final on the coaching side in 2013 with Liam Sammon and Cathal McGinley.
“Then in 2015 I was involved with Mountbellew-Moylough when they reached that Final also. They were the main teams I worked with heavily in Galway along with Colaiste Einde and the Academy.”
So Johnson has derived plenty of satisfaction from trying to assist young footballers in the west. “Yes, I suppose I got involved in coaching very young,” Johnson states.
“One thing that stood out to me was I got involved in coach education very early. It opened up my awareness and my eyes a lot to raising standards of coaching and having better practice.
Former Mayo footballer Alan Dillon remains a key figure for Ballintubber.
“What coaching should be like. I'm a qualified coach education tutor and an Award 2 coach as well, I got really involved in schools football and with the Galway Academy. I'm now 10 years involved with the Galway Academy, the work that is going on there is brilliant.”
“The structures are there now because there is so much information and education out there for people to get involved in coaching.
“In the GAA it is very important that if we want our players to keep playing GAA that the coaching must be right. That is what the aim of the coaching education programmes were to get people and to give them best practice. If young players get the best practice they will maximise their potential.
“That has always been the objective of coach education and coaching. That it is our role to maximise a players potential, that is what we try to do. We try to allow a player to be the best that they can be.”
Johnson is adamant that the strength of Gaelic Football continues to increase in the west with the Connacht counties all eager to make progress.
“It is just improving on a yearly basis and a lot of that has got to do with the people from the top down in Connacht GAA,” Johnson remarks. “It is hard work and spreading the word because Connacht is a smaller province.
“Galway as a county with the hurling and football means it should be all about proper communication. At the moment you want the structures there to allow players to play, and to allow players excel, to be the best that they can be.
“That is what we feel in Galway that the Academy has a good atmosphere, the environment we create and from a Galway point of view so many have gone on to represent their county.
“The main thing is that they enjoy playing, that is something is the key philosophy about what we are trying to do.”
It is also what Johnson has sought to do with Ballintubber where the progressive Mayo club remain a seriously competitive outfit. The Mayo SFC semi-final replay triumph over Castlebar Mitchels was a significant achievement putting Ballintubber back on the stage on which they craved to perform.
Prolific Ballintubber forward Cillian O'Connor.
“From where they were 12 months ago the goal was always from a players point of view was to get back into another County Final,” Johnson comments. “That was the first objective from the start to make up for last year's loss.
“Throughout the year with the structure of the calendar changing in Mayo with it being a set structure with the League played out when it was meant to.
“The club plan in Mayo this year was very well organised in terms of all League games being played. County players were unavailable at times, but by having a set plan when Championship was going to be it allowed us to plan and aim towards this time of year. That has been a massive thing for me in terms of the planning side.”
That Mayo were knocked out of the All Ireland Football Championship early had an impact, but Johnson simply wanted to ensure that the O’Connor brothers returned to the Ballintubber fold refreshed and rejuvenated.
“I suppose when Mayo went out early we had two players involved, Cillian and Diarmuid, at the time and the most important thing was that the Championship dates didn't change,” Johnson says. “We knew from when Mayo went out we had maybe seven weeks and it was very important that some players got a break too going from inter-county to the club.
“Diarmuid went to America, he had his five or six weeks in America and he came back really fresh, he was playing good football.
“Cillian had a couple of small injuries he had to get right so he went to get them right and came back really fresh. It was more about giving them time to get right rather than putting them straight out on the club scene. It was about timing and freshness, and that is what we did.”
A nice blend has been located in Ballintubber with established and emerging footballers producing under Johnson’s guidance. “There is a great balance in the team between experience and youth,” Johnson stresses. “That is very important in any successful team or in any team you work with.
“The likes of Alan Dillon, Cillian O'Connor, and Jason Gibbons, these are fantastic role models for the younger players like Jamsie Finnerty, Stephen O'Malley, and Ciaran Gavin. That is very important in any club, especially in a rural club like Ballintubber.”
On and off the field Ballintubber are busy building for the future with Johnson a central figure in their 2018 story.