'With Kerry at times I feel like I'm overcritical': the tricky balance of being a Kingdom pundit

Irish Examiner

14 hours ago

After their escapades in 2009, the late Páidí Ó Sé took great relish in singing the tune dedicated to his nephew Tomás Ó Sé and Colm Cooper.
Jack O'Connor dropped the pair for the All-Ireland SFC qualifier against Antrim for breaching discipline but it all worked out in the end and 'It Wasn't Lucozade', belted out by Ó Sé in The Boar's Head pub over the All-Ireland final weekend they beat Cork, was the hit that never was.
Will O'Connor's latest row with an Ó Sé inspire another ditty? Don't be surprised. Kerry make a habit of making light out of the dark even if O'Connor's thinly-veiled dig at Darragh Ó Sé spoke of a profound difference.
Some wounds cut deep. Friendships and associations have ended on the back of commentary. 'The one player who won't talk to me is Ogie Moran," Pat Spillane wrote in his autobiography, No Pat on the Back – Confessions of A Football Pundit.
"Ogie was a great player. My problems with Ogie, or more precisely his problems with me, go back to the time when he was manager of the Kerry team and I was very critical of him. One of my dearest wishes would be that Ogie and myself could bury the hatchet."
Perhaps sensing his analysis would eventually be interpreted similarly, one of the game's most insightful minds Dara Ó Cinnéide left The Sunday Game after five years. His work commitments with Raidió na Gaeltachta had increased but Ó Cinnéide was also acutely aware of how his words resonated within the county's confines.
Being a pundit is akin to an occupational hazard for a Kerry footballer. Of the 20 Kerry players who played in the 2009 All-Ireland final, nine have either had a newspaper or online column at some stage, including Ó Sé and captain Darran O'Sullivan.
Since retiring in 2019, the Glenbeigh-Glencar man has worked with the likes of Kerry's Eye, sportsjoe.ie and Off The Ball. He admits he struggles to avoid placing the same expectations on Kerry teams that he had of himself.
'It is one of those things that the longer that you have finished up, the easier it is to be more direct and honest because you don't know the players as much,' says the four-time All-Ireland SFC winner. 'I'm not sure if I am with other counties, with certainly Kerry at times I feel like I'm overcritical because I expect the highest standard of everything, which is unfair.
'When you see back in black and white what you've said or written, your reaction is, 'Ah, I was a bit harsh.' But a lot of that has to do with I as a player liked having that extra bit of pressure and people expecting that we had to do more than anybody else. That our style of football had to be better and I grew as a footballer in a dressing room environment when nothing was ever enough. If we won by 10 points, we'd find a flaw somewhere.
'It is tricky, the punditry, especially when it is your own. You are just putting on them the expectations we put on ourselves. There's always another gear.'
For the life of him, O'Sullivan can't remember anything any of the Kerry golden years era that he might have taken exception to during his career. 'Most of what I got was when I was working in the bank and random people coming in with the sole purpose of telling me we were good or bad, that this fella shouldn't be on the team, that this fella should, all that type of stuff.
'Most of the media stuff you'd be aware of it but I would have never read it. I was good for avoiding that stuff. Social media wasn't as big then either so you could ignore things a lot easier.'
Living among those he critiques and with the possibility of seeing them on the street is also something O'Sullivan has to consider. 'I try to be straight. If Kerry play badly, I will say they played poorly. I tried not to make it individual so if the defence are leaking scores, I will comment about them collectively.
'You would go as far as saying such and such had a tough afternoon but you wouldn't be thinking, 'Oh, I hope I don't bump into him.' By and large, they would have known they had a bad game and even though you're highlighting that, and they might be thinking 'f- him anyway', more often than not fellas accept it.
'You're going to be called out if you have a bad day. You just have to avoid getting personal or being too personal. At the end of the day, you're there to do a job and call it as you see it, and if you don't do that, you'll be called out yourself for bluffing it.
'There can be awkwardness but so long as you can stand over what you said or wrote that's enough. You're not doing it to hurt anybody; you're saying what you see.'