Seventh All-Ireland final beckons for Kerry's self-styled football outsider
'This group have been in a few finals like. They were here in '22, '23…,' he begins.
'They were here in '19, sorry — '19, '22, '23 — so this will be their fourth final, most of those boys.
'Paul Murphy, Paul Geaney were there in '14. And '15. So there is a good bit of experience in the group, yeah.'
And what it means, of course?
'Sure of course it counts. Where it counts more than anything is in the build-up to it. You know to avoid getting carried away in the euphoria of the thing, and keeping the main thing the main thing, if you know what I mean.
'Keeping your priorities right, and keeping the focus on arriving here in your best physical and mental condition. To play the game rather than the occasion.'
If there is one thing he laments, in what he calls the 'old days', it was the month of a lead-in to the final. But that can't be helped either.
The season starts with the bang of a gun and teams have to put their head down to make the early yards. There's barely a chance to get the head up and see where everyone else is. All you can do is take nothing for granted, and Tyrone are not a side that O'Connor has learned to take for granted.
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O'Connor shakes hands with Peter Teague. Tom O'Hanlon / INPHO Tom O'Hanlon / INPHO / INPHO
'Tyrone had some big results that almost went under the radar. They beat Donegal above in Ballybofey, very few teams do that. I don't think it was picked up too much in the media,' said O'Connor.
'Beat Dublin here; I don't care what they say about Dublin, Dublin are still a hard team to beat here in Croke Park. They would have come into this game with a lot of confidence and there was lot a noise about our game, which meant Tyrone were coming in under the radar.
'I thought that showed early on. I thought, in the first 15 minutes, Tyrone were the better team. They settled quicker and had us in a lot of bother on breaking ball around the middle of the field. As soon as we got to terms with that, I thought the game changed and David's goal settled us.'
The kickout count was heavily in Tyrone's favour before Kerry arrested that. In the second half, Tyrone simply couldn't cope. A good part of that was the man sitting beside O'Connor in the press briefing. Gavin White won three break balls from Niall Morgan's kickout in the third quarter alone.
'No better man than this man here,' said O'Connor of the Dr Crokes man.
'That was the thing that was killing us early on. There was a bit of a disconnect between Shane's kickouts and fellas getting to the pitch of the breaks. We spoke about that at half-time and that was a big factor in the second half.'
This win was less of the Catherine Wheel spectacular of the win over Armagh, but it could have been even more impressive. It doesn't feel like a performance is being magicked up out of nowhere.
'It was a more rounded performance because I thought that spell against Armagh was a bit freakish. It was like they just couldn't get their kickout away and we kept the ball up that end of the field,' said O'Connor.
David Clifford celebrates. James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
'I think this was a more rounded performance because Tyrone are very big around the middle of the field, Kennedy and Kilpatrick are big men and they have a lot of targets, and Morgan has a serious weapon of a kickout. The two boys (O'Shea and O'Brien) plugged away great for most of the game, and then Joe finished up midfield and what a game Joe had. Powerful game, he is getting better all the time.'
Kerry supporters have had all sorts of things thrown at them. Occasionally, outsiders paint a pretty vulgar picture of their assessments of players.
But this team seem to be reaching for a deeper connection. You can see it in David Clifford most of all. He has been appealing for greater turnouts of fans, and when he plundered his first-half goal here, made a huge show of trying to raise the decibel level among the Kerry support.
It's working.
'I mean it was no secret that Armagh seriously outnumbered us here at this stage last year,' said O'Connor.
'And I know I got stick for it but I said at the time that they were a factor in the game. And I don't think anyone could dispute that.
'(The) Kerry crowd were a factor today big time. So delighted with that. The support travel in huge numbers.
'And long may it continue. I mean these boys are giving everything for the cause. And they're playing good football. So they deserve to be supported. And we're delighted that, you know, I don't have the language to describe it.
'But it's working both ways, you know. They're getting energy from the crowd. And the crowd are getting energy from the players.'
Meanwhile, O'Connor noted at the end of his press conference that Paul and Conor Geaney, along with Tom O'Sullivan, will be in a position to make a contribution in the final.
*
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Irish Daily Mirror
2 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Meath win stirred my soul again, but I won't be a supporting them in Croke Park
LIKE an old pitman descending into the gaping mouth of a coal mine, Liam Hayes clocks in for our conversation, grabs his pick and lamp and stoically lowers himself into the deepest tunnels of a complex mind. At 63, the former Meath footballer and ex-award-winning sports writer remains compelling, introspective, self-aware, the custodian of what he calls a 'mad brain', one that facilitates a refreshingly off-piste way of thinking. Excavating private thoughts, chiselling into parts of the psyche where most fear to tread, exposing old wounds, walking towards the showers of black rain which occasionally pass through his head, decoding his fears and regrets, unlocking doors to his innermost self and inviting you across the threshold, Hayes is a slave to his own brutal honesty. We've known each other almost 40 years. We soldiered together on the sports beat in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I'd like to think we were friends. Some of the more thoughtful, profound but also - and this is a part many miss about Liam - fun nights I've had were over Chinese meals and beers on what were then Five Nations nights in Paris, London, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Though this is our first direct contact in maybe a decade, it feels like picking up a conversation in mid-sentence. Across our 65-minute chat, Hayes is a superior, Ballon d'Or-quality interviewee. Trusting, presenting the gift of unedited thoughts. An open book, we veer across a rainbow of topics: mortality, social inhibition, wanderlust, cancer, the joy of grandkids, life regrets, how the passing years have gifted him a new way of viewing the man in the shaving mirror. Why one of the pilot lights of Sean Boylan's first great team hasn't been to a Meath game in almost two decades and, why, though it has given him immense solace to find the Royal class of 2025 again stirring his blood, he won't be anywhere near Croke Park tomorrow for the county's first All-Ireland semi-final in 16 years. 'No, but I feel a bit guilty. I'm semi-retired from any interviews or PR activity. Obviously I'm more than happy to talk to you, but I've kept my nose out everything. I know if the young lads on the team are reading me saying I don't go to Meath games or if I had read that back in my day, I would have said 'f**k him, what does he know. He's got some attitude.' 'Because when you are in the middle of it, you think it's life and death and the most important thing in the world. This summer already I've been driving in the opposite direction to thousands of Meath cars on match days because I'm going home to my senior mother in Skryne. And in those moments, I feel no guilt whatsoever. 'It just goes out of your blood. You are interested in the lads and you wish them the best and this summer it has been brilliant to see. Any time they are on the TV I'll watch them, but you wouldn't drag me to Croke Park. 'If you paid me 10 grand you wouldn't get me to Croke Park next Sunday. I know that sounds awful and please, mind me here, because I don't want to sound like I'm up my own arse. I'm truly not being disrespectful. 'It's a mental thing. When you are involved like we were in the day, you are living and breathing it, like its 24/7 for 10 or 12 years. Nothing else is important in life. And then when it ends, it ends with a bang, a crashing steel door and it's over. 'And you're out of it. Then you go through four or five or six years, and this is true for every sportsperson, when you don't know whether you are coming or going. You feel guilty and you feel dispassionate and you hope they lose all their matches because you are not part of it. You feel selfish and all these horrible emotions. 'Then you come through that and you say 'you know what, I may as well become a supporter or not.' 'And you know what, I'm not going to become a supporter. I wish them the very best, but I'm not going to trail all over Ireland watching the team, I can't do that. I don't think many (ex-players) do that to be honest with you. 'Ah Jaysus, I'm not trying to be up my own arse, but you just go into a different place mentally where you say 'okay, I went through all of that, it's over.' Hayes has written and spoken with extraordinary eloquence about finding his brother Gerard, with whom he shared a bedroom for 20 years, dead at the GAA field in Skryne next to the family home after his elder sibling took his own life. Forty years on he was able to recall how he 'ran far and fast away. I was devastated by it. I don't think I have every fully recovered from it.' He doesn't make the link during our chat, but the suspicion is that such an horrendously traumatic experience has shaped much of his character, influenced and perhaps stymied other friendships, contributed to him being what he calls 'an outlier.' An All-Ireland winner in 1987 and 1988, captain of the team that emerged from that four-game epic that brought a jackhammer pulse to the summer of 1991, he sees little of most of the players with whom he authored history. 'Yeah you see I don't do reunions. I don't do school reunions. I've never done business reunions, I've done one Meath reunion in 30 years. I don't know why. It's something I'm not good at, it's a weakness of the mind, something in my psyche that I just don't like doing reunions. It's not a strength, I'm not proud of it. I just don't do them. It's a social inhibition. 'I think the older you get the more you realise how many issues you have had all your life. And it's good to deal with them. My family hate me saying this, but I think everyone is on the spectrum. We all have our problems, our issues. 'There's some reason why I don't do reunions. And I don't know what it is. I just don't do them. It's something you'd like to find out more about and discover why. 'I finally did a counselling session a couple of years back and found it very interesting. I was due to do six, but I never went back after the first one. 'When you are in that dressing room, it's all emotion and high-octane. You are this big band of brothers. You are all just ordinary individuals with not that much in common, so why would you want to do reunions. I'm not sure why you would want to do them. 'Gerry (McEntee, his long-time midfield partner back when they were kings) phoned me the other day. 'He said, 'We are all going down to Royal Tara, 15 or 16 of the lads, we are playing nine holes. What are you at?' 'I said 'nothing' so he asked me to come down with him. Gerry would be good at that. Gerry would always try to get me involved. We were buddies in the middle of the field. We would be buddies. I said, 'no' 'He said, 'You don't have to play golf, just come down for a pint with the lads and a bite to eat.' 'Again, I said, 'no.' Friday night is a big night for me, an important night, I'm not going to share it. It would be lovely to meet the lads for three or four hours, but you decide in you heard that you are not going to do that. 'Sean Boylan had a big 80th birthday, there were about 5,000 people at it, but I didn't get an invite. Rourkey had a 65th or a retirement gig and I didn't get an invite. For half a second after I heard about the latter, I was a bit put out. 'But I think both of them knew, I wouldn't have wanted to go. So they didn't invite me. They were actually being kind to me. . I think they know who I am.' The interactions he does have - walks with the great corner-back Bob O'Malley and McEntee - are typically profound. 'When Bob and I meet up, it's not a handshake, it's a hug, a big hug, full of meaning. We talk about life, mortality, politics, Ukraine, Gaza, anything and everything. But football just wouldn't come up in conversation.' Mortality invaded Hayes's private space in 2010. Diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, he spent much of the next decade in and out of St. James's Hospital, undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The experienced altered his view about both life and death. 'I was afraid, fearful at the start. But the older you get to 63 and you see so many people dying. 'When you get to mid 60s, you think you should have another 10 years left, but then you look, even this last week or two, and you see all the people - like Jota at 28 - dying. 'It makes you realise that you have no entitlement to live as long as you'd like to live. 'You've got to be ready for anything and I think once you go through an illness you are. You've got out of jail once. 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He wants to return to Meath's restoring of the old psychic connection with their people after becoming the first team since Offaly in 1982 to defeat Dublin, Kerry and Galway in the same summer. 'It is important for me that the players I played with don't think I don't like them or that I'm being disrespectful. The same with the young Meath lads now. 'If I was on the team and I read about an old Meath footballer saying they didn't go to Meath matches any more, I would have said to myself, 'well he is some arrogant f**ker.' 'I thought Meath were magnificent the last day. I thought their goose was cooked when Galway came back and hit them with those goals. But they showed amazing character to come back. It was the first time in a long, long time that I felt stirred by it. 'I just felt very proud of those young lads in the green jersey when I saw the last 15 minutes. A Meath team standing up for the first time in 20 years and it did stir my soul a little bit (here he laughs in a self-deprecating fashion). Ah no it did, I felt it and I thought 'I love that spirit.' 'I haven't had that feeling in a long time to be honest.. It was a good feeling to watch and feel really proud of them, feel just a twinge of emotion.'
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Eamon McGee, an All-Ireland winner in 2012, was talking on a podcast last week. It was powerful. 'We were able to play in a zone where very few people can go, where you are physically exhausted but you keep going. Most footballers back off from that place. They say, 'Naw, naw, that's me done'. We were consistently in that zone and that's better than any medal.
The 42
3 hours ago
- The 42
'Like that older brother that you don't want to let down' - Dublin club glory to Meath manager
WHEN THE 2KM runs started up after their league games, there were no objections among the players. The call to slog it out came after three of those matches. Or maybe it was four? Kilmacud Crokes captain Shane Cunningham can't quite remember. But what he can recall is that the buy-in was unquestionable. Everyone on the line. Everyone in agreement that this was the remedy for losing an All-Ireland club final after extra-time. This was ground zero for the Stillorgan-based side. They would not be denied again. The concession of that late goal against Kilcoo was powering them through every stride. It was still a raw and fresh memory from just a few weeks beforehand. And behind every hard yard was their manager Robbie Brennan. He was selling them a vision for what these 2km runs could bring. 'We've played this game but we're going to put in the extra time now. We're going to do this 2km run. I want everyone to do it to the best of their ability.' It was the launchpad of Kilmacud's 2022-2023 campaign, and a defining moment in Brennan's tenure. 'It was just his attitude when he turned up for training,' says Cunningham. 'It was like a smile on his face and just good fun. 'Initially when we came back from Kilcoo, no one wanted to be there. So when Baggio wasn't feeling sorry for himself it was kind of hard to be feeling sorry for yourself.' A disappointed Shane Cunningham after Kilmacud's loss to Kilcoo in the 2022 All-Ireland final. Ken Sutton / INPHO Ken Sutton / INPHO / INPHO **** He's always been Baggio to Cunningham. Or Baj for short. Everyone who knows him knows him as Baggio. The nickname has followed him ever since he missed a penalty for Kilmacud Crokes on the same day that Italy's Roberto Baggio also suffered the same fate during a shootout in the 1994 World Cup final against Brazil. Even now, as he prepares to manage the Meath footballers into their first All-Ireland semi-final since 2009, it continues to be his identifier. His birth name would be an unnatural sound. 'I can't even remember calling Robbie,' says Cunningham. 'I might call him Robbie to other people, but it would be more Baggio or Baj [to him]. If someone's asking me, 'Is Robbie here?' You'd be looking around and thinking, 'Who's Robbie?'' **** Advertisement There's a certain irony attached with Brennan's idea for the 2km runs. During his own spell as a footballer for Kilmacud Crokes, he was not renowned for being an enthusiastic trainer. His former teammate, and two-time All-Ireland winner with Down, Conor Deegan, said in a recent interview with the Irish News that Brennan was a 'lazy bugger.' Mick O'Keeffe's playing career also crossed over with Deegan and Brennan. And while he can appreciate that sentiment, he wouldn't quite use that term. 'He [Brennan] didn't enjoy training,' says O'Keeffe, who won three Dublin SFC titles with Kilmacud Crokes. 'He was tall and if he got himself that bit fitter, he probably could have gone on to another level because he was a lovely footballer. 'I was one corner [forward] and Ray Cosgrove was in the other corner. We got all the credit, we scored all the points and all the goals. Robbie was the one who was catching the ball and giving it to us.' Brennan is a year older than O'Keeffe. After soldiering through the underage grades together, they broke through to the senior squad together just after Kilmacud's first senior All-Ireland success in 1995. Former Dublin players Johnny Magee and Ray Cosgrove were also part of that emerging group. A new generation of talent hoping to leave their own imprint on Kilmacud's growing legacy. 'We would have been the young upstarts coming into that very successful dressing room. You needed to be a big personality to survive in that dressing room,' says O'Keeffe. 'You wouldn't want to be a shrinking violet.' **** When Brennan's time as Kilmacud Crokes manager concluded last season, Cunningham was asked to give a speech. The players already knew that Brennan was leaving to become the new Meath manager, but there was nothing but support for their departing general. In fact, they wanted to give him a Dublin four-in-a-row success as a parting gift. Cuala, however, crashed that party by defeating them by a point in the final. It was up to Cunningham to say something that would honour Cunningham's six seasons of service. Something to mark the three-in-a-row they had achieved between 2021 and 2023, and the fourth Dublin title they won in 2018. There was also three consecutive Leinster titles to thank Brennan for, along with an All-Ireland title in 2023. Johnny Magee and Robbie Brennan pictured together before the 2018 Leinster quarter-final between Kilmacud Crokes and St Peter's Dunboyne. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO Cunningham chose this moment to make a confession: he was disappointed when Brennan was announced as joint-manager with Johnny Magee in late 2017. The Kilmacud hurlers had just hired Anthony Daly as their manager, and Cunningham felt the footballers should be aiming for someone with a CV that was comparable to a two-time All-Ireland winner who had managed the Dublin hurlers to a Leinster title in 2013. Cunningham, now in his fifth season as a senior player, also felt time was not on his side. Kilmacud had not contested a senior county final since 2012, and their last championship title was in 2010. St Vincent's and Ballyboden were All-Ireland winners in 2014 and 2016 respectively, and Cunningham feared that Kilmacud were falling further from view. 'I can remember feeling that I was worried that I'd never win a county championship. 'And then you're thinking, 'another managerial appointment, and if it's not the right one, it's another three years wasted'. And then you're 27 or 28, it [your career] can quickly go by. By the end of 2017, that was definitely at the forefront of my mind. 'We got Robbie, who had been selector on the previous management team. We hadn't done so well and Robbie didn't have too much of a managerial experience. He paired up with Johnny, but it was a bit underwhelming. 'That was kind of the feeling for a few of us when they took over.' Within a few training sessions, Cunningham could feel the dial moving. The training style implemented by Brennan and Magee was an instant hit and Brennan's tactical knowledge was particularly impressive. 'It was straight away to be honest. I was kind of blown away by how tactically astute Robbie was in terms of identifying threats and trends of other teams. He was big on matchups and coming up with a plan to negate certain players. I was very impressed in the lead up to those championship games. 'When they came in, it was kind of an attack, attack, attack. Definitely we were allowed to express ourselves, take risks, a lot of kick passing. Throughout that campaign, we had really good games, really good victories, performances were really good.' Brennan and the Kilmacud Crokes team after the 2022 Leinster final. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO **** On Friday, 29 January, 1999, the Irish Independent published an article carrying the headline, 'Brennan back to beef up Kilmacud attack.' It was the weekend of game three in the Leinster club final between Dublin champions Kilmacud Crokes and Éire Óg of Carlow. The first game on 6 December produced a scoreline of Éire Óg 1-6 Kilmacud Crokes 0-9. The replay was seven days later and ended seven points apiece. Brennan didn't feature the first day but came on as a substitute in the 50th minute of the replay. Incidentally, he replaced O'Keeffe the second day out. Brennan started in the third installment and capped his promotion with three points from play as Kilmacud succumbed to a 1-11 to 0-11 defeat. 'That third game was like a whole new season,' O'Keeffe remembers. 'The Dublin campaign is quite long and bruising and I think we ran out of steam going into that Leinster championship. Robbie came back into that. When we needed him in Dublin, he was excellent.' Despite losing his starting position between the county and Leinster championship, Brennan accepted his place in the squad. According to O'Keeffe, he wasn't a player 'who'd be challenging a manager or throwing his toys out at a pram.' Experiencing the difficulties of that transition is something that O'Keeffe feels has benefitted Brennan throughout his managerial career. 'I think from a management perspective, if you're not the superstar all the time and you're struggling to get in and out of a team, it probably gives you a little bit more emotional intelligence when you're dealing with lads who are on squads and you have to keep everybody happy. 'Sometimes these superstar players struggle in management because they are so used to everyone having the highest standards and so used to always playing.' Mick O'Keeffe on the ball for Crokes in the 1998 Leinster semi-final against Stradbally. Patrick Bolger / INPHO Patrick Bolger / INPHO / INPHO Brennan transferred clubs in 2002, switching to St Peter's in Dunboyne, later becoming a resident there. The club is home to his wife, and his brother-in-law, David Gallagher, who is a Dunboyne stalwart. It was an interesting development as Brennan had already played against the Meath outfit during that 1998-1999 campaign, at the Leinster quarter-final stage. Three years later the sides met again, with Brennan now playing in Dunboyne's black and amber strip. Again, Kilmacud prevailed with a 1-14 to 0-3 result to advance to the Leinster semi-finals. 'We would have kept in touch,' says O'Keeffe reflecting on that 2005 encounter. 'I suppose like at that point I was coming to the end of my time with Crokes as well. Related Reads Trevor Giles: 'I am just delighted that Meath are going well. That's the main thing' 'I couldn't miss out' - Meath star battles back from serious leg injury Here's this week's GAA inter-county schedule and TV coverage 'There was nobody having a go at him. There was a bit of banter after the game but we won it pretty comprehensively.' Another noteworthy link followed in the 2018 season as Dunboyne and Kilmacud Crokes played out a third meeting in the Leinster quarter-final. By this stage, Brennan was back in the Kilmacud camp as manager to oversee a 16-point victory. **** The highlights reel of Brennan's stretch with Kilmacud Crokes is an impressive set of memories. But there were some lows to endure too. A shock defeat to Longford's Mullinalaghta in the 2018 Leinster left some scars, while that All-Ireland defeat to Kilcoo also stung. Brennan steered the club through controversy too. The transfer of Galway's Shane Walsh was certainly divisive, as were the circumstances of their 2023 All-Ireland win over Glen. Kilmacud briefly had 17 players on the pitch in the dying moments. In those challenging moments, Brennan distinguished himself as a leader. 'I think when Walshie was joining, it was kind of obvious that he was going to go into the team and maybe someone was going to lose out,' Cunningham explains. 'But for us, it wasn't like whoever was losing out. I lost out last year in terms of I didn't start a few games. It wasn't a case of lads being unhappy with Baggio or Walshie. It was very much, we're in this together. 'We probably had a few crushing blows as well against Mullinalaghta and Kilcoo and definitely 100% Robbie was picking us up off the floor on those occasions. It's something he's really good at. He seems to just get on with it with a smile on his face. He brings the energy and fun back into the game.' Robbie Brennan after Meath's famous victory over Galway to book their place in the All-Ireland semi-finals. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO When Cunningham looks at the Meath team today, he can identify a confidence in the players that Brennan imparted to the Kilmacud crew. It's the same psychological influence that convinced the Kilmacud players to commit to those 2km runs. The Baggio formula has already produced results against Dublin, Kerry and Galway. Meath will lean into it again later today against Donegal. 'I describe him as one of the lads,' says Cunningam. 'He's not really a father figure to us, he's nearly like a big brother. He is one of the lads. 'He's nearly like that older brother that you have so much respect for and you don't want to let down.' *****
