by Adam Moynihan

Is there a tougher gig in Irish public life than being bainisteoir of the Kerry senior football team? Think about it. Losing is not an option. Others in high-profile positions – GAA managers in rival counties, the head coach of the Irish soccer team, even Taoisigh and other high-ranking politicians – are not held to such high standards. (Some of the latter cohort have been failing successfully for years.)

Many good Kerry men have discovered this for themselves. The terms of legends like Mick O’Dwyer and Páidí Ó Sé and basically every other Kerry manager in the past 50 years ended unpleasantly. The All-Irelands weren’t rolling in. The pressure built. Hard decisions were made.

Jack O’Connor was facing the same fate. After securing a hard-won All-Ireland in the first year of his third reign in 2022, two more right good chances slipped by in 2023 and 2024. They should have beaten Dublin. They should have beaten Armagh. They came up short.

There is an unwritten Rule of Three for managers of the Kerry football team: if you go three years without winning an All-Ireland, you have failed. Thanks for the memories. Who's next?

It was widely assumed that O’Connor was going to stand aside this year even if Kerry did go all the way. Bowing out with a fifth All-Ireland would have been ideal. Realistically, the chances of going back-to-back would be slim – bar Jim Gavin’s run with Dublin, no other manager has won consecutive All-Irelands in the modern era. His legacy assured, the 64-year-old could retire in peace.

But that was an enormous ‘if’. Several doubts lingered over Jack, his newly assembled management team, and his players coming into 2025. Even as the season progressed, it was hard to get a handle on where Kerry ranked amongst the contenders. The new rules didn’t help in that regard. They added another layer of uncertainty. Teams that looked like world beaters one week looked awful the next. Pundits were predicting the most open championship ever.

The shocking defeat to Meath in Tullamore was a landmark moment in Kerry’s campaign. The fact that six starters, including Seánie O’Shea and Paudie Clifford, were missing was a strong mitigating factor but the performance was as bad as I’ve seen in my time as a journalist covering the team. It was just a total malfunction, primarily around the middle third where they were devoured by a hungrier and, it seemed, better prepared opponent.

Not many Kerry people witnessed it – the travelling crowd wasn’t huge and the game wasn’t televised – but the widespread panic the result caused around the county was understandable. How can a team that loses by nine points to Meath win the All-Ireland?

It wouldn’t be totally accurate to say that the knives came out after that game. Some knives came out but a good share of the knives were out since Day 1. O’Connor has his fans but he has also amassed fierce critics over the past 21 years. The way some of these naysayers speak about him, you’d swear he won all those All-Irelands at senior, U21, minor and schools level in spite of himself.

After the Meath defeat, O’Connor’s former soldier Darragh Ó Sé wrote in his Irish Times column that “most people think there’s an air of inevitability about what comes next”. He said he met one person who wanted Kerry to get the hardest preliminary quarter-final draw (Galway), not so it might spur the team into life, but so we could all be “done with it”.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. It’s pretty clear from reading his articles that Darragh is fond of a bit of mischief. Plus, Kerry fell way short of their own standards. Some flak back home was inevitable.

But it later became clear that O’Connor and the players took it personally. I’m not sure how much of the criticism was real and hurtful and how much was embellished in their own heads – the story about Michael Jordan totally fabricating a slight as a means of elevating his own performances comes to mind – but whatever way they spun it, it worked.

They came roaring back to life from the quarter-final stage on, their newfound hard edge personified versus Armagh by the indefatigable Seánie O’Shea who simply refused to take ‘no’ for an answer. O’Shea and his teammates bristled on the pitch en route to a sensational against-the-odds victory and afterwards the manager bristled in the Croke Park media room, taking aim at those within the county who had been “slating” the team. “I’m in the business of building people up, not knocking people,” O’Connor declared, speaking like a man who knew what he was going to say before he said it.

He also referenced a column written by Joe Brolly in which the ex-RTÉ pundit wheeled out that old pub talk classic: “Kerry are a one-man team”. Let’s be real. No one in the Kerry camp could take Brolly seriously unless they were actively engaging in mental gymnastics. That O’Connor would even bring it up was clear evidence that an ‘us versus the world' dynamic was being fostered. It worked that day. Would it sustain them right up to the end of July?

The manner of that Armagh win completely changed the mood of the county. Supporters were back on board in a major way, in no small part due to the unprecedented pleas made by Paul Geaney and David Clifford, both of whom had urged the fans to get behind the team. Was O'Connor involved in this initiative? You'd have to imagine he at least had some say.

All of a sudden everything was rolling in the right direction – and Sam Maguire was back on the table.

But even at this juncture, the chances of Jack O’Connor being in charge of Kerry in 2026 seemed remote. There was a sense that if he managed to pull this one out of the bag, he’d be as well off counting his blessings and getting out of dodge on his own terms.

As it turned out, he did pull this one out of the bag – and he did so in style. Another excellent win over Tyrone followed in the semi-final, a result which teed up an All-Ireland final against a highly-rated Donegal team managed by a highly-rated coach, the talismanic Jim McGuinness.

Much of the pre-game analysis focussed in on whether or not Kerry would be able to live with Donegal’s tactics. The majority of pundits tipped the Ulster champions in a close one, in doing so implying that McGuiness would get the better of O’Connor in the sideline duel.

It was a fear shared by many Kerry people but once the ball was throw in on the last Sunday of July, that fear quickly made way for elation. The Kingdom dominated proceedings from the off, eventually running out 10-point winners with the Clifford brothers to the fore. When it mattered most, Donegal were unable to get a handle on Kerry’s tactics, not the other way around.

That point is crucial. In the end, it wasn’t just mind games and great footballers that got Kerry over the line. Tactically, the champions were basically perfect from the quarter-finals on, outsmarting and outmanoeuvring three Ulster teams en route to an incredibly sweet All-Ireland. The kickout failings against Meath were rectified and the team's game management improved tenfold.

O’Connor cannot claim all the credit here – Cian O’Neill is the team’s head coach and the main architect behind their tactics – but the manager does deserve credit for assembling and managing his backroom team of O’Neill, Aodán Mac Gearailt and James Costello (particularly when several potential candidates reportedly turned their noses up at the roles during the off-season).

Make no mistake, had the team fallen over the line, O’Connor’s detractors would still have been clamouring for change. But this All-Ireland triumph was so emphatic, and O’Connor, his management team and his players so clearly outclassed the competition, the ‘Jack Out’ brigade no longer had a leg to stand on. The spectacular nature of Kerry’s performances from the quarter-finals on have shifted the landscape to the point that it’s almost unrecognisable.

Add to the mix that players like Paudie and David Clifford and Kerry GAA Chairman Patrick O’Sullivan have publicly suggested that they want O’Connor to remain at the helm and it now seems inevitable that the retired schoolteacher will once again be donning the bainisteoir polo shirt when intercounty action resumes next January.

Winning Kerry’s 40th All-Ireland next season will not be easy but there is a consensus that the pieces are in place to be a serious force again in 2026. The new rules suit them and several key individuals are entering their prime years – most notably GOAT candidate David Clifford, who turns 27 at the start of next year.

On a personal level, a sixth title would bring O’Connor level with Gavin as the second most successful county football manager of all time, and just two short of the great Micko, who won eight.

A couple of short months ago, it seemed like there was no reason for Jack to stay.

Now, there is no real reason for him to go.