by Adam Moynihan

Apart from the odd throwaway remark about an in-form player potentially catching his eye, Jack O’Connor really shouldn’t be on our minds right now. Within the new split season model, September should be a time of rest and relaxation for the Kerry manager, albeit with a bit of research at club matches thrown in for good measure.

Kerry haven’t played in two months and we are four months away from the start of the 2025 season. The pressure should be off, or at least a bit less intense.

That is not the case, however, as the overhaul his management team has undergone in recent weeks has left O’Connor facing unseasonable scrutiny.

Eyebrows were raised when O’Connor’s two selectors, Mike Quirke and Diarmuid Murphy, both walked away from the set-up. When confirming his decision, Quirke gave no reason for leaving after what he termed “three largely enjoyable years”. Murphy doesn’t appear to have made any statement at all. For their part, Kerry GAA and the manager have been quiet on the double departure too.

Given the lack of a proper explanation, fans are naturally wondering if all was rosy in the Kerry management team’s garden. Was there tension behind the scenes? The second-hand information doing the rounds at the moment is that all was not rosy and the outgoing selectors did not feel that their input was 100% valued. Maybe some or all of the relevant parties can come out and contradict that, but that’s the prevailing story for now.

Once it was known that Quirke and Murphy were out, the scramble to find replacements began. According to Tony Leen of the Irish Examiner, several candidates turned Kerry and O’Connor down, among them legendary former players Tomás Ó Sé, Kieran Donaghy, Eamonn Fitzmaurice (also a former Kerry manager), Declan O’Sullivan, Colm Cooper and Séamus Moynihan. If that is accurate, and Leen has suggested even more people were approached, it makes you wonder where the men who were eventually appointed as selectors, namely James Costello and Aodán Mac Gearailt, were on the longlist.

Costello managed the Kerry minors for four years between 2019 and 2022 and last year he was a selector under Mark Fitzgerald in Clare. Mac Gearailt was a regular starter for the Kerry seniors around the turn of the millennium and in recent years he is best known for his work as a co-commentator on TG4 (and a very good co-commentator, it must be said).

The pair might turn out to be shrewd appointments and their names don’t look out of place on a Kerry management ticket but when higher profile individuals were linked it is bound to affect the fans’ perspective. Perhaps more pertinently, that so many of those high-profile candidates apparently said ‘no’ can hardly be interpreted as a positive.

Hiring Cian O’Neill as a head coach is another move that does not appear to have been greeted with widespread enthusiasm by the green and gold faithful. From what I’ve seen and heard, it would be fair to say that the reaction locally has been mixed.

O’Neill has been around the block a few times having previously worked with Limerick, Tipperary, Mayo, Kerry, Kildare, Cork and, for the last three seasons, Galway. He helped Kerry to win the All-Ireland in 2014 in what was the second of his three years under Eamonn Fitzmaurice.

Revisiting the past and rehiring a previous coach is rarely going to generate massive excitement amongst a team’s fanbase. It’s a bit like sitting through an old movie you’ve seen before. (Jack O'Connor might argue that some movies are worth a second watch. And a third, for that matter.)

Whatever some supporters might think, players who have worked with O'Neill say he is excellent at what he does.

He also appears to have a sentimental attachment to Kerry GAA. As recently as last year he spoke to The Irish Times about how much he enjoyed his time here, saying he would have stayed for 10 years were he not tapped up for the manager’s role in his native Kildare. “I loved it down there,” he told Denis Walsh. “I loved the players. I loved the management, the county board. Everything they did was just class.”

Not many of those 2014 players are still around – just Paul Murphy, Paul Geaney and Stephen O’Brien from this year’s panel – but being familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Kerry football, and Kerry footballers, may work to his advantage.

The managerial shake-up also sees head coach Paddy Tally being repurposed as a performance coach (a role previously held by Tony Griffin); Brian Kelly replacing Brendan Kealy as goalkeeping coach; and Pa McCarthy coming in as an assistant coach.

All told it is a significant upheaval for the team and one that was not anticipated or necessarily desired. After the season ended in disappointing fashion with the largely unexpected defeat to Armagh in the All-Ireland semi-final, it was felt that a new voice – possibly a forwards coach – would be a welcome addition to the dressing room. But the feeling was that tweaks were needed, not major changes.

The fact that the entire management team has effectively been disbanded and reimagined, along with the manner in which it has all played out, heaps even more pressure on O’Connor to deliver an All-Ireland in 2025.

While it seems unlikely at this juncture that he will stay on beyond next season either way, coming up short again and signing off with just one All-Ireland in four years with this team will be considered a failure. Of course he will always be fondly remembered for the four All-Irelands he has won, but going out like that would put a dent in his legacy as a Kerry manager.

On the other hand, if he and his new helpers work their magic and deliver No. 39, he will go out a legend. Such is the fickle nature of sport, particularly in Kerry where that comical maxim from Talladega Nights - “if you’re not first, you’re last” – isn’t a joke at all.

After the recent spike in attention coming his way, O’Connor will be hoping that things cool down for the remainder of 2024 before he embarks on what will be one of the most challenging and most important seasons of his career.