Jack O'Connor Kingdom abdication may be on hold as new rules a boon to bluebloods

RTÉ News​

a day ago

In his viral rant back in February, Meath manager Robbie Brennan may have asserted that the new FRC designed game was "not Gaelic football" but Kerry proved pretty good at it all the same.
Starting next year, they'll be going in search of a 40th All-Ireland title. Their 30th was claimed in 1986 in what turned out to be the final triumph of Mick O'Dwyer's reign.
As far as the more exacting elements of the Kerry support are concerned, this probably makes it overdue. It took them only 24 years to get from title No. 20 to 30 (1962-86). It'll have taken at least 40 years to bridge the gap between 30 and 40.
Things have been delayed firstly by their own lost decade during the Charlton years and latterly by Dublin's unprecedented hegemony in the 2010s.
The prospect of presiding over a 40th All-Ireland title was put to Jack O'Connor last Sunday evening, in an attempt to sound out whether he was really intent on leaving the Kerry job.
O'Connor had indicated all year that this was likely to be his final campaign in charge and he reaffirmed as much in the aftermath of the All-Ireland victory.
However, something in his tone and phrasing suggested that he might still be persuadable on the matter and the Kerry county board chairman Patrick O'Sullivan said this week they were hopeful he might remain for a crack at the back to back.
Kerry have only done the two in a row on one occasion since '86. O'Connor presided over the first leg of said back to back in 2006 before exiting the role for the first time, enabling Dr Crokes stalwart Pat O'Shea to complete the job.
That year, O'Connor published his startlingly frank autobiography 'Keys to the Kingdom' in which he was assumed to have burned his bridges with the Kerry county board and several of the players as well. He also outlined his grievances with the made men of the 1970s-80s, a clique who were portrayed as having little respect for him at the beginning of his first stint in charge.
Despite all his success over the years, O'Connor has never been subject to unqualified adoration among the Kerry support. Mingling among the fans on the evening of Kerry's league defeat to Mayo in Castlebar earlier this year, the vibe was very much that he'd be gone after this season and no harm either.
His strike rate is now in a similar ballpark to O'Dwyer's, with O'Connor procuring five All-Ireland titles in 11 seasons, while the former won eight in 15 years. Added to that, O'Connor's titles were won with different teams across different eras.
Having so many All-Ireland titles sitting in the memory bank, Kerry football people have taken to ranking them in the satisfaction stakes. Pat Spillane made clear this week that this title sits particularly high in the list, with Kerry having put manners on their 'nouveau riche' northern foes in the knockout series.
For two decades, they've been listening to the Ulster crowd boast of being at the cutting edge of modern football, while talking incessantly of Kerry's soft route through the Munster championship. Now, they've gone and won an unofficial Ulster championship, beating all the big cheeses of northern football by hefty margins.
The suspicion at the start of the year that the new rules would suit them more than any other team proved well founded.
Their two-point stats had been underwhelming in the league but they made full use of that outlet from the All-Ireland quarter-final onwards. They landed five two-pointers apiece against both Armagh and Donegal, their advantage particularly marked against the latter, who scored none at all in the final.
When Tyrone tried a more aggressive defensive tack in the semi-final and pushed out to defend against two-pointers, Kerry found oceans of space in behind and should have scored a barrelful of goals.
David Clifford cut a fairly dejected figure at the end of the 2024 All-Ireland semi-final. He'd been rendered peripheral by the crowded defences that pounced on his every move and had been mainly deployed as a glorified decoy in Kerry's win over Derry in a dismal All-Ireland quarter-final.
At the end of 2025, he looks unstoppable with the main question now being whether he is the greatest Gaelic footballer anyone has seen.
The consensus is tilting that way. Certainly, he looks the most complete player in the history of the sport, as if some executive in the Kerry football factory said "give us something like Colm Cooper again except make him a tank this time".
At the moment, the main counter-arguments are coming from Ulster people advancing the claims of Peter Canavan and lads with Hill 16 avatars in their profile posting the picture of Michael Fitzsimons, James McCarthy and Stephen Cluxton displaying their ninth All-Ireland medals.
From a neutrals' perspective, the 2025 season concluded on a bum note, with three fairly lop-sided games in the semi-final and final.
Before that, the acclaim for the new game among the pundits and the general public was extreme.
In an address to the media before the launch of the All-Ireland knockout series, Jarlath Burns, who had assembled the new FRC and appointed Jim Gavin as chairman, proclaimed it a job well done and noted that the word 'classic' was now being regularly applied to games in Gaelic football as opposed to just hurling.
There were plenty of dissidents among the managerial and coaching fraternity, many of whom were chafing at the restrictions on their tactical imaginations.
Kieran McGeeney was the most consistent critic, making it clear that he regarded the 'lump-it-out-there' kick-out rules as random and lowbrow and only introduced at the behest of dinosaur pundits.
After the quarter-final loss, 'Geezer' sighed he was more or less helpless when they were destroyed on kick-outs in the second half: "Listen, that's what we (the public) want. We just want to be able to kick the ball out and make it 50:50. People find that more exciting."
Former FRC member Malachy O'Rourke also became less enamoured of the new kick-out regulations after returning to the inter-county managerial circuit.
The Football Review Committee are not inclined to call it a day and there are a new set of sandbox games planned with a view to further fine-tuning.
There are soundings that the FRC now feel they were too hasty in ditching the four-point goal after last November's televised inter-provincial trial games. The overall goals tally was slightly up on 2024, although there were so few last year, this isn't considered much of a boast.
With the two-point option now proving decisive in games, there is a feeling that they could do with restoring the premium value of a goal.
There are trials being run on restricting the handpass, though similar exercises before had apparently resulted in players poking lateral five-yard footpasses to one another.
Still, the handpass, the bete noire of the traditionalists, remained as prevalent as ever, with the ratio of handpasses actually increasing in 2025.
At the end of 2024, the talk was that the age of empires was over and we'd arrived at a new democratic era in Gaelic football.
That was borne out in Leinster, where Meath's win over Dublin was one of the landmark results of the summer, ending the capital's 15-year unbeaten run in the province. Louth subsequently won their first provincial title in 68 years, on a day when the Croke Park atmosphere had an All-Ireland final like grandeur.
For the preceding years, the Leinster football final had been a zombified affair, with Dublin collecting routine title after routine title in front of fast dwindling crowds.
But the season ends with predictions that another spell of Kerry dominance is looming, in light of the emphatic manner in which the All-Ireland was won and their excellent age profile.
The finely-tuned zonal defences in Ulster have proven inadequate against the elite forward units under the new rules and a rethink is required.
Tyrone have a wave of decorated Under-20 players coming, although some of their veterans - Peter Harte, Mattie Donnelly - are coming close to the end of their careers.
Dublin, challengers in Leinster for a change, are still to appoint a new manager and haven't been pulling up trees at underage level in recent years. Despite their manager's misgivings, Meath were one of the biggest beneficiaries of the FRC's handiwork though the semi-final pasting was a sobering afternoon.
After a strong start to the year, Galway struggled to find their rhythm and again struggled to get Damien Comer on the pitch. Their defence had difficulty working the ball out with costly turnover goals conceded against both Dublin and Meath. It was a year of upheaval of Mayo, who failed to find any forward momentum.
Kerry have found the back-to-back a tough ask in the modern era and they may struggle to replicate the siege mentality they brought to the All-Ireland series this year. But regardless of who is the manager and the tweaks that the FRC have planned, they look intimidatingly well placed for the next couple of years.