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Irish Times

Kerry's Jack O'Connor: ‘A few pundits down our way let themselves down'

Jack O'Connor lives for this stuff. A Kerry team coming to Croke Park as underdogs. A Kerry public doubting, questioning, whispering in corners. The sun in the sky and the ball in the air and a point to prove. And prove. And prove again. This is Jack's bailiwick. He's won four All-Irelands in three different stints as Kerry manager. He's been involved in Kerry teams at various levels since 1992 and has overseen incredible success and glory days. And still he never seems more at home than when he has a pebble in his shoe and his nose out of joint. Kerry didn't so much beat Armagh here as ransack their souls. It's grand being All-Ireland champions until someone gets a run on you. That's when you find out who you are and what you have. Kerry kicked 14 points on the bounce in a quarter of an hour and Armagh's defence of Sam Maguire lay in ashes. Who predicted it? Not many. And if they did, they weren't talking about it landing with such a thump and a bang. Ethan Rafferty has spent the summer getting bigged up as the ultimate kick-out ninja, able to change his mind at will and still land the ball on a sprinkler head. Kerry won 11 out of 14 of his kick-outs in that spell and sped off into the distance with them. READ MORE And so Jack came in to talk to the media afterwards, in the mood to kick some ass and take some names. The GAA press people warned us to put the camera phones away, apparently because 'Jack doesn't like being filmed.' If it made him speak freer, so much the better. He definitely didn't spare the rod anyway. 'I don't think too many people outside the camp saw that performance there,' he said. 'But we were very, very determined. There was ferocious determination in the camp that we weren't going to let the season fizzle out after the Meath game. It may have been difficult for Armagh not to listen to the outside noise where we were being written off and they were being written up.' Kerry man of the match Seán O'Shea celebrates a point with David Clifford. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho Was it fuelled by hurt, Jack? 'Look, one of the great motivators in life is trying to prove people wrong. We were being portrayed as a one-man team. I saw somebody writing this morning that said the only Kerry player worthy of being called a Kerry player was David Clifford. Now, David is a great player but David will tell you that there was a fair supporting cast there today. 'We think we have a lot of good footballers but I think sometimes we're being judged on different criteria to other teams. For example, Dublin got beaten by Meath in the Leinster Championship and I didn't see any ex-Dublin players coming out slating the team or slating the management like we had down south in our county. There's a sense of commitment to the team and a sense of loyalty to the team. Unfortunately a few pundits down our way let themselves down in that regard.' Jack was on a roll now, a righteous mixture of hurt and defiance. He didn't spell out who he was talking about but you didn't need an AI search bot to make a decent guess. The only-player-worthy line was from Joe Brolly in the Sindo. The few-pundits-down-our-way is a bit broader to parse but one of them is fairly certain to be Darragh Ó Sé in The Irish Times. Even if one man's slating is another's genuine reflection on the mood of the county , all nuance is torpedoed at a time like this. When your team turns expectations on their head, those are the spoils of victory. A scutching of the All-Ireland champions makes things very simple. You Da Man. Everyone else can sit and listen for a minute. Armagh's Barry McCambridge and Andrew Murnin look to stop Brian Ó Beaglaoich of Kerry. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho 'I'm not giving out from my own point of view,' O'Connor went on. 'I'm just saying. I just gave the example. I never hear Dublin players slating the team. They're loyal to the group. They're loyal to the county. They give their support. 'What's to be gained by slating people? It's the easiest thing in the world. I'm in the business of building people up. I'm not in the business of knocking people. I spent all my life coaching underage, schools, minors, under-21s, seniors – every level. I'm in the business of building people, not knocking people. 'I ask people that are knocking the group and knocking people that are involved in the group – look in the mirror and ask what have you contributed? What have you contributed to Kerry football off the field? You know what I mean? It's very easy to knock people. That's how you help Kerry football. Not knocking people.' And with that, he was up and away, his jaw set and his walk full of purpose. Five minutes later, the word came through that they have Tyrone in the semi-final. Jack is a veteran of that bailiwick too. He won't be shy about Kerry's ability to prosper in it. Not after this.