The Job leaves Paidi speechless

ALL-IRELAND FOOTBALL FINAL: Tom Humphries heaves, pushes and tugs until finally he manages to draga few words from the legendary Kerry boss about . . . well, yerra, you never know.

Kerry Press days are all foreplay and no consummation. Four-and-a-half hours of anticipatory journey and then a rebuff, a slap on the cheek.

Not today.

I have a headache.

I've never done anything like that before.

No means no.

Just what sort of a man do you think I am?

Páidí Ó Sé will let you squeeze his knee but no further. He'll pass the time but he's not loose. If anything, he's a tease. Sure, he says, I'll see you on Saturday, but when Saturday comes he's wary and clammed up.

Two questions into the big interview he makes slits of his eyes. "When is this for?"

He uses that tone of voice old movie actors deployed when they'd say a line like, "hey, just whaddaya tryin' to pull here Mister"?

News that the article is to run the day before the All-Ireland final and not in some winter solstice special hits him hard. He winces. If we were playing chess, which we are in a way, you might say that he switches to the classic "yerra defence".

In the yerra defence, the answer to every question is prepositioned by a sucking in of breath, a slight grimace and the soft exhalation of the word "yerra".

The ensuing answer is purified and distilled through the yerra. All controversial impurities are removed.

What makes you a good manager?

"Yerra. I don't know."

What have you changed about the way you handle players and people over the years?

"Yerra, that's not something I like talking about the week before an All-Ireland final."

Personally, has this been a hard summer?

"Yerra, it has and it hasn't. I wouldn't be one to talk about that now."

Was the loss of your brother a hard blow for you?

"Yerra. . . " Pause. "That's private."

Páidí deflects every question. One suspects he has a capsule of arsenic secreted in his mouth ready to chomp down on if he thinks you are getting anything out of him.

There are a limited number of things he feels comfortable speaking about. How terrific Armagh are. How Kerry can't be sure of their own form. How anything can happen on the big day. The weather.

The job has changed him and the vow of virtual-silence tells its own story. When Páidí took the Kerry job he overshadowed it. He was the story. You couldn't approach the borders of Munster without being beset by Páidí stories. His head wasn't just above the parapet, it was so far above it that the parapet was visible to him only in satellite photographs.

He wanted it though. The Job. He wanted it and was prepared to change for it, shrink for it. So it has diminished him in some ways, grown him in others. He's less of a legend now, more of a man. He's not that great slab above in Ventry like a tourist attraction. He's a dormant volcano.

So, you can't walk into any football bar in Kerry and hear half a dozen wild Páidí stories, but you can watch him apply the lessons he has learned the hard way. You can see him year-in and year-out coping with the doubts which people have had about him.

He's quiet, and in his repose he has proved people wrong. It's frustrating for those of us who want his life to be some wild epic, but quietly satisfying for Páidí.

It surprised him at first to find himself floating above the Kerry scene like a dirigible with his county folk taking pot shots.

"I suppose I knew it, but I was a bit surprised that when I got the job this image was there that I was a wild man from west Kerry and that I shouldn't be let loose.

"But I had things to change and things to learn. It's not all about football. I knew the football part."

He won't speak in cases or specifics, but he has learned about handling people, about how different people need different treatment.

He came into the job with a reputation, which wasn't warranted, as a table-banging, cup-throwing, eyes-bulging type of manager who sent players out on to the field with the message that it would be easier to die out there than come back in defeated and face him.

He was never the monster of myth, and whatever he was has been refined now. There have been unhappy personnel and the odd spat, but Páidí gets good players to play for him. That's what good managers do.

"I'm not the same person I was when I took the job, I suppose, and I'm not the same manager. You get knocks and disappointments along the way that change you. In this job you get plenty of things to think about. In the winters I go back to west Kerry and I think about them.

"I lay low and have a good think. Sure, you'd have to learn something. It's about more than knowing what sort of football you want to see played. You have to know how to get the fellas to play it."

He's learned that in Kerry, where even the stones on the road have hard opinions about football, it's wisest to keep his mouth shut most of the time. A word out of place will be parsed and analysed and deconstructed forever if it is followed by defeat.

Eleven minutes into the interview, he asks if we shouldn't wrap it up here. His face is a picture of discomfort. He's paranoid not just about giving Armagh cuttings to pin on their dressing-room wall, but about giving critics within Kerry anything to whip him with.

He takes a little break to pose for photos. He's a different man when he relaxes for these few moments.

A little redhead wants an autograph.

"And where are you from?" says Páidí.

"Tralee," says the kid.

"Tralee," says Páidí, mock alarmed. "Stacks is it? Wisha, would you not get out to the Gaeltacht and play some proper football?"

The little fella is delighted and a chat ensues, but Páidí glances up a couple of times. You can see he's worried that the exchange will get into print, that Austin Stacks mightn't understand that he's having the crack with a young lad.

"I suppose," he says when he rejoins the adult world, "that over the years I have let criticism get to me.

"As a player, I never really had it, or if I had I knew it was coming because you know when you've played badly. In this job, you are ultimately responsible and even if things go wrong that you can do nothing about, you have to expect it, you know you'll be criticised. That was hard at first."

He speaks about the confidence he's gained though, all these All-Ireland final weeks he's been through, 10 as a player, three now as a manager. He stays focused because it's about Kerry and pride and football."It's a way of life, it's what I was reared in."

The tradition of it. He likes that. Last week he was saying to the lads that this was a young Kerry team, but he could remember watching John O'Keeffe on television playing in the 1970 All-Ireland final and Johnno hadn't shaved his first whiskers yet.

Johnno didn't burn out. He went on to be one of the great Kerry footballers.

Then Páidí trails off and speaks about the advantages of now having O'Keeffe training the team, the sense of it, what Johnno brings. But you take him back and ask him, one of these evenings does he ever glance at John O'Keeffe and think of all the dressing-rooms they shared, all the times, all the games, all the bricks in the history of Kerry football the two of them were responsible for?

He pauses for a moment and smiles for the first time since he began talking. "Yerra," he says, "sure we wouldn't be that sentimental at all."

But he would. He's the very one who would. He could tell you stories and recount games till darkness, but not while he has The Job. There are six million anecdotes held against their will in Páidí Ó Sé's grey head.

Till he's finished proving that he can do The Job, most of them will stay there.