Seán Moran: O’Connor and Joyce share same ambition but contrasting pressures

One of the more intriguing aspects of Sunday’s All-Ireland football final will be the clash of management – and not because it has the potential to turn into some kind of sideshow in itself.

Neither is it likely to have huge influence during the match; that work has to be largely done by now and beyond effecting running repairs, the destiny of the Sam Maguire will be determined by those on the field.

It’s likely that both managements either by instinct or simply hard experience would accept that. What binds Jack O’Connor and Pádraic Joyce is the transparent ambition with which they came to their respective roles and what differentiates is the contrasting pressure.

Each of them has also sought outside coaching assistance, which has in either case experience of Sunday’s opponents. Cian O’Neill went to Galway after a well-travelled career that included training Kerry when they won the 2014 All-Ireland.

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Jack O’Connor and Kerry exactly where they want to be

Coincidentally, Paddy Tally who was recruited by O’Connor – despite queasy sensibilities in Kerry due to the Ulsterman’s association with defensive football with Tyrone in Mickey Harte’s first All-Ireland success – also spent time in Galway as coach to Joyce’s predecessor Kevin Walsh.

O’Connor was appointed to bring home Sam Maguire and anything short of that will be treated as failure. Joyce frequently talks about winning the All-Ireland but having guided Galway to a first final in 21 years, is under no significant pressure, apart from perhaps himself, to deliver anything more than a competitive performance.

In some eyes, O’Connor has carefully plotted the journey up the mountain since being appointed last autumn and it remains only for him to plant the flag. He has scrupulously attended to all of the difficulties that were foreseen after last year’s championship exit against Tyrone under his predecessor, Peter Keane.

At his unveiling in Tralee just over nine months ago, O’Connor walked a couple of tightropes: one, his complicated departure from Kildare and two, whether he had been wise to share his thoughts on Kerry’s 2021 shortcomings with Paul Rouse on the Irish Examiner podcast the previous August.

“Basically,” he explained patiently, “I was asked a couple of tactical questions, like where did Tyrone have it over Kerry. I said their use of the ball and their ball retention. I said that Kerry hadn’t come up against as organised a defensive system and players found it hard to cope with that. It was all fair game and all analysing the game.”

Both Kerry and Galway came to this year’s national league with specific aspirations. Although O’Connor indicated impatience with the assumption that he had been determined to win the Division One title because that’s what he always does the year of All-Ireland success.

Dismissing such talk – “I’m not into piseogs at all now” – after walloping Mayo in April’s final was probably as much about damping down the rising temperature of All-Ireland talk as a serious attempt to portray verifiable precedent as superstition.

In all three of his previous All-Ireland wins, O’Connor has had to deal with a team and county traumatised by championship defeat by Tyrone, which is exactly where he came in this time as well.

In the circumstances, taking the league seriously made sense. In his three All-Ireland years, Kerry finished in the top two and qualified for the knockout stages. They may not have set out to win the title but it was important to maintain interest as long as possible.

In his memoir, Keys to the Kingdom, he recounts how relieved he was in 2006 to be back in an NFL final, describing the previous year’s mood in the weeks between failing narrowly to progress in the league, and the championship as, “out of the league and listless”.

Joyce didn’t set out to win Division Two but simply to get out of it. He had been rendered speechless by relegation from Division One the year before after Galway handed over a five-point lead in the 68th minute to Monaghan.

It capped a luckless two years in the league for the manager whose team were motoring in his first season up to the pandemic shutdown in 2020.

They also were forced into the straitjacket of pure knock-out championship both years, losing the Connacht final to Mayo and having no opportunity to survive and, importantly, to develop in the All-Ireland qualifiers.

If O’Connor is keen to avoid All-Ireland talk, Joyce has had no such inhibitions. As early as one of his first interviews as manager on Galway Bay FM, he talked freely about winning an All-Ireland in his first year.

The context was that he had limited patience with two- and three-year plans when success could be targeted more immediately. That was after all, his playing experience when called into the Galway panel by John O’Mahony in 1997 after winning a Sigerson with IT Tralee (TRTC, as it was then).

A year later the county had its first All-Ireland in 32 years. He was a brilliant footballer but also possessed a cool head, as demonstrated when scoring a goal in the 1998 All-Ireland final against Kildare – dummying his way around the goalkeeper and tapping into the empty net.

As a young player he was talkative and opinionated about the game. I remember him on international duty in Australia in 2001 giving a detailed run-down on how Galway had strategised their way through Meath in that year’s All-Ireland final.

For all that he is blunt and impatient, Joyce has dragged Galway back to the top table. He won’t easily accept blandishments about chalking defeat down to experience for application at some indeterminate point in the future.

sean.moran@irishtimes.com