Persistent veteran William Kirby looking for a final flourish

Two ways of looking at this. William Kirby, who lines out for Austin Stacks in tomorrow's Kerry county final, will be 40 next February. Or – just a second now – William Kirby, who lines out for Austin Stacks in tomorrow's Kerry county final, won't be 40 until next February. The man himself likes to go for Door Number Two.

“It’s great!” he says. “To be in a county final is just something I didn’t think would still be on the radar at this stage in my career. The 40th isn’t for a good few months yet anyway so I probably have another few years left in me unless they kick me out.”

Kirby is one of those Kerrymen walking around with All-Irelands to his name that only the knottiest kind of Kingdom nerd would be able to put a number on if they absolutely had to. He won two – in 1997 and 2004 – but rank bad luck robbed him of a couple more.

A cruciate injury in 2002 kept him out for a year and the work he put into getting back and staying back ended up clipping years off the end of his intercounty career.

Cashed out

It was on a cold Killarney night in the spring of 2006 that Kirby’s body quietly cashed out. He’d spent the session battling with Darragh Ó Sé but for once the

fear láidir

from back the west wasn’t the opponent with most in hand over him. This time, it was time itself. Time and miles and enough being enough.

He couldn’t run. He couldn’t turn. The whole left side of his body took to the picket line and the rest of it wasn’t in any shape to turn scab. He walked off the pitch and out the gate and just like that, he was a former Kerry player.

“I had to stop training and go home. I couldn’t go on. I was talking to Jack O’Connor on the phone afterwards and I just said, ‘Look, the body has broken down. I can’t keep going’.

“So I kind of just walked away from it then. When you’re in the intercounty set-up, you can’t be forcing the body to come along with you. You can’t be carrying injuries the whole time. You’re no good to anybody. I just left it go. I didn’t think that I was physically able for that level anymore.

“It was hard because there was a very good team there at the time and they went on to win a couple more All-Irelands. So from that perspective, it was hard to walk away. But the way I looked at it, I just physically couldn’t do it. I needed a break from it.”

Full year

That Kerry team – including Ó Sé, who was only six weeks younger than him – went on to win three more All-Irelands. Kirby – who’d been most people’s man-of-the-match in the 2004 final (albeit that

Colm Cooper

got the official nod) – didn’t kick a ball for a full year after that night.

“I did nothing the whole way through 2006. I couldn’t play with the club, I couldn’t do anything really. I had to stop because I had burnt my body out.

“Getting back from the knee injury and then giving it two really good years, I pretty much just flogged my body until it would take no more. I had a couple of good years with Kerry so I was probably satisfied enough. And I eventually fell back in with the club as well.”

Thereby hangs a tale too. Kirby grew up in Oakpark in Tralee and his first club was Na Gaeil. But his father Bill owned The Brogue pub in Rock Street, deep in the heart of Stacksland. He remembers working behind the bar when the whole Stacks team landed in with the cup after beating Dr Crokes in the 1994 final replay, their 11th county title putting them top of the Kerry roll of honour.

“My dad was always onto me to move to the Stacks,” he says. “I knew all those lads very well and since we had the bar and restaurant right in the middle of Stacks territory, it just made sense. It was a good move for me in terms of trying to get the break with Kerry and get into the county set-up.”

What Kirby couldn’t know then and what nobody in the club would have imagined at the time was that they’d still be sitting on 11 county titles all of 19 years later. Kirby had to wait seven seasons for his first county final and even now, tomorrow will only be his fourth. They were never particularly blessed with luck in their opposition.

The door

The An Ghaeltacht team that beat them in 2001 lost an All-

Ireland

final to Caltra. The Crokes teams that stood in their way in 2010 and 2013 bookended the first Kerry four-in-a-row for 50 years.

“Around 2009 and 2010 we were really knocking on the door. We were training really hard, we had a nice young team, we were making the semi-final and final. But we kept running into the Crokes and we just couldn’t get over them. We met them in a couple of finals and in semi-finals,” says Kirby.

“They were at their peak and they’d come through a few years of bad losses themselves. They’d fallen to South Kerry a few times but they had got over it and now they were totally dominant in Kerry . . .. ”

Stacks face Mid-Kerry tomorrow but at least there’s no psychological barrier to leap for the town club. And for Kirby, the very fact that there’s still a jersey on offer is leap enough.

“I’ve five kids at home and it can be hectic in the evening when I’m heading out to training. My wife mightn’t like to see me going out the door but once I get to training I really love it. Your career is short enough and I’m finding it hard to walk away.”