Gooch’s watching brief ensures no slip in standards at Dr Crokes

AIB Munster club football final week, and Micheál Burns is listing off some of the reasons Dr Crokes scored 5-20, all from play, in their semi-final.

Nice clean ball into the forwards, players always coming off the shoulder, unselfish passing and thinking and something else about a Cork club being their opposition on the day.

Oh yeah, and Colm “the Gooch” Cooper is sitting on the bench, itching and scratching to come in should any one of the Dr Crokes forwards drop their game.

It’s perhaps the best measure of where the Kerry champions are at right now, and also a fair measure of where Cooper is too – the five-time All-Ireland winner with Kerry, eight-time All Star, and 2017 All-Ireland club winner with Dr Crokes still playing his part off the bench, though certainly not content just sitting on it.

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And play it Cooper did – coming in for Tony Brosnan, who had already kicked 0-4, adding 0-3 in the 18 minutes he was on the field. Dr Crokes ended up with 11 different scorers, Burns himself hitting 1-1 before being replaced, and that team spirit, he says, is one of the main reasons Dr Crokes are back in a third successive final.

Brosnan didn’t actually drop his game. Cooper was sick for a part of the club’s Kerry campaign and lost his place, and that semi-final against Cork champions St Finbarr’s already decided, got his run. It’s not certain Cooper, 35, will start against Clare champions Miltown Malbay in Sunday’s final, but again Burns points to his enduring influence.

“Colm got sick before one of the games, Tony Brosnan came in, and kicked something ridiculous, like 1-13 or 1-12,” says Burns. “If any fella should be playing, he should be playing. Colm obviously wants to be playing and you can see he’s motivated to try and get his place back, but at the same time, he knows he still has a job to do.

“Say in 2017 I wasn’t getting my place and maybe I didn’t react the right way at times, and I might have thrown the toys out of the pram. Looking at the way Colm reacts now it would make you feel a bit guilty for the way you behave sometimes, because this is a man who has won it all in the game.

“He’s been there and done that and now he isn’t getting his place on the team and he could easily pack it in and say, ‘look, I have done my bit’. But no, he still has that hunger. He wants to win more for the club, because he loves the club. He loves the Crokes. He doesn’t care if it’s not his name up in lights, he just wants the club to get that success.”

Most vocal

“As in, in training he’s still the most vocal. He’s encouraging the fellas in his position particularly. He wants everyone to do well. There is not one bit of bitterness there. Colm loves this club and he wants them to do as well as possible, even if he’s not getting as much game time as he wants to.”

Burns, 22, is in like to take over the Kerry captaincy for 2019, given the enduring tradition of allowing county champions nominate their chosen player for the role, but that’s talk for another day.

Losing last year’s Munster final to Cork’s Nemo Rangers still stings, and hence Dr Crokes held nothing back against St Finbarr’s – finishing with a record 21-point winning margin. David Shaw, still only 20, also hit 1-3.

“We’ve been on the road a long time, won an All-Ireland in 2017, and got to a Munster final last year. The secret is just trying to maintain that high standard, and when you’ve got players who’ve won way more than I have, driving standards, still want to win, then you think if they have the motivation. I better have it too, or else there’ll be someone else playing in my place.

When you play against Cork teams you do subconsiously play that bit better

“It’s not really a fear thing either. Even the lads on the bench know they have a job to do too, contribute just as much as anyone else, and more just a want for success than thinking some fella is going to take your place. We know we have a good side at the moment, and want to win as much as we can while we have it.

“And you can be training all you want, but it’s match time you really have to perform. And I’ve been maybe guilty of that in the past, playing brilliant in training and not bringing it out on the football field.

“And coming back this year you could see we were reinvigorated, and again them older fellas are setting that bar so high, and expect you to step up to that level. And when you play against Cork teams you do subconsciously play that bit better. But we just wanted to get back to a Munster final and right the wrongs of last year.”