PAIDI O SEA is in good spirits. A little light dances in his famous, cloudy, deadman's eyes. The stories bubble up out of him, his low voice making you lean forward more intently as the punchline nears.
"Do you know what all the talk is down here now," he says, making a big fist of his right hand as he prepares to fell you the latest.
"What?"
"Vinny." And the big fist softly thumps the table.
"Vinny Murphy?"
"Vinny Murphy. Will we pick him? Won't we pick him? Well, I'll tell you what is going to happen here with Vinny Murphy, I'll tell you exactly," Paid stops. He picks up the tape recorder. Looks at it apprehensively, as if he is working out how to defuse it.
"Is this yoke switched on now?"
"It is."
"Oh."
"Go ahead."
"Well, is there anyway of doing this piece without quoting me at all?"
"Not, really Paidi. Sure it would look very strange.
"Well. Let's rewind it and go hack to the beginning."
Whirr. The tape rewinds. Paidi sits in contemplative silence for a minute. The tape is rewound. Paidi is deflated.
"So Paidi, what are you going to do about Vinny Murphy?"
A little more silence.
"Well, like every other player in the county, he will be considered when we fine comb the clubs again after the league campaign is finished.
"That's it? Is that what you were going to say to me before we rewound the tape?"
"Sure, that's all I can say."
"Why so? Is there pressure on you."
"You've no idea. I had no idea before I got this job what I was letting myself in for."
"And is there much pressure on you to pick Vinny Murphy?
"Just say that there is pressure to pick him and pressure not to pick him. Just put that down for the moment."
It is mid afternoon in Ventry. Quiet time in Paidi's pub at Church Cross. If he minds his business a judiciously as he minds his words, Paidi O 56 must be a rich man.
If not rich, happy anyway. No more turbulent times. Just doing the job he has always wanted living in the place he has always loved, running a business which always thrives and surrounded by people who have always cared for him.
Paidi has just had three coachloads through for the lunch trade. Then a party of young people from North Philadelphia hung around awhile, waiting until they could have their photo taken with Paidi.
"Our dad was a big fan," they told Paidi, "this is so exciting."
Paidi wrapped his arms around assorted shoulders, said cheese, wished them well and left them to sip their creamy pints.
Paidi O Se's is a big white barn of a pub with a big grey barn of an extension out the back, a west Kerry landmark, like its owner. Three glorious miles of beach lie just down the road and some of the most beautiful folds of the earth cradle the little crossroads.
Paidi's functional place wins no architectural awards, but nobody takes the spin out to this nook of west Kerry for the architecture. They come to see Paidi, the master of the place. From Tom Cruise to Dolly Parton to Charlie Haughey to half the GAA world in any given summer. They come to see Paidi and sample the warmth of his immense welcome.
"You have to be here," he says, "you have to be here for people when they come in."
It's hard to know if being manacled to his pub is the best thing or the worst thing in Paidi's life, but the affection in which he is held is such that if Paidi was of halt a mind to run for President this year, he'd sweep into the Phoenix Park just on the votes of those who know him.
"I am of Ventry. Come dance with me.
His mind is on higher things than politics, however. In Kerry, a life in football is a life in the public service. The county is enjoying a spring time of quiet optimism. Paidi, the most prominent of the county's public servants, is quietly pleased himself but would like to damp down the bush fires of confidence.
With good reason, too.
Paidi and his co workers are assembling a fine team, harvesting the best of Kerry's well tended underage prodigies and moulding them into a team of talent and confidence. They have everything but experience and an All Ireland senior title. Pressure might just drive them backwards.
They come to Croke Park tomorrow slightly understrength and still very much a work in progress. Dara O Cinneide, the best of the young forwards to have emerged in the past couple of years, is absent through injury, as is Genie Farrell, the diminutive corner forward.
Elsewhere the team is spotted with areas of both potential and concern and contains only seven of the side which lost the All Ireland semi final to Mayo last August. It is drawn almost exclusively from Kerry's successful under 21 squads of the last few years. The county has reached five of the last seven All Ireland under 21 finals.
There is consensus that despite his youth Barry O'Shea of O'Rahilly's is the best full back in the county and that the team has improved significantly in that sector, although the injury which is keeping young - Charlie McCarthy out of the side is keenly lamented.
The half back line looks weaker for the mysterious absence of Laune Rangers's Tommy Byrne, but the decision to send Seamus Moynihan to a wing back posting has unanimous approval. Tomas O Se (brother of Dara and another nephew of Paidi's) is expected to press strongly for the other wing back post during the summer also.
At midfield, William Kirby, who won an All Ireland under 21 title in partnership with Dara O Se, has been harnessed as the junior partner. Most doubts rest here. O Se is immensely talented but young, while the equally youthful Kirby, prior to the League quarter final with Down, had been making slow progress.
The forwards aren't quite settled yet. Maurice Fitzgerald, O Cinneide and Den is O'Dwyer are all certain championship starters, with about eight players battling it out for the other three positions. This summer may just be a year too early for the prodigious Mike Frank Russell and his Laune Rangers club mate Pa O'Sullivan. Kerry leave an AN Other spot open for tomorrow at right corner forward.
How they perform tomorrow against a developing Laois side is a matter of keen interest in a county not usually given to excitement over the League.
A victory offers experience, confidence and the chance of another crack at Cork, whom Kerry beat in the League proper just a few weeks ago.
"It was good to beat Down in that we got a win in Croke Park. We needed that," says Paidi. "We need experience like that. As for maybe playing Cork in the final, we wouldn't have too many worries, the summer is a while away yet."
And the pressure? There shouldn't be pressure in Kerry just now, but there is. There shouldn't be pressure for a county which has won back its provincial crown, holds the All Ireland Under 21 title and has reached the late stages of the League again.
And yet.
Every hand which shakes Paidi's hand is accompanied by a smooth soundtrack of football opinions. There are as many views on what Paidi should be doing as there are Kerry people.
"It's a tough job," says Paidi. "One thing about it that I would find is that although we certainly feel that we can see an improvement, that the team is getting stronger and more confident and we'd be happy that we have a nice team coming along, if we say that to the Kerry public they'll go along with it, and you'll win a Munster final maybe and they'll go along with that, but they want the team in Croke Park on the big day. That's all they want. That's how they judge it."
He picks his words like stepping stones. Everything has to be low key and cautious. The expression of high hopes or harsh words takes place behind dressing room doors.
It is a time of transition for Kerry football. For Paidi O Se, too. The demands of managing the senior football team have made a different man of him. He has tamed his great enthusiasm for talk and company and sends his words forth like grey suited diplomats, picked because they will no damage.
Paidi, the manager, is a fugitive from his own colourful past, hedging around the sensibilities of the county board and keeping out of range of snipers on bar stools.
You come to Ventry with a brain bulging, with Paid O Se stories the truth of which he will politely decline to confirm so long as the tape recorder is running. Sure I couldn't have done half the things they say I did," says the legend.
Paidi, the manager, is a larger than life character, crouching uncomfortably to fit the confines of his job. To see him later on the pitch in Killarney, training his players and excitedly transfusing his pass ion, is to understand that the self suppression is no great sacrifice.
Asked what he brings to the job he makes the usual stations of the cross, acknowledging his players and his co manager Seamus Mac Gearailt and his selectors, but then adds quietly that he brings a love of football a passion for the county and a clear idea of the way he wants to see football played by Kerry teams.
He knows how easy it is draw down criticism upon himself. Last summer, when his young side regained the Munster championship, he gave them the following week off from training. All good and well until Kerry lost their All Ireland semi final to Mayo. Then tales of how much porter had been consumed by the team and manager in Ventry during the famous week off began to circulate. Seemingly, they all lost consciousness some time on the Tuesday and didn't come to for another five days. Thinly veiled criticism seeped out of various quarters and some old hands nodded their heads sagely, as if they'd always expected Paidi to let them down.
Paidi has played his hand well this year, possibly better than most people expected him to during the long period in which he was letting it be known that he would like to manage Kerry.
A few years ago, before a Munster final with Cork, Paid cut loose a little on Radio Na Gaeltachta to the effect that the West Kerry team, which he had managed to a county title, was being unjustly deprived of representation on the county side (Regarding Paidi's loyalty to the west Kerry area, there is a joke in the area about players being left off the county side because they failed Paidi's oral Irish exam). The interview caused a ripple or two of controversy and some discomfort for Paidi. He learned the lesson.
"I was wrong. I was in error. Four or five days before we played Cork, it was the wrong thing to say. The next time I saw Mickey O'Sullivan (the manager at the time) I apologised to him.
He shows a restraint now which borders on paranoia when it comes to dealing with the media. He contributed an analysis column to a national paper for a few years. Now he is resigned to "grinning and bearing it" when he hears the shrill pot shots flying past his ears.
Reticence has served him well. He has left no hostages to fortune, provided no ammunition for detractors, and even within that segment of the county which once resigned itself to "letting Paidi at it" for a couple of years, there is a growing sense of excitement and goodwill.
Until he gives Kerry the big day out in Croke Park, some September soon, Paidi is content to kick to touch.
Take the case in hand. Vinny Murphy is, indeed, a big talking point in Kerry these days. Murphy, playing with the O'Rahilly's club, is working on a GAA related FAS course in the county. There were whispers in February that Murphy was about to slip into a green and gold jersey. Counter rumours circulated later that it would never be so. Friends of Kerry in North America were said to be chief among the parties who would never tolerate such a heresy.
Then Murphy scored seven points from play against Rathmore last weekend. Paidi was there to witness this feat himself. Hard to divine how impressed Paidi was, but just now around Kerry any forward who can catch ball and kick points has an almost luminous quality.
People want to know what Paidi will do and Paidi points out politely that it isn't entirely up to him. Even if it was, with a League semi final looming this weekend, now isn't the time to be worrying about giving Vinny a jersey graft.
"I have to be careful" he says for the umpteenth time. "I don't want to say anything which might upset the team or the people I work with. We are all working well and have a good relationship with the county board. I won't disturb any of that."
Batt Garvey, another legend of Ventry, wanders in. Batt scored three goals (the last disallowed) in the Polo Grounds final 50 years ago. The sight of him sets a smile spreading across Paidi's face.
"Here's a great man of Ventry," he says, calling Batt across, "a great, great man.
The pair of them sit, Paidi filling Batt in on the best players to look out for on this year's under 21 team, as enthusiastic for football as he was when he was brought as a child to make up the numbers on a Gaeltacht team playing an under 14 game in Dingle.
The tape machine is put away and Paidi is in full and joyous flow for a few minutes more before he jumps up and heads out the door to get ready for training in Killarney.
Outside the sun is still bleaching the crossroads, the traffic is quiet and the sea is docile. The most perfect spot on earth. If it weren't populated by a people who get high on football you could throw your hands in the air and shout "pressure, what pressure?"
"Do you know," Paidi says, "some people in the county would disagree, but there is more football spoken about in west Kerry than anywhere else in the country. I would have no doubt about that."
There are many good reasons for hoping that Kerry wins the All Ireland it yearns for this year, not least of which is the fact that if Paidi O Se pulls off the trick of bringing the cup home to the kingdom he might uncork his exuberant personality again and the legend of Ventry might grow to new dimensions.
Meanwhile the "work in progress" sign is still up and the famous face is furrowed with football worries.
