O'Shea to finish the job with Dr Crokes

GAA:The appointment of Páidí Ó Sé to the Clare football manager's job completes the list for next season. In Ó Sé's own county, Kerry, the successor to All-Ireland winning manager Jack O'Connor will be confirmed as Pat O'Shea tomorrow night.

Clare have made no decisions yet on Ó Sé's backroom personnel or selectors but it is believed that outgoing joint-manager Donie Buckley will be involved in the new management team. The Clare board will hold a media conference in Ennis's Temple Gate on Thursday afternoon.

In Kerry, county chair Seán Walsh has said there will be no problem with manager-elect O'Shea's dual involvement at club and county level. The Dr Crokes manager, who has been announced as the county executive choice to take over the All-Ireland champions, guided his club past Nemo Rangers at the weekend to reach the provincial final.

There the Killarney club will be hot favourites to proceed to the All-Ireland stages at the expense of either Aherlow or The Nire, who have to replay their semi-final this coming weekend in Dungarvan.

This means O'Shea is likely to retain his club involvement into the New Year until they finish up either in February or on St Patrick's Day.

"It's not a big problem," according to Walsh. "The team will be away on holiday until the middle of January so preparations for the league won't start until then. The club championship has to be over by March. Pat will be able to stay involved until then after which he'll be standing down."

There is an encouraging precedent for this double commitment. When Mickey Harte was appointed Tyrone manager five years ago he was still guiding his club Errigal Ciarán to the Ulster title and into the All-Ireland series where they were ultimately beaten in the semi-finals by eventual champions Nemo Rangers.

These recent appointments bring to five the number of Kerry managers in charge of intercounty sides, together with Liam Kearns in Laois, Mickey Ned O'Sullivan in Limerick and Wicklow's Mick O'Dwyer.

All told, there are 12 new managerial appointments for next year but only five of them are actually new to intercounty management: ironically O'Shea with Kerry; former Tyrone player Jody Gormley (the county's only other scorer apart from Peter Canavan in the 1995 All-Ireland defeat by Dublin and coach of this year's Hogan Cup winners Abbey CBS from Newry) who has taken charge of Antrim; Donal Keoghan in Cavan; new Tipperary manager John Owens (who played on the Leitrim side to win the historic 1994 Connacht title but who is a Tipperary native); and in Down, Ross Carr, twice an All-Ireland winner in his playing days and a former county minor manager.

Among the other new appointments are men with significant achievements behind them at intercounty level. Obviously O'Dwyer and Ó Sé have led teams to All-Ireland titles and different counties (three in O'Dwyer's case and two in Ó Sé's) to provincial success.

Kearns managed Limerick to a historic first under-21 Munster success as well as a first senior victory over Cork in 38 years. In Meath, Colm Coyle has experience at this level with Monaghan, with whom he engineered a spectacular first-round win over then All-Ireland champions Armagh - coincidentally on the same day as Kearns's Limerick defeated Cork.

Joe Kernan is still in charge of Armagh and is the doyen of next year's football managers, as he heads into his sixth season in charge and he has indicated it will be his last.

In cumulative terms, O'Dwyer is about to embark on his 11th successive season in management - to go with the 20 years he had previously spent managing intercounty teams - and Cork's Billy Morgan will be four years into his second stint with the county having had 10 uninterrupted years, 1986-'97, before his return to the position in 2004.

Another long-termer is John O'Mahony, who returned to Mayo 15 years after his last spell in charge of his own county. All told, O'Mahony has racked up 16 years in management between his first term in Mayo and his years with Leitrim and Galway.

Ó Sé, meanwhile, has claimed that sources within the Kerry camp conspired against him getting the Kingdom job for a second time. He was speaking on Eamon Keane's Lunchtime show on Newstalk.

In his first interview since landing the job, Ó Sé claimed a delegation of Clare selectors visited him in a pub on Friday night and wouldn't leave until they had their positive answer.

"I'm still a Kerryman, a staunch Kerryman. I think I did my best. Undoubtedly, I made plenty of mistakes . . . Now I was not the flavour of the month in Kerry, for some reason or another. I was never going to be in the shake-up to become the Kerry manager. I wasn't going to to get a unanimous approval from the executive of the Kerry County Board.

"The county chairman never had a problem with me . . . most of the executives I don't have a problem with . . . but generally, they wouldn't think that I would be a safe pair of hands, to be honest with you.

"They think, you see, that I make impromptu decisions and I'm indisciplined with time, and other kinds of stuff . . . maybe I might drop my guard."

On being head-hunted for the Clare job, Ó Sé said: "A delegation of Clare officials came down to me in the pub on Friday night and this is the frugal truth of the fact. I met with them and they wouldn't leave the pub without getting yes for an answer so I told them I'd give them a 90 per cent commitment. I had to check it out with the family. So I got the green light from the boss, which is my wife. And away we go."

But Kerry still has a place in his heart: "One of the highlights for me was the Ó Sé family brought the Sam Maguire up the night before last and my young fella, Páidí Óg, slept with the Sam Maguire. Now if that isn't passion for Kerry football, you get somebody to come up with a better one."