Outsider on the inside, watching those on the outside looking in

In this extract, Jack O'Connorexplains how everyone didn't greet his appointment as the new Kerry football manager with open arms and words of encouragement

I'm an outsider. When you grow up on Toorsaleen you'll be an outsider everywhere you go except your own parlour. In Kerry we make up for our remoteness from the world with our ability at football. It's a cliché, but it's part of the identity of the county and its people, part of the way we express ourselves and project an image of Kerry for others and for ourselves. We win and we win with style. Our own style.

There's a type of footballer, the classic Kerry stylist, who we'll always elevate above all others. The Mick O'Connell or the Maurice Fitzgerald, the man who plays in the style we see ourselves as having invented. The pure footballer. Within the divisions of the county, which are strong and distinct, I think that those of us living down here in South Kerry would see ourselves perhaps in the same way as Kerry sees itself in the bigger picture. We'd feel that we play the purest football, and that the way we play represents us and expresses us.

We are outsiders, though. It's always said that a young fella from South Kerry would have to be twice as good as anyone else before they'd get a look-in on a county team. The townies have that scene sewn up. And then cut the cake again. Within South Kerry, within our own little corner of the Kingdom, we would know that Waterville, with its more genteel, anglicised background and its easy way of winning local championships, would look down on us mountainy men from poor old Dromid, a place which never won a single championship before 2004. Dromid, whose little club was founded originally out of spite for Waterville.

Even within Dromid, our dark mountain of Toorsaleen wouldn't be football country. Here in the outsider county, we're the outsider's outsiders! I nourish myself on that. Sometimes I resent it, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

When I was involved training the schoolboys in the Kerry Techs, back in the early 1990s, I'd say it to the Tralee and Killarney boys, winding them up. They had it handy, I'd say; back in Dromid we were the poor relations, the mountainy men, half savage. I think, because of all that, I would always have felt a little bit of strain in my relationship with Mick O'Dwyer. He's a Waterville man, even though he played a year or so with Dromid when he was younger, and I played three years for Waterville myself when I fell out with Dromid.

A good part of those three years were spent training under him. I remember his enthusiasm mainly. Tactically, he wouldn't have made things complicated for us. Getting the ball to his son Karl was our main ploy! I expected more from him when our paths crossed in later years. I remember going away up to Kildare once for a challenge game when Páidí was in charge and I was a selector. This was around 1997. We were in Newbridge, and Dwyer, who was a king there, came out to welcome Páidí, his prince. Dwyer greeted the other Kerry selectors warmly. He ignored me completely.

It didn't sit well with me. Perhaps it was to do with Karl. Maybe he thought that as the South Kerry man in the selection room I hadn't pressed Karl's case hard enough on the county team. Anyway, Karl made his own point. He transferred to Kildare and got himself an All Star the following year. I don't really care what Micko's reasons were for snubbing me. He was a neighbour and it shouldn't have happened. A few years later, when I got the Kerry job, I thought that Mick O'Dwyer, after all he'd won, could have given an old phone call, politely offered some advice over a cup of coffee. There was nothing. No goodwill. No word. Not one of the 1970s team or the four-in-a-row men called up. There was just a silence for the poor rustic from Dromid as they waited for him to screw it up.

Perhaps I just wanted a bit of approval, some bit of a stamp or a brand that identified me as one of the herd, even though I was never a county man. I remember, on the day before the 2004 final, driving to Killarney to join the team for the trip to Dublin. I stopped off in Cahirsiveen. In to Relish for the quick cup of coffee. Superstition perhaps. Hardly a day of life passes without me going in there. I took a quick, brave glance at the papers. Dwyer was writing a Saturday column at the time and it was his words I was looking for. Perhaps there'd be a benediction to send me on the way.

No such luck. Micko's thoughts were on the pandemonium that surrounded the dropping of Mike Frank Russell for the next day's game.

"He's just trying to get my pulse going, the old hoor," I said to myself. I rolled on towards Killarney.

They work almost as a cartel, those boys. In Kerry it's as if they'd invented football and, for all they achieved, it's hard to begrudge that notion. They gave us great pleasure and eight All- Ireland titles in the golden years - but the game moved on. In Kerry we went from Dwyer to Mickey Ned O'Sullivan to Ogie Moran to Páidí Ó Sé, looking for a man who could make the world the way it had been again.

Then the Kerry county board came looking for me. And the silence from the lads was deafening. An outsider? Sure. Sometimes it's hard to feel otherwise. In January 2006 we went to the Gleneagle Hotel for the Kerry Sports Star awards. Myself and Bridie and my fellow mentors and their partners all sat together. Big night, big crowd. Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh was master of ceremonies and when the time came Micheál moved through the tables, squeezing comments from those who should have something to say.

My turn comes early. I supply the usual hopeful raméis that managers spin out at the beginning of the year. The spotlight moved on and a few minutes later lit upon a table of golden-agers. Dwyer, Jimmy Deenihan, Bomber Liston and the boys.

At the time, it was being touted about the place that Jimmy Deenihan and Eoin Liston would be commuting to Laois as specialist coaches helping Micko. There was some excitement in Kerry about this. Maybe the boys were having a dry run for Micko and Bomber doing the Kerry job together next year. Anyway Ó Muircheartaigh slid over to Dwyer and asked him who would win the 2006 All-Ireland.

"Tyrone," Dwyer said quickly.

The microphone moved on around the table. Jimmy Deenihan said some nice words about his old manager and concluded rousingly, "we all hope that Micko will be brought back to finish out his great coaching career as manager of the Kerry team. We'd love him to finish up training Kerry."

Applause. A few whoops.

I looked down at the plate and just wondered to myself: "Jesus Christ. Am I only imagining it? Do I have this job at all?" For the sake of the table I put a face on and said to myself, sure fuck them anyway, but I was mortified. Bridie sitting beside me, the selectors and their wives all around. I considered walking out of the function altogether, but that would bring more embarrassment and attention. I sat and thought about how it would be if I was whisked up to Laois for a similar dinner and somebody put the spotlight on me and said, "Jack you'll have to come and train Laois after this year when we get rid of the loser we have doing the job."

Afterwards Ger had a couple of words with Deenihan. Pat Flanagan spoke to Bomber. They told them it was outrageous. I doubt that the lads were worried. In their heads the Kerry team is still their plaything.

It works that way in Kerry. The four-in-a-row team hover over everything. They still write the history; for instance, I've read an article written by Páidí crying about how his selectors deserted him in 1997. I was one of those selectors. Myself and Séamus MacGearailt packed it in. I tend to do things in two-year bursts anyway, so I wanted to shoot off on my own with the under-21s, whom I had trained for the previous two years. Tom O'Connor had to leave because of his wife Toni's illness. Bernie O'Callaghan, one man who would have undivided loyalty to Páidí, stayed.

Séamus and Páidí had gone into the job together as a joint management team, but by the second season, 1997, Séamus's role had been watered down so that he was essentially a selector. He felt maybe he wasn't getting the fair crack of the whip he had been promised. The first year, Páidí took the physical stuff and Séamus did the football with the team. By 1997, Páidí was doing the whole lot. Páidí had decided to take the football for the league. The team won the league so Páidí continued in that role. Séamus's role was watered down a bit every time you looked.

We'd put up with a lot. After the Munster final in 1996 I think Páidí himself would admit that he lost focus for a week. We paid the price in the semi-final. We had overlooked it, though, and stayed loyal to him - and in fairness he was a different man the next year. It was us, though, who had deserted Páidí in the end!

Oddly, the selectors that replaced us in 1998 and 1999 (Frank O'Leary, Seán Counihan, Paul Lucey) were gotten rid of quite quickly themselves. Kerry had scored 2-4 against Cork in the Munster final of 1999. Something had to change, and it was the selectors who were sacrificed. There was much talk (in one newspaper article especially) of Páidí looking around to the dugout for inspiration at a critical moment and finding none was forthcoming. It paved the way for another change of selectors.

Páidí screwed me in 1999, too, with the under-21s. We won the All-Ireland semi-final with 15 points to spare over Roscommon. Two weeks before the All-Ireland final, Páidí carried off my five senior players - Tom O'Sullivan, Mike McCarthy, Noel Kennelly, Tomás Ó Sé and Aodán MacGearailt - for a week's hard training with the seniors.

I went to the county chairman and told him I wanted our men for the final. Páidí got through to him too and said, he's not getting them. This was in May. The Kerry seniors preparing for a first round against Tipperary. Useless.

I had it out with the chairman. It shouldn't have been done.

I got the players back when we had finished our preparations for the final. They were no use to us. They'd lost focus. Their heads were gone. MacGearailt came back injured. Our free-taker for the final. We went into that match badly prepared mentally, and we lost to Westmeath.

I thought at the time that if we had won that under-21 final I might have got the senior job in 2000. Losing it removed me as a threat. Páidí didn't spend all that time above in Kinsealy and learn nothing at Charlie Haughey's knee!

I decided after that that the seniors were the only show in town and threw my lot in with Páidí again in 2000. I watched my back as I went about my business this time.

There's times when I'm reminded that when push comes to shove there's the aristocracy from the 1970s and the 1980s and there's the peasants, and if I fail in two out of three years in the Kerry job it will tell people all they need to know about the peasantry.

Jack O'Connor: The Keys To the Kingdom - The Story of an Outsider who led Kerry back to glory - is published by Penguin Ireland, €16.99