Trusted defenders of the Kingdom

AL LIANZ FOOTBALL LEAGUE KERRY:MAKING IT on to the Kerry football panel is an achievement beyond most footballers in the Kingdom, but, for those that do, stepping away from the team can prove just as difficult.

Relief rather than surprise greeted the word that Tom O’Sullivan has, after all, commited to a 13th season to the Kingdom.

The Rathmore man’s 11th hour return to duty during last Sunday’s facile win over Galway enhances the experience of a Kerry defence which has looked threadbare since Michael McCarthy retired for the second time after last year’s championship.

And manager Jack O’Connor’s success in enticing Eoin Brosnan not only out of retirement but to operate from the centre-back position greatly enhances the options available to Kerry as they prepare for this year’s championship in the unusual position of watching Cork as All-Ireland kingpins rather than the other way around.

It remains to be seen how O’Connor uses senior men but regardless of how it unfolds for Kerry this summer, the manager has once again demonstrated his stealth of making the most economic use of the materials at hand.

It was on a frigid day in Castlebar that Brosnan made his debut at centre back for Kerry, two years after he had last played a game for Kerry. His decision to retire at the age of 29 was just another example of the high attrition rate at the elite end of football.

“Intercounty football is very much a pressurised environment,” he remarked at that time. “The glare of the national media is upon you. Walking down the street, every fella is looking at you, judging you. You begin to realise towards the end of your career that there’s a lot more important things to life than football, like work and family.”

That wasn’t just paranoia. When things didn’t go well for Kerry, Brosnan was one of those players who often shipped the most vocal criticism, particularly after the 2008 All-Ireland final loss to Tyrone.

That O’Connor enticed him back is proof that high-calibre intercounty players are not that easily found. Brosnan’s performance at centre half against Mayo could hardly have gone any better.

It may have been a humdrum league match, but he read the game comfortably and his distribution was excellent. O’Connor said afterwards that he hatched the plan while watching Brosnan in action for Dr Crokes in the Munster club final against Nemo Rangers.

And Brosnan was superb for the Kerry champions on an afternoon when they were under the cosh for a good portion of the match, making several spectacular catches at midfield and setting attacks in motion with perfectly-placed balls.

But Dr Crokes’ late rally was short and afterwards, while the Cork team celebrated, Brosnan stood alone by the railing at the side of the pitch and looked like what he was – a former Kerry player with three All-Ireland medals still playing excellent football.

The thought must have occurred to most people watching the match that day that Brosnan had clearly left the intercounty game at his peak. Few could have guessed that they would see him back in county colours little over a month later.

After his return in Mayo, Brosnan slipped quickly from the dressingroom and on to the Kerry coach, politely declining invitations to speak to the press about his return.

Since then, he has gone about his business in a very low-key way and last weekend against Galway, he formed the anchor of a veteran half-back line, with Aidan O’Mahony and Tomás Ó Sé on either side of him.

It remains to be seen how the Killarney man copes with his new role in the elevated championship theatre, but it has taken him no time to look at home again.

It was also in Castlebar that O’Connor was asked about Tom O’Sullivan. O’Connor frowned as if he had half forgotten about the player whom he first coached as a school kid at vocational level. And he noted O’Sullivan liked to do things his own way, cautioning that O’Sullivan would want to make it up quickly.

“I would say that if he is not back the week after the Dublin game, he won’t be back.”

That, of course, was presented as an ultimatum and it was just the latest in a history of cat-and-mouse games between manager and player.

“Jack and I have a great relationship but he likes to have a hop off me now and again,” O’Sullivan was reported as saying when he confirmed he would return to Kerry. What that translates to is O’Connor willing to tolerate O’Sullivan’s carefree approach up to a point.

“I think Tom would say to himself, ‘how far can I go this time before Jack cracks?’” O’Connor said in an interview with this newspaper weeks after Kerry had won the 2006 All-Ireland final.

That was the summer when Kerry were depicted as a weakening force: ousted in the championship and given a mighty fright in a qualifying match in Longford.

O’Connor did not have a confrontation with his defender as much as a battle of wills. O’Sullivan failed to show for a scheduled training session, offering just five minutes’ notice via text.

O’Connor sent an annoyed text and left a voice mail.

The player did not respond.

O’Connor sent another text message, letting O’Sullivan know in uncertain terms that if he wasn’t in, then he was out.

O’Sullivan showed up for the next session.

He finished a season with a splendid All-Ireland final, keeping Mayo’s Conor Mortimer under wraps.

McCarthy retired after that final. O’Sullivan thought about doing the same but stayed on to win two more All-Irelands in 2007 and 2009, picking up the most recent of his four All-Star awards in the latter year. After McCarthy’s retirement, O’Sullivan was the man most often required to take up the full-back position.

It was not his preferred choice and he is not built in the traditional full-back mode, relying on slithery athleticism and his read of the game rather than old-fashioned domination of the square. When he won his 2009 All-Star, he moved over to his customary left-corner back position, with Cork’s Michael Shields taking the gong at number three.

And last year was not the most comfortable season. A torrid league afternoon spent chasing the shadow of Michael Meehan presaged what was an underwhelming summer for Kerry – a Munster championship victory spoiled by an eight-week ban for Paul Galvin and then victims of an All-Ireland quarter-final coup by Down. O’Sullivan was again handed the trickiest assignment that day too, keeping company with Benny Coulter, who delivered three important points in a virtuoso performance. Perhaps that defeat is as good a reason as any as to why O’Sullivan came back. It was no game on which to bow out.

That match, however, did mark the definitive conclusion of McCarthy’s career. The gamble that he took in coming back worked gloriously and few players have had such a forceful impact on the direction of a single season as McCarthy did. But it was always going to be a short-term arrangement.

Tommy Griffin played at full back in Kerry’s last championship match but the auditions for that position are ongoing. When the All-Ireland champions Cork visited Killarney in February, Marc Ó Sé played the edge of the square. Last week against Galway, with Ó Sé suspended, Killian Young wore the number three shirt. O’Connor is giving youth its fling in this league – Brian Maguire, Shane Enright, Pádraig O’Connor and Jonathan Lyne have all been given league starts this season.

Nonetheless, it is to the irreplaceable few that O’Connor finds himself returning to again. One of the encouraging signs of the early season was the freshness of Aidan O’Mahony. Tomás Ó Sé’s form is staggeringly consistent, season after season. There is a temptation for O’Connor that Brosnan might eventually push up to midfield, where the absence of Darragh Ó Sé remains obvious. That move would bring Tomás Ó Sé back to number six but while that might solidify the defence, the Gaeltacht man gives Kerry a dimension and quality that few teams can match when he is operating at right-half back.

One thing is certain. This is not a back six that is going to have to produce IDs for the nightclub bouncers. Tomás Ó Sé is 32, O’Sullivan is 32, Brosnan and O’Mahony turn 31 this summer. In life, these are modest figures but all of the players have the accumulated training sessions of those six consecutive All-Ireland final appearances.

They are going to need every ounce of their experience and craft when the ground turns hard and punishing in a few months’ time. The instruction from managers in charge of teams with fast and powerful forwards will be simple: isolate them and run at them. How the veterans cope with this and how they knit together for yet another season will be one of the intrigues about Kerry this season.

It is all ahead. Armagh are next up this weekend. O’Sullivan is back and O’Connor has yet to crack.