EVERY winter without Sam lasts a lifetime in Kerry - but already Jim McGuinness is being blamed for dragging out the suffering that little bit longer.
The Kingdom’s scheduled National League opener was postponed because Donegal couldn’t travel to Killarney due to the havoc wreaked by Storm Éowyn.
No sooner had the announcement come around midday on Saturday - some 16 hours after word was unofficially handed down by St Eunan’s soothsayer, and former Tir Chonaill midfielder, John Haran – than conspiracy theories started to swirl.
“There was deep suspicion,” says ex-Kingdom forward Dara Ó Cinnéide with a low chuckle.
“I suppose there was a bit of a surprise that some teams from the county could travel, and the Donegal senior football team couldn’t; I think about 100 Donegal supporters were already on the way. Maybe there were genuine reasons for not coming to Killarney.
“But we’ve been stung before with the Covid year…”
Ah yes – who could forget it? Certainly not Kerry.
The circumstances surrounding Tyrone’s shock All-Ireland semi-final ambush in 2021, coming in the wake of a hefty delay after Covid ripped through the Red Hand camp, emboldened a sense of mistrust when looking north.
But Donegal, and their manager, already had a bit of previous.
McGuinness – who twice captained IT Tralee to Sigerson Cup glory in the late ‘90s - has yet to come up against Kerry in his second coming, and now won’t until the rescheduled fixture takes place on Saturday, February 8.
Memories, though, remain fresh of the famous ‘Spygate’ story that preceded the 2014 All-Ireland final, when a friend of the Donegal manager was spotted in a tree overlooking Fitzgerald Stadium as Kerry trained five days before the big one.
It was reported at the time that Patrick Roarty, a fellow Glenties man based in Kerry, had been identified after dropping his wallet while fleeing the scene. It was also reported that McGuinness had been best man at Roarty’s wedding nine years previous.
Since returning for a second stint, the erection of an eight-metre perimeter fence around the main training pitch at Donegal’s Convoy base has only added to the intrigue that surrounds the McGuinness masterplan.
“I find all that stuff around the game very good,” says Ó Cinnéide.
“The yarns, like - if you listen to Eamonn Fitzmaurice, Diarmuid Murphy and these lads talking about that incident… Mikey Sheehy saw the tree moving, ‘there’s a fella up there’. It’s nuts.
“Then since coming back he’s built a fortress up there - and the players will love him for it. I get it, like, I do. He improved them again in his first year back, they were within a whisker of making an All-Ireland final and then who knows?
“I learnt my lesson in 2011 criticising Donegal for playing the way they did - I work with Donegal people in Raidió na Gaeltachta and they were saying to me ‘what are you on about? This has been the greatest experience of our lives’.
“And that’s my take on it now. If it gets however many people there are in Donegal behind them, then great. He has given them an All-Ireland in 2012, they could’ve won another in ‘14, and he’s got them back to that level again where there’s expectation.
“Even taking off the Kerry cap from last weekend, we were all curious to see what Jim McGuinness might do with the new rules.”
Given the Kingdom’s slow start to recent League campaigns, allied to the absence of David and Paudie Clifford from the early Division One action, the delay could turn out to be a blessing in disguise for Jack O’Connor.
Yet, even with their Division One campaign about to belatedly gets under way in Derry on Sunday, conversations around what went wrong last year continue to blow on the breeze. Armagh emerged from the pack to claim a first All-Ireland crown in 2022 years, overpowering the Kingdom after extra-time in a hell for leather semi-final.
O’Connor has seen all the peaks and troughs during two previous stints in Gaelic football’s most demanding job; the introduction of new rules just another hurdle to overcome for a man who knows how to roll with the punches better than anyone else.
“Jack probably got a bit of a going over during the winter for not delivering an All-Ireland, and for not exposing enough young players to the environment,” says Ó Cinnéide, captain of O’Connor’s All-Ireland winning side in 2004.
“Then Cillian Burke went to Australia [to AFL side Geelong] and I think, unfairly, that has been used against Jack – ‘why didn’t he give him more game-time? Why didn’t he trust him more?’
“If Cillian Burke was going to go to Australia, he was going to go anyway; we’ve won an All-Ireland where the following year Tommy Walsh goes to Australia. But that’s a serious issue for Kerry, and it’s really pissing people off.
“You’re chatting to lads involved with the underage teams, asking who are the hot-shots coming through – ‘oh he’s good, he could do well, although the Australians have been talking to him’. Why’s it always Kerry lads?
“We know these lads, we respect them and we understand their reasoning, but it’s a conversation you’d have with former colleagues saying ‘why can’t we have a Ciaran Kilkenny who looked at it and said, no, that’s not for me’. There’s just that bit of frustration that anything good being produced is being undermined.
“But look, even when I was playing and this new football came in with Tyrone, everybody was saying how will Kerry react? They won the next All-Ireland. The Down team of the 1960s were trailblazers, and Kerry reacted to that as well.
“Our hand has been forced so often, but history will show that we have always reacted, always come back with some answer. When Tyrone beat us in 2003, people were saying we were going to be off the landscape for 20 years, that we didn’t understand how to play the modern game… we made the next six All-Ireland finals.
“We’re not above learning our lessons. There’s so much to learn from Armagh last year - I’d say there’s a general feeling, like many other teams, well if they can do it, there’s six, seven or eight can do it.
“It’s not like when Dublin were the dominant team for years… Armagh are after winning the last All-Ireland and you’re saying ‘why did they win it?’
“Yes they have decent players, yes they’re extremely committed, yes McGeeney showed incredible persistence - for 10 years he withstood all the slings and arrows - but it was just hard work. They were an honest team who went at it, and fair play to them last year they got over Kerry.
“I’m sore as a Kerry supporter, but I wouldn’t be sore if I was in their camp. Definitely there was a team last year good enough to win an All-Ireland - they’re still deficient in a few areas - but they’re good enough to be there or thereabouts again this year.”
Paddy Tally was in the green and gold corner with O’Connor for the last two years but, at Celtic Park, the pair will come face to face on the sideline after the Galbally man swapped the Kingdom for a return to front line management.
Ó Cinnéide insists there has been no ill-will since Tally’s departure to Derry, with Cian O’Neill having already been brought into O’Connor’s coaching team as the Kingdom attempt to navigate Gaelic football’s new normal.
“The pressure on Jack, and on Tally, when they first came in in ‘22 was huge. It was a ballsy move, like, not just because it was Tally - but a fella from Tyrone? Into Kerry?
“And Tally got on with them like a house on fire. He’s a lovely man, a proper class guy, so there was no issue like that, but it was a hard sell. Even in a social context, you’re down in the pub and talking to people from the Gaeltacht and they’d be saying ‘what are we doing with a f**king Tyrone man?’
“Jack was under pressure the minute he took that job, and he wins an All-Ireland in his first year. He doesn’t have any friends in the PR trade to package it for him or anything like that. He just does his own thing, he’s pig-headed and stubborn, and his instincts around football are brilliant.
“He is the figurehead, Cian O’Neill is the latest one in… with Tally, it wasn’t like a Mickey Graham situation, so nothing really came out about it. Personally, I was surprised he stayed as long as he did.”
Twelve months ago, under another Tyrone man, Derry were the Ulster county on the tip of Kerry tongues after a breathless battle at Croke Park the previous July.
The Kingdom – and O’Connor - had their own history with Mickey Harte but, when the counties next collided on the same stage, the Oak Leafs offered little resistance. Perhaps that rivalry will be reignited on Sunday.
For Ó Cinnéide, though, bigger picture concerns remain closer to home, rather than worrying about what might unfold this summer or next.
Frustration with the exodus Down Under is one thing, but the shift in the game’s place at the heart of Kerry’s sporting identity is another worrying strand. Marc O Se has spoken about the same in recent days; a lost connection, and why football isn’t at the heart of it all for the county’s up-and-comers.
“I’ve been saying it for years,” sighs the An Gaeltacht stalwart.
“You know, we love romanticising about the game. To me, that was a huge part of my identity as a Kerry footballer; that history going right back to the civil war, how that myth and the aura around Kerry football was forged.
“I still believe in that passionately, I love that about Kerry football, but we have to try harder now. Other counties have other challenges, and that is Kerry’s challenge - it’s not enough to sell them the history any more. It’s not enough to sell them Maurice Fitzgerald, or Mikey Sheehy.
“It’s a long, complex debate why it doesn’t matter as much any more… what’s happening inside in clubs in Kerry? There’s a huge depopulation area in terms of rural areas, there’s a drift towards the centre of the county.
“To me, south Kerry was the haven for the artistic footballer – Mick O’Connell, Jack O’Shea, Maurice Fitzgerald, Bryan Sheehan, you could draw a line right through the decades. They are struggling with depopulation now.
“North Kerry always produced teak tough defenders – how many north Kerry footballers are even on the squad now? Where Tralee and Killarney are probably overstocked, the dynamic of the population of the county is changing. The power, the winning of trophies, has all been centralised.
“Famously Deividas Uosis won an All-Ireland in goal with Kerry minors, and it was all ‘this should engage the Lithuanian population’. It didn’t, and it won’t.
“You have to sell them something more of a dream now – it’s not enough just to sell them the Kerry football dream.”
