The Jack O Connor Column

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Taken from the Irish Times, 18th April

It's so funny how we don't seem to kick any more
Former Kerry manager Jack O'Connor joins The Irish Times GAA team in a hard-hitting weekly column every Wednesday
Two things struck me about the recent league. Too much handpassing. Lots of bad refereeing.
I checked the figures. There were well over 200 handpasses in several games - 235 when Kerry played Tyrone, nearly the same between Cork and Tyrone.
The Aussies came here last year and were better kickers with our ball. No wonder. We don't kick any more. It's too easy to coach handpassing rather than the natural skills of the game. You can get any bunch of athletes to develop into a handpassing team just running and handpassing.
One theory is that in winter teams train in grounds where the lights aren't great. And they do lots of training inside grids, handpassing and doing contact stuff. It gets ingrained.
I've said this in the past about Dublin, for example, they pick athletes and hope to make footballers out of them. Great teams get footballers and turn them into athletes.
Coaches take the easy option. Working on kicking or developing the skill isn't done at county level. Kicking is all about trying to get the balance right. You don't want fellas kicking the ball stupidly. The long ball has to land in the scoring zone and you need constructive diagonal footpassing out the field. One or two quick handpasses, a good diagonal ball for half forwards to come on to and then inside the 21 with the ball is the ideal.
We started out last year in Kerry one way and ended up moving back towards a kicking game. We worked hard on constructive diagonal kicking in each side of the field.
My cure is a change in rules. Two consecutive handpasses and then make a team kick it. That rule would transform football. Right now there are so many men behind the ball at any time there is often no point in kicking it, because there is nobody up the field.
The handpass epidemic brings us to referees. The handpass game is almost impossible to referee. Teams charge out with the ball, moving it quickly. We get too much contact in a confined space. Refs can't see. There are bodies and hits everywhere.
The Kildare and Donegal game last week was an example. Players were done one minute for overcarrying, the next minute for the foul. It's grey on the best days. A lottery on bad days. It is easier to referee two men going for a ball than six or seven in a fast moving huddle.
Not that referees are perfect anyway. A share of them don't look up to intercounty fitness. As usual this year they went like lunatics with the cards for the first few games, putting cur isteach on fellas. Frighteners till fellas cop on and it becomes a bit of a farce.
The GAA needs to draw in referees by making it attractive to former players. Too many men who referee big games know everything about refereeing and nothing about football. They can quote rules verbatim but they have no feel for the game.
There are things we have to learn or adopt. An advantage rule. Let the game flow. Come back and book a player when the play is dead.
And what about the amount of time it takes to book a player. A ref is miked up. Just let him say number 11, Kerry or number 11, Armagh down the wire to the fourth official and get on with it.
When referees stop play it takes at least 30 seconds to book fellas. Let the game flow. Let the fourth official keep track. Number 11 for Kerry booked. Recorded and announced.
And wire the umpires! A referee looks silly going from one to the other and then chasing around the field looking for a guy.
There were five minutes wasted in the Kerry-Tyrone game and they still couldn't find Tom O'Sullivan! For Crossmaglen John McEntee got booked twice but stayed on the field. If all information went through the fourth official things would move better and referees would have more authority.
Pat McEneaney has been our best referee for some time. Pat was playing a bit of junior in Monaghan until a year or so ago certainly. He knows his football. He talks to fellas. He understands the game. The GAA will have to seek these guys out.
Make it attractive, you'll get the best applying for it. We should take the time-keeping away too. I saw it work in Gaelic Park, New York, for the three years I played there. A big clock behind the goal. The referee signals to the clock man when play stops. And the clock stops. When time is out and the clock gets to the top a buzzer goes off and when play next goes dead the game is over.
Simple. Yet in my first game as Kerry manager (a league match with Longford) three minutes of injury-time were signalled and eight played. Against Tyrone in the All-Ireland final of 2005 four minutes of injury-time were signalled and only three played. You remember the ones you lose, of course, but such simple things need to be got right.

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2nd MAY 2007

Value of sun trips seen when crisis arises
Jack O'Connor's column: Jack O'Connor on how managers try to keep players focused and build that never-say-die team spirit.
Nature abhors a vacuum. So do managers. The leagues are over. The championships are a while away. This is a very difficult period for a manager. Right now some teams are building to a championship and have had no match for five or six weeks.
Having no matches is tougher than having a run of games. Players go back to their clubs. They are away playing club matches, dipping in and out of the county team. It's difficult.
Players lose a little edge when they go home. The club stuff is necessary but it's a different focus. With a county team you try to create a professional environment. Clubs are a little bit more laid back. It's hard to turn a player's mentality up a notch when he comes back.
Keeping minds focused without games is difficult. You try it all. Bonding exercises. Weekends away. Training camps in the sun. All designed to get that "never-say-die" spirit that you want. You don't know if it's there until you hit a crisis.
Sometimes you see the arse fall out of a team during a season. You see teams beaten in the qualifiers by teams they should never lose to. Somewhere along the line they just gave up. There is nothing worse for a manager. He might as well get on his horse and ride away.
Atmosphere and team spirit are crucial but it's tricky chemistry. Everyone has to enjoy each other's company because they spend so much time together. You need a sense of fun, and a few jokers in the camp are no bad thing provided they know when to knuckle down.
The game is changing. The advent of the 30-man panel makes it virtually impossible for a manager to keep everyone's morale high. You have one team on the pitch and another in the dugout. Somebody is going to be unhappy. There aren't enough games to do the rotation stuff or act the tinker man (as Claudio Ranieri was known at Chelsea because of his fiddling with the team) but you have some chance if you reward form.
Sometimes you have to shake it up. We did that once a year in Kerry. In 2004 Paddy Kelly debuted in midfield in an All-Ireland quarter-final against Dublin. In 2005 we put Bryan Sheehan into the team for his championship debut in an All-Ireland semi-final. Last summer Paul O'Connor had a championship debut in a Munster final in Killarney. Each time the impact on morale in training was huge.
The weeks in the sun that teams take now will only work if they are well planned and well structured with good variety. Otherwise teams are just following a trend. There are risks. Fellas live in each other's faces for a week. That needs proper handling. You have to let them leave off steam in the middle of the week. That can have its own side-effects.
You do three sessions a day and hopefully players won't have the teaspach to be up to much outside that. Being a professional for a week can have a huge effect on mentality when players come back again. A huge part of professional training is rest and sleep.
There is the danger that training weeks become a chore for teams when the novelty wears off so you go to different environments. In 2004 we went to La Santa in Lanzarote. Last year to Browns Sportsclub in the Algarve. In 2005 we didn't go anywhere. We didn't win the All-Ireland either! I don't know! You hope for a benefit. Team spirit isn't tested until things go wrong. It's when the flak starts flying that people need to stick together.
The watershed for us last year was the Munster final defeat. We met in a hotel afterwards. I had no idea what the outcome would be. That afternoon we found out who the real leaders were.
There is a point in every season when a manager learns if he has the faith of his squad. Some teams just quit. That day in Cork was our rubicon.
I spoke to John O'Mahony late last year and he said he had the same experience with Galway in 2001. They lost a Connacht final and John gave them a week off. He said that only those who were interested need turn up after that. High risk but it worked.
If there is friction it will be magnified in a crisis. Adversity isn't a problem, it's how you handle it. Obstacle or a stepping-stone. Look at Tyrone in 2005. There were times when they were tested to the limit. Defeat to Armagh. Peter Canavan and Stephen O'Neill's red cards along the way. They stuck together to win a fantastic All-Ireland.
That was the result of more than a week in the sun but the sun trip is something everyone sees and copies. In the race to find an edge it has become almost compulsory.
'And another thing . . . '
I saw Jose Mourinho last week talking about Didier Drogba before the Liverpool game. Drogba was on one yellow card and Mourinho was saying that the Liverpool players would be chasing the referee around the place in order to get Drogba booked.
Pure cynicism.
This sort of stuff has been going on with Mourinho and the boys for a while. It's wrong. It's one thing for a manager to have a go at a referee after a game but before a game it is calculated to create pressure.
We haven't got that far in the GAA yet. Anyone can leave a few oaths at a referee after a game when tensions are high, but it's different in the cold light of day. In Kerry last year we felt that our old friend Billy Morgan ratcheted up the pressure any time we played when he cast aspersions on our particular style of play. It got under our skins which was probably part of the intention. Possibly the words were designed to raise referees' antennas. Maybe Billy did believe it.
Generally GAA managers handle themselves well in victory and defeat. There is an onus on us all to keep that part of the game. If we start showing disrespect to referees and opposition the whole system will break down. Rugby has got it right.
Players are brought up to respect the referee. Only the captain can question his decisions.
Thousands of kids watch us every week and they are picking up messages that apply not just to sport but to life itself. There is still some spirit of sportsmanship in the GAA and respect between GAA managers. Only we realise the pressures of our job. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown etc. We understand each other, and you'd forgive a fella anything he says in those moments after a game when the blood is pounding.
I'd hate to see that change, We all want an edge but it's the stuff beforehand we have to watch. There'll always be managers who'll play the media like a violin but at the end of the day it's about honesty between us and then getting it right on the pitch

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9TH May

Underage set-up needs to be streamlined

Former Kerry manager Jack O'Connor looks at player burn-out

The Under-21 football championship finished at the weekend. It is a much maligned grade of activity, and in recent years there has been a lot of easy talk about getting rid of it.

But disbanding the competition would be a serious mistake. It is hugely important in the development of players. I was involved in some shape or form at Under-21 level in Kerry from 1993 to 1999 and again in 2002 and 2003.

Sure, once in a blue moon we see players go straight from a minor team into a senior team. There are exceptions, in every generation you'll find one. Johnny Culloty won a senior All-Ireland back in 1959, in his first year out of minor. Jimmy Barry Murphy was 19 in 1973 when he won with Cork. The Gooch went straight into the senior Kerry side at 19 and won an All Star.

Geniuses like those guys don't come along too often. Even a genuinely great midfielder like Darragh Ó Sé needed two successful campaigns to develop properly. He won Under-21 medals in 1995 and 1996, but it was 1997 before Darragh was truly ready for the big boys.

The grade gives huge value. One of the main reasons Kerry have won four senior All-Ireland championships in the last 10 years is the success at Under-21 level from 1995 to 1999. During that period we won five consecutive Munster championships and three All-Irelands. That meant a stream of confident young players coming through. The same with Cork in the late 1980s. They reached four All-Ireland senior finals in a row and won the last two. They were backboned by three successful All-Ireland Under-21 teams.

What is worrying in Kerry now is the lack of success at the level. We haven't won a match in two years. We haven't got out of Munster since 2002. Cork have won four in a row in Munster and now an All-Ireland. This will manifest itself at senior level. On Saturday Cork had four or five players who look senior material. That's how it should be done.

Putting young players in too early can be detrimental. Look at Donie Brennan in Laois. A county senior two years ago but not on the panel now. He's a fine young player who should make it if he bulks up. He was too light for senior football at the time.

There are gradual stages to reaching senior football status. Under-14. Under-16. Minor. Under-21. Progress is meant to be gradual and planned.

Ask an 18-year-old to jump straight into a senior scene with physically mature 25-year-old is usually unrealistic and potentially dangerous.

Irish rugby has successfully planned the physical development of players from an early age. The game has a cohesive national development programme supervised by Dr Liam Hennessy. The physical preparation in underage academies has been nationally streamlined to ensure that young players achieve the maximum benefit from training programmes. We can learn from this.

Contrast rugby with GAA's unco-ordinated approach where every Tom, Dick and Harry does his own thing. Some are doing laps, more are doing this, that and the other. Players do too much of the wrong things.

Training regimes at minor, Under-21 or senior in a county sometimes bear no resemblance to each other and don't even complement each other.

For instance, strength training, especially weights, should be progressive from Under-16 on. Learning the technique at an early stage lessens the risks of injury and increases the strength gains later on. For us in Kerry the importance of weights in physical preparation for the last few years was paramount.

Our trainer, Pat Flanagan, put more emphasis on this than any other form of fitness work. Pat would see running and laps as being counter-productive to high-intensity performance on the pitch.

The bottom line is that the problem isn't with the Under-21 grade. It's with cohesion and planning. County boards need to appoint one development officer with sole responsibility for implementation of a co-ordinated physical programme at all age levels. This would end the disjointed approach and the à la carte attitude that exists among managers and trainers at the moment.

Generally, everyone in the GAA looks for short-term gain. A proper development officer would rule that, in the long term, it is important that the players play with their age group and go back to the seniors when they are ready.

It is important in the development of any county down the line that the Under-21s get fair play. Ideally the competition should be played off in the autumn. In spring, fellas train with colleges, are off to county Under-21 managers and maybe four or five are in with the seniors. They are being pulled in all directions. Wrong.

And Another Thing . . .

Speaking of young players, burn-out is a related issue. A player welfare committee is reviewing the demands placed on players in the modern era.

A variety of things which, when combined, can lead to player burn-out.

Too many games, not enough of the proper type of training and poor recovery periods.

There are psychological reasons, too, like unrealistic pressure to win even from a young age. Nowadays Gaelic football at senior level takes over a player's life completely. This isn't sustainable or advisable in the long term, and could well explain why intercounty careers which extend beyond the age of 30 are now the exception.

Professional demands are placed on amateurs and the inevitable result is burn-out. Last year Declan O'Sullivan certainly suffered. Declan had played to nearly the end of December for three years in a row. Each time he was playing again in January. In hindsight, it was my fault. The manager should supervise things like that. Sometimes you leave your heart rule your head though. If the player is enthusiastic, you let him at it. The player suffers later on.

In soccer, Alex Ferguson will occasionally send off one of his stars to Dubai or somewhere for a week. That's not for the crack. It's for scientific reasons. They need to psychologically chill out for a while. I've seen young players who should progress stall because they have played too much underage. They haven't the time to train properly. Playing matches and not training, the body weakens. You don't deposit. You withdraw all the time. That catches up.

Look again at rugby. How few matches they play. They have a long pre-season of eight or 10 weeks. We have too many games and not enough time to recover or train. We need a good pre-season with no matches. Do the stamina work and then a maintenance programme during the season.

In college football they are doing heavy-metal work on heavy pitches and still trying to play matches in late winter or early spring. Lads are trying to do a bit of study on the side. There is no proper structure for the season.

We need real leadership. County development officers need to pinpoint who the stars of the future are. Take it out of a player's hands. Protect them. Say no for them.

Young fellas want to play. They are mad for the road. It's not in their best interest though. They need a structure, proper advice on lifestyle and diet and weights from an early age. Treat them as elite athletes.

That's a quantum leap, but if we want to flourish that's the way we have to go. At this point players are coming through despite the system, not because of it.

© 2007 The Irish Times

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16th May

Jack O'Connor on how being a manager is like running a decent-sized company in your spare time
Well, we're off. The first Sunday of the championship is done and the first harsh judgments of the managers are in. Winners and losers. Intercounty management is a tough game.
What is a manager in the first place? A leader, a psychologist, a motivator, a counsellor, a breaker of good news and a breaker of bad news. He knows the way he breaks the bad news can define his time in the job. But he's a cheerleader as well, always making players feel good about themselves. And he's the great pretender. During all of this the manager can't show any signs of the strain he is under. He looks after all these people. Nobody looks after the manager.
In this early part of the summer, when games are being played for which teams have been training and planning for a long time, a big part of the success comes from psyching out your opponent. Declan Coyle, our psychologist in Kerry, tells a story about a Stanley Cup (ice hockey) game where a journalist goes to do a pre-match interview with one of the managers.
"Do you think you'll win?" asks the journalist.
"Yeah. I think we'll win but that's not too important," says the boss. "If you go down to the next dressingroom, though, they think we're going to win too. That's important."
At the top of the tree there are about half a dozen intercounty managers who will almost always end the year being regarded as winners. Everyone else struggles. For most managers starting their team out on the road after epic preparations means hoping they might get a run of two, maybe three games. That is difficult.
The pressure is phenomenal. Each manager has a squad of players to keep happy, plus a backroom team of 10 to 20 in number, and then county board people keeping watch. Add in statisticians and video analysts and that's a lot of people. It's like running a decent-sized company in your spare time.
The amount of time spent going to training, to meetings and just watching club matches is incredible. Most managers need bonding trips with the family not the players! And it's all for no pay (in most cases).
Why is it so addictive? You do it all for those moments. I'll always remember coming off the field in Croke Park last summer after we had beaten our nemesis, Armagh. The hair standing on the back of my neck, the Kerry people in the stands getting behind us again.
I always think of a quote from John Dowling, the Kerry captain in 1955, about the day he was chaired off the field having led Kerry to beat the Dublin machine. He said every sacrifice he had made for football since childhood was worth it for that experience. It all crystallises into magical moments.
Along the way managers try to outwit and out-pysche each other but there is kinship there. We share the same experiences. We all know, for instance, that if the leaders within a team turn against you, then you have no chance.
Taking on the big fish to prove your mettle can be foolish. Look at Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane. Even Tony Considine and Davy Fitz. Whatever the ins and out and the rights and wrongs, the amount of energy being wasted in Clare is a distraction. Is it worth it unless you are trying to prove a ferociously important point? Every manager knows the public will generally side with a player. Players win games. Managers lose them. That's the public perception.
There's kinship but we watch each other. I remember being at a press conference before a big game and the rival manager was asked if he was happy with the referee for the occasion. He replied that he was, just so long as he did a better job than the last time he had encountered him. Translation: instant pressure on the referee.
I got a friend of the referee in question to call him and raise the matter in jest, just so he knew we knew what was going on.
In the end there will be one big winner. And, strangely, on All-Ireland night one big loser. Losing teams in an All-Ireland final never get the credit they deserve. In 2005, we thought we were in a great final against a great team. We were within a point of Tyrone with a few minutes to go. When it's over though, you are history. You go out the sidedoor and listen to the cheering behind.
In September it ends for everyone. When you lose the world stops. It is so clearcut. Winner. Loser. It all stops but your head keeps working. There are withdrawal symptoms. You feel cheated. No training on Tuesday? You can't settle. Home routine is impossible. The game is in your head. You are in an another world. It takes weeks, months to come back.
And even for the winner coming back the next year after a holiday and a few months of backslapping is hard. Saying to yourself you are starting again. Bottom of the ladder in the muck and shit, fighting teams in March who regard beating you as their All-Ireland. You want to fast forward to September and Croke Park. You just want the sun shining and 80,000 people looking down. It's a long tough road for everyone. Everyone out there is prepared to succeed. Not many are prepared to prepare to succeed. Even some of those who are will be branded as losers.
© 2007 The Irish Times