Jack O Connor a whinger or just trying sell his book

[Davitt Man]

Jack O Connor was on Saturday night chat show with Miriam O Callaghan promoting his new book and he came across as a whinger. He def has a chip on his shoulder.

Here is the article that appeared in the Sunday Indo

'Outsider' O'Connor grinds axe over snubbing by Kerry greats

Sunday June 24 2007

DAMIAN LAWLOR

JACK O'CONNOR has admitted that even after he was appointed Kerry senior football manager in 2004, he felt out of the loop because he never played senior football for the county during the golden age of the 1970s and early '80s and also because he came from a small isolated pocket of south Kerry.

In a frank new autobiography, O'Connor reveals what it felt like to be an 'outsider' who delivered two All-Ireland titles in three years.

He recalls being a selector under Páidí Ó Sé in 1997 when the team travelled to Newbridge to play Mick O'Dwyer's Kildare in a challenge game and describes how Micko offered a warm greeting to Páidí and the other selectors, but ignored him.

"I don't really care what Micko's reasons were for snubbing me," he writes. "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 '70s 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 up."

O'Connor also recalls the embarrassment he felt while at the Kerry Sports Star of the Year awards in 2006 when former player Jimmy Deenihan publicly expressed his wish that O'Dwyer would finish his coaching career as manager of the Kerry team. At that time the Dromid Pearses man saw that as a serious slight on his own position.

The book, Keys to the Kingdom, is an honest and witty account of life in modern day management.

In the 200-page memoir O'Connor also documents some disagreements he had with current Kerry manager Pat O'Shea.

"I've a good relationship with the Dr Crokes players on the team but had the odd run-in with Pat O'Shea. After we'd announced the (Kerry senior) team for the league final, Pat rang me and asked was it OK for Eoin Brosnan to go with Crokes to play an old Kerry league game down in Cahirciveen on the Saturday, the day before the league final. 'Be good for his confidence', said O'Shea pointedly. I asked if this was some sort of wind-up. It wasn't. Well, wouldn't it be great for Eoin's 'confidence', I said, if he came on in the league final and just cut loose.

"I was stunned. Asking a county player to play a Kerry league game in Cahirciveen against a weak side when the county team is playing for a national title the following day."

O'Connor also criticised O'Shea's contribution to an article in this newspaper last year amid rumours of unrest in the camp. "The Sunday Indo ran a piece that was a compilation of some of the rumours which have been going around. I don't know where most of the stuff came from but I was disappointed to see Pat O'Shea quoted in there. He should have stayed out of it, but he was quoted as saying we were playing a style alien to Kerry. A football man should know the story better than anyone about having a go."

Another incident which upset the former Kerry manager was a text message he received shortly after the 2006 All-Ireland final when he included clubmate Declan O'Sullivan in the final selection at Eoin Brosnan's expense, which indirectly took the captaincy off Colm Cooper and handed it back to O'Sullivan.

"No matter how gently you tread, you've walked on a few dreams in picking an All-Ireland team," he remembers. "Word of the team travelled fast. At five past nine, when I was driving home, I heard the beeping of the mobile. Here we go. 'You should be ashamed of yourself by upsetting a winning team. Hope it backfires on you and I mean it.'

"I don't recognise the number but the text has come so quickly after the end of training that I know it can't be coming from anyone too far away from the heart of the team. It hurts. I get home. Shaken. Wounded. Everyone is up but eventually Bean an Tí drifts up to bed. I fetch one of the boys' mobile phones and ring the number on loudspeaker. 'Hello?' The hair stands up on the back of my neck when I hear the voice. I expected some flack from up Killarney way, but this is from inside the camp. The voice belongs to a close relative of one of the team.

"I realise straight away too when I hear the voice that the text wasn't meant to be sent anonymously. The sender would have assumed that I would have the number. I was better off not knowing. I've made a mistake in wanting to find out. It's just a bad, bad thing, knowing where the text came from. A knife through me."

[magpie seanie]

From the bits I've read so far I can't wait to get my hands on it.

[MauriceMalpas]

Bit of both really. So Micko didnt call him.

[mannix]

I strangely enough have great respect for jack, i wish to god he could impart some of his confidence on another county that i like a lot.I heard that the abuse he got from fans and others in kerry was unreal despite winning two out of three allirelands with the team.Its a case of kerry people being too greedy.Wait until the famine returns as it did from 86 to 97, what will they say then.I will by his book because from what I know from his neighbours in kerry he is no nonsense and a genuine man.
Mick odwyer is better left to talk for himself, i cannot stand him and his cute old hoor ways.
When you have as many titles as kerry its easy to be disrespectful to the lads in the boat at present.I bet in donegal and derry their players and management get  a lot of respect for the winning teams of the early nineties.

[Jinxy]

It seems to be written in the same extremely annoying style Páidí's book was. "Had an egg for breakfast. Soft-boiled. 3 minutes. Savage. The wife had a couple of rashers on her plate. Streaky. I hopped into the car to go to work. Toyota. Avensis. Turned the key in the ignition. Started. Got to the bottom of the drive. Left. Right. Drive on. Powerful." And so on and so forth.

[tyroneman]

I also have great repoect for O'Connor Winning 2/3 AI is no mean feat for any team. I think it was the Tyrone itch that he couldn't scratch that seemed to turn a lot of the Kerry contingent against him

I also have to laugh at the 'kerry football' accusations levelled at him. Nowhere but nowhere is cute hoorism more evident than in kerry - if they had to play dirty and scrappy to win so be it. I'm quite sure they would've played with tennis rackets or hockey sticks to win if that's what was deemed necessary.

It amazes me the grief some managers get from fans and pundits alike. O'Connor was one. Micky Moran, who I generally had little time for, is another - to guide Mayo to the AI final in his first season and then get the sack!!! Mayo folk that critisice him must have some brass necks or some massively unrealistic expectations.

[IolarCoisCuain]

Nice one, Jinxy. 

Just saw the book in Hodges Figgis' now. It's ghosted by Tom Humphries, which people were probably able to guess from Jack's Irish Times columns - "On Sunday, a blond bombshell from Kilmacud was the chief gunslinger."

That don't sound like no Kerryman to me. 

[IolarCoisCuain]

Micky Moran, who I generally had little time for, is another - to guide Mayo to the AI final in his first season and then get the sack!!! Mayo folk that critisice him must have some brass necks or some massively unrealistic expectations.

Mickey and John got more from their time with Mayo than Mayo got from Mickey and John. Morrison said at the post All-Ireland final dinner in CityWest that it had always been his ambition to be involved in an All-Ireland final and now that dream had come true. Mayo had already been involved in a number of All-Ireland finals in the past ten years, and were looking for something more. And will be making no apologies for it either.

[MauriceMalpas]

Agreed about the style. Wink and nudge language if you will; any danger of a few structured sentences??

The Kerry job is the always the same anyways. O'Se got an awful doin as well, as did Moran et al. No change really

[tyroneman]

Mickey and John got more from their time with Mayo than Mayo got from Mickey and John

SO basically the brief for a first time manager taking over the reigns at Mayo is...win the AI in yr first year or yr out? 

Jaysus yis are harsh down that way...................................

[neutral]

In Tyrone we give a manager 2 years to in an All Ireland - EVERY TWO YEARS!

[neutral]

2 out of 3 is excellent but he never beat Mickey Harte in the champsionship, him and the Pony.  Unfinished business without a shadow of a doubt, but the business he did finish , he finished it well..

[Tatler Jack]

From the couple of extracts I read its certainly cringe whatever about whinge. I can't stnd fellows with chips on their shoulder and if all he has to worry about in life is that somebody did not ring him up to wish him well then he is lucky. He wanted the job, nobody pushed him into it and he knew damn well there are always a few begrudgers about. I am beginning to get sentimental for the days when managers did not write books!!!

[tyroneman]

Tyronies actaully believe that because he didn't ever beat them that he had "unfinished business".

Wasn't the Tyronies that came up with that theory I'm afraid. I remember an article in a Sunday broadsheet (or maybe it was the Irish News) which talked about how Kerry beating Mayo was deemed insignificant in the kingdom and how they immediately talked about needing to beat Tyrone to feel they had won it properly.

Now for a county with over 30 AIs I took this with a pinch of salt but I have heard that opitnion come out of Kerry more than once...................................................

[cavanmaniac]

I don't mind Jack giving a poke in the eye to some of his detractors, he's more than earned the right.

A minority of Kerry folk can be proper sense-of-entitlement little bastards at times and don't know when they're well off, another short drought might bring some of these 'animals' back into line. Whatever about Micko and Co. snubbing him and not calling him, the amount of shite he had to put with, phone calls and abuse and so on, must have been pretty hard to take. I always get the sense he was made to feel inferior or cold-shouldered somewhat for not being one of the golden boys of the seventies and eighties and now feels he has the right to take a pop at all those who thought they knew better. The manner of Kerry's win last year when it looked hairy earlier in the year was a big big vindication of Jack's management.

And who among us wouldn't feel like doing the same if we were in his shoes?