I have no agenda other than the belief that change is needed in Kerry

When I suggested on TV that it was time for change in Kerry, believe me, I had a fair idea of what would be coming my way.

What I didn’t expect was to have my opinion dismissed with the line, ‘Sure you don’t even live in Kerry!’ As if that meant I didn’t know what was going on there.

I played senior with Kerry for 17 years and never lived at home in that time. Did that mean I was out of touch?

Incidentally, I didn’t throw anyone under the bus last Sunday night, as some suggested. I gave an honest opinion. Maybe some people would prefer if I danced around the houses here, played it cute. But trust me on this, I slept easily on Sunday night.

I see one word re-appearing time and again, though. The word ‘agenda’. But an agenda would only trip me up because I’m not smart enough to pursue one.

What I refuse to do, however, is speak out of both sides of my mouth.

Something that sickens me is fellas doing that, communicating one thing in public and the polar opposite in private. Would people prefer I said Peter Keane should get an extended term now, even if I categorically believe otherwise?

There is nothing personal between Peter and me by the way and I have no pre-ordained idea on who might or might not be in contention to take over if he goes. But I’m happy to nip one thing in the bud here.

I saw my own name mentioned in certain quarters as a possible replacement and can say categorically that I’m nowhere near ready for that calibre of job. Not yet. Not by a long shot.

Hand on heart, yes, I’d love to be involved with Kerry somewhere down the line.

I offered my services as under-20 manager after John Sugrue stepped down, having put together what I thought was a hell of a good backroom team. Fair enough, I didn’t get it. No issue there. No harm trying.

And I was glad that someone like Declan O’Sullivan got it because I genuinely think he will be outstanding.

I’ll say this. Keane seemed absolutely the right man at the right time when he replaced Éamonn Fitzmaurice as senior manager, having delivered three minor All-Irelands in a row. Yes, it was a star-studded group, but he still had to steer the ship.

But this hasn’t worked. In fact, I’d suggest something pretty fundamental isn’t working in Kerry. The fact we won five All-Ireland minors in a row, yet haven’t managed to translate that success into a single under-20 crown is deeply disconcerting. To me, there’s a hard edge gone out of Kerry football.

Hard edge, by the way, doesn’t translate into just lamping fellas. It translates into being prepared for anything that’s thrown at you, being ready.

It’s also been thrown at me this week that my own team didn’t have that edge when we were playing Tyrone in those battles of ’03, ’05 and ’08. We fully believed we’d beat Tyrone every one of those days and, yes, we failed.

But Tyrone were the only team that had that over us. It strikes me that the current Kerry team has encountered problems against too many different opponents now.

As for last Saturday, the bluntest analogy I can use here is this – put a wall in front of me and no matter how hard I might feel or how wired I might be, unless I’m highly stupid, I know that to get beyond that wall I need to find a door.

But Kerry kept bouncing off the wall as if they imagined it might give way.

That they kept doing that after the first water-break, after half-time, after the second water-break and even into extra-time was simply inexplicable. This wasn’t a case of running into something new. On the contrary, this was something all too familiar.

It was Tyrone doing what they’ve always done. Knocking you backwards in contact and hurting you on the counter-attack.

I heard a certain amount of commentary after, marvelling at Tyrone’s passing accuracy under pressure. But their football is shaped by a claustrophobic environment. Yes, their counter-attacking was good. But Kerry’s defending looked shambolic and disorganised to me.

It actually reminded me of us against Donegal in 2012, something Fitzmaurice had completely turned around by 2014.

In Ulster, Tyrone are used to getting hit while running. And getting hit a lot harder than they were on Saturday.

That said, believe it or not, I had sympathy for Keane this week. I remember the abuse my own uncle took in ’03 and something similar encountered by Fitzmaurice in more recent times.

Both men delivered All-Irelands to the Kingdom. Both men ended up facing the mob.

That’s not changing any time soon because, in Kerry, there’s almost no wriggle room for the senior football manager. I was talking about this to a Cork friend this week. To me, the Kerry football job is the same as the Cork hurling gig. It can be savagely unforgiving.

But you know that when you take the position. Or, at least, you should.

The kernel of the problem for Keane here is that most people would agree Kerry have good enough footballers to win the All-Ireland. But we’ve come up short three years in a row and, in all three cases, I think management had serious questions to answer.

When Kerry were warming up last Saturday, I counted about 18 backroom staff on the pitch. That’s nothing unusual about that in this day and age, but only one person becomes the fall guy when things don’t work out. Only one person gets it between the eyes.

So it’s very important that that one person knows exactly what they’re getting from the involvement of everyone else around them.

I look at the Limerick hurlers and you can see clear lines of authority for the likes of Paul Kinnerk, Caroline Currid and Mikey Kiely in John Kiely’s backroom. Kiely actually defers to those people, recognising the importance of delegating to experts in specific fields.

I’ve never really seen that clarity within Keane’s set-up. Last year, Maurice Fitzgerald was announced as the forwards’ coach, even though he’d already been two years as part of the set-up. So was Maurice doing nothing with the forwards before 2020?

Kinnerk is known as a genius coach for what he does in Limerick, but if you asked me who coaches the Kerry footballers, I couldn’t honestly tell you. Maybe you or I don’t have a right to that information. But you’d imagine we’d have some idea.

Listen, I get that winning signs every cheque. But Kerry looked ill-prepared both defensively and offensively for what they faced last Saturday. And I see an uncanny likeness between this Kerry story today and that of Páidí’s final year in ’03. In other words, a third failure in succession, each one stamped with different shortcomings.

I was part of the team that won an All-Ireland in 2000. But in ’01 we collapsed completely against Meath, triggering the same kind of shock in the county you sensed after last year’s loss to Cork. In ’02, we lost the All-Ireland final to Armagh by a point; similar in many ways to our loss to Dublin in 2019. In ’03, Tyrone just bullied us.

See where I’m going with this?

Páidí was lucky enough to keep his job after ’02 but was then all but run out of it in ’03. And if I’m honest, I think Kerry needed a change at that time.

So I’m saying that against my own flesh and blood. This isn’t a West Kerry agenda against any other side of the county.

Lord God, when I hear that nonsense, it makes my blood boil. In ’04, it was ‘The ó Sés won’t pull for Jack O’Connor!’, all that kind of horse manure.

Jack came in after Páidí and, straight away, won a National League and an All-Ireland. That change suited Kerry. We just found a freshness, emotionally and tactically, that carried us past the finishing post.

Now Jack was an obvious choice, given his brilliant work with the under-20s, but that obvious candidate doesn’t exist today.

In other words, there’s still a fair chance Keane will stay. But he’s had three years and, for me, that’s long enough. Remember, Ogie Moran was only given three years. Mickey Ned? Three years. After Micko won in ’86, he only got another three years.

The most damning issue for me this time is that, in three years under Peter Keane, Kerry’s game-management has not improved.

Bottom line, they looked spectacular this year against opponents who were afraid of them. But once presented with a team that challenged them to cross the line, everything fell apart at the seams.

Let me put it this way – if you told me beforehand that Kerry would win all of their own kick-outs as well as the majority of Tyrone’s; if you told me that Kerry would have 34 shots at goal, five more than Tyrone; if you told me that Kerry would have 27 turnovers and that Tyrone would win the game, I’d have said you’re raving.

But that’s what happened.

Kerry conceded 2-9 to turnovers. Now you’re always going to concede turnovers against Tyrone because they tackle like dogs. But so many of those turnovers were pathetic.

At half-time, did anybody think of saying ‘Lads, for f**k sake, stop carrying the ball down cul-de-sacs! It’s a big pitch, use it!’ Or maybe they did, but could summon no on-field leadership. Either way, damning.

I saw bodies wide last Saturday that were ignored, which begs the question were players just doing their own thing? Flying solo? When Dublin were at their best, they always had players wide. But they also always had players ghosting in around the ‘D’. Moving constantly. Making you second-guess.

They kept shifting the point of attack, creating space, keeping the opposition honest.

What was Kerry’s plan?

You know I’d nearly be more forgiving if I got a sense of someone holding up their hand and saying, ‘We messed up!’ Admitting you’re wrong is nothing to be ashamed of in my opinion. On the contrary, it’s a strength.

But we heard nothing like that after last year’s fiasco against Cork and I won’t be holding my breath to hear anything now.

I do appreciate that there’s nobody obvious waiting as an alternative, save perhaps Fitzmaurice (in my opinion probably the standout option if he could be enticed back). Or maybe Jack O’Connor. Either way, we need a fresh management culture in Kerry.

We need a team that takes responsibility for its own failings.