ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON, ALAN Kerins took his place with his colleagues of the 2001 All Ireland football championship winners.
They were brought together again for one last time to say farewell to John O’Mahony at his funeral in Ballaghaderreen.
On the day, he and his Galway colleagues were just one of many guards of honour.
There were the Mayo players of various editions and ages and middle-aged spreads, managed over two spells.
The Leitrim heroes of 1994 who delivered a Connacht title with their generations passed on looking down from the Veranda of Heaven.
There were politicians. Galway fans. Ballaghaderreen club people and people he had done a good turn for.
Salthill people, there to recognise his final managerial posting and the job he made of breathing a new life into the club.
All there to pay their respects to a stand-out gentleman.
When Kerins thinks of him, he thinks of the All Ireland football medal he has from 2001. One that came completely out of the blue, utterly unforeseen.
The background to it was the National League final of 2001 when Mayo beat Galway. Over the May bank holiday Monday, Kerins was keeping his fitness up by playing a bit of football with Salthill, some light relief from his hurling career.
O’Mahony had gotten wind that Kerins had been producing strong football at Trinity College and went along for a snoop. To the meagre crowd at a Junior match, there must have been a stir to see the county manager on the bank. Kerins was 25 at this stage and had only played his first game of football at 23.
After losing the 2000 All Ireland hurling semi final he started playing football with Salthill. By then, the club had been knocked out of the senior championship. Kerins hadn’t even played a senior club championship match.
After the game, Johnno asked Kerins how he was fixed. At the time he was doing his finals to qualify as a physio. But he agreed to hang around for a week’s training to see how he shaped up.
Ten days later, O’Mahony named him to start against Leitrim in the Connacht championship.
“If I was never brought in there I might never have played much for Salthill. I would never have won the All Ireland three months later. I was forever grateful to him and it was some punt too, in fairness,” says Kerins.
As heart-warming as the story sounds, not everyone was best pleased. The Donnellan brothers, Michael and John, walked off the panel. John had lost his place to Kerins.
Galway played the game and won by 19 points. Kerins played well and helped himself to a brace of points.
Johnno went to work on the lads on the picket line. By the following Tuesday flush out of the legs in Tuam Stadium, the Donnellans were back.
“Johnno was an unbelievable person in terms of what people allude to; he was meticulous. His professionalism, his attention to detail. He just brought all that and a sense of steel, the stuff you can see in the video clips now,” says Kerins.
“But I liked the way he managed, how he managed the players, even the controversies. Everyone came back.
“He was able to treat everybody the same but manage them differently, if you get what I mean.
“And he managed everybody the way they needed to be managed, rather than generically.”
It wasn’t just the Donnellans that could feel the sting of rejection. Later on in the year as they got ready for the All Ireland final against Meath, O’Mahony had a decision to make. Kerins had lost the All Ireland hurling final to Tipperary a fortnight before.
Johnno had to drop the man who he stuck his neck out for.
“Even the way he broke the news to me, he walked me away from the group with his arm around me and explained to me, ‘You’re exhausted after this summer. You’re mentally exhausted. You’re after losing the All Ireland final in the game you love the most. I know you’ll take it really well and you’ll take it professionally,’” he recalls now with a light chuckle.
“And that’s the way he broke it to me! With a wee bit of sugar to tell me to stay ready because I would be coming on. But the way he said it! ‘You’ll take it really well because you’re such a professional.’
“He was just a brilliant manager, a brilliant tactician and back then he trained the team as well. As well as selectors, but he was the manager, he was the trainer, he was the statistician, he was the video analyst.
“Back then there was only three or four people involved, now they have a huge team. That was just testament to his ability.”
Loyalty to his players was something that endured. Throughout all Kerins’ charitable endeavours , he only had to mention to Johnno that some function was going on in Croke Park or in Galway and there he would be, present and ready.
As a politician, he regularly joined the dots, putting him in touch with the right people to get things done.
“I think people saw his genuineness, his humanity. He wasn’t just a manager, he was a friend who would support you in everything you did, so you would support him as well. That’s why, I think, you see the warm universal tributes and the huge reaction over the last few days and the different sentiments being expressed,” says Kerins.
“It’s a phenomenal reaction, the tributes have been unbelievable and they are so well deserved.”
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THERE ARE FEW people west of the Shannon that had an influence over sport in the region that John O’Mahony had. His Leitrim team ended a wait of 67 years since their first Connacht title.
His Galway side brought an end to 32 years since a team trained by John ‘Tull’ Dunne had won Sam Maguire.
The wait now stretches out to 23 years. The man trying to close the gap now, was shaped and moulded by O’Mahony, and by his family in Killererin in the Galway football heartland; Pádraic Joyce.
There was an interesting vignette in Ciaran Murphy’s autobiography about life as a club footballer in Galway; ‘This Is The Life.’
It was based around the huddles of young men gathered on the banks of various venues watching the club championship games. Inevitably, a knot of people would gather around Joyce to hear his observations about teams and players.
It wasn’t always complimentary. Sometimes there was a cruel verdict delivered on either or both. Inevitably he would be bang on the money.
Going into an All Ireland semi final against his former Tralee IT team mate, Jim McGuinness and Donegal, this Sunday will feature two outsize personalities up against each other.
“PJ always had the strong personality,” says Kerins.
“He has a huge presence. A huge personality and he is very assured in himself, assured in his decision making and strong in his opinions and would be very studious in his reading of the games as well.
“He has a great understanding of the game, of the players, their movements and the type of players that is needed.
“So I would always have seen him as potentially going into coaching and management. From his pure love of the game, his pure passion for the game. His love of Galway and his commitment to Galway.”
Kerins continues, “He just loves the maroon, the culture of Galway football and comes from the heartland of Galway football down there, a huge tradition of football with his family.
“I suppose when we won, and going through the leaner years, there was still a hunger there to bring Galway back to where they could be, when he was a player.
“And he sets huge standards for himself. I‘d say he can’t see any reason why, I mean, he said when he came in that if he doesn’t win an All Ireland, it would be a failure.
“It’s that level of belief he has, that level of standards he set, they are so high, he just believes that Galway should be that competitive all the time.”
Galway face a number of difficulties this week with the fitness of key players Sean Kelly, Damian Comer and Shane Walsh.
They also have an intangible to deal with. In beating Dublin, they defeated the ultimate video game End Of Level Boss. What they did against Dublin will need to be further improved upon for taking on Donegal.
But this is a year when Galway could and should win an All Ireland, Kerins believes.
“Sometimes it is written in the stars. Tony Keady died in 2017 and Galway won the hurling,” he points out.
“You just don’t know, these things can inspire a team as well. Also, with beating Dublin and pulling the performance out when it wasn’t there all year, with a lot of the bigger players not performing that well and going off injured…
“They should have been beat by Sligo and they weren’t. They should have been beat by Mayo, and they weren’t. They could have been beaten by Dublin.
“Sometimes, it’s your year. Winning ugly for a lot of the year, but winning without a lot of your key players has probably given a lot to the players who are standing up.”
Winning ugly runs contrary to the image of Galway football. But they will take it any way they get it this Sunday.
