Declan Bogue

THOSE THAT LOOK at it from afar, might have snapped their neck with the double-take.

Pat O’Shea? Back with Crokes? How many times is that?

It’s his third, as it happens. Previous stints have been lavishly successful. He’s won All-Ireland titles as a player. He’s lost All-Ireland finals as a manager. He’s won All-Ireland titles as a manager.

This weekend, he’s back at it in Austin Stack Park, Tralee, where his Dr Crokes side are aiming to achieve a remarkable double over Dingle. Having already beaten them in the final of the club championship, they now meet in the final of the county championship. Kerry. You have to love them.

While Crokes have always tried within reason to keep within the parameters of their own people as senior club manager, O’Shea has still been a handy ‘In case of emergency break glass’ option.

And you cannot imagine him taking a lot of convincing either. Nobody would ever say such a fanciful thing out loud, but essentially he’s been ‘Director of football’ for decades.

If he hasn’t been taking the senior team, he can usually be found with an underage side. His coaching, sharpened through his work with the Munster Council, has always had the flavour of the technical infused with a little bit of tough talking.

What surprises is his relative freshness. He’s still only 58 now. Thirty years ago he produced the coaching guide; ‘Gaelic Football Training Drills.’ It’s yours for a cool £126.95 on Amazon if you fancy.

Around the club, they know his ways. After they won the club championship earlier this year, Crokes’ forward Micheál Burns said, “Pat O’Shea is the crazy genius, as I call him.

“Anyone who asks what is it about him, you can’t explain to them unless you are involved with a team he is coaching. So many people ask me that. Where to create space, where to take on the man, when to kick it, when not to kick it. Every single detail. He is the Pep Guardiola of the GAA.”

As a player, he was stationed in the corner and had a talent for finding the net, especially in their county title in 1991 that was purloined into an unlikely All-Ireland win. How unlikely? Well they hadn’t won the county since 1914.

His playing career had a fair span. In 2000 he was in one corner, and in the other was a callow Colm Cooper. In between them was Connie Murphy, a fomer Kerry player and one of O’Shea’s current selectors.

The manager back then was Harry O’Neill. He had been away from Killarney for a while and when he came back and first clapped eyes on The Gooch, he thought, ‘That’s a redhead Pat O’Shea.’

Pat O'Shea celebrates the 2017 All-Ireland club title with Colm Cooper. Tommy Dickson / INPHO Tommy Dickson / INPHO / INPHO

O’Shea’s first spell as manager had them representing Kerry in Munster, but the might of divisional side South Kerry stopped them in the 2005 and 2006 finals. No disgrace given the region was calling on Maurice Fitzgerald, Declan O’Sullivan and Bryan Sheehan at the time.

But they still managed to win the Munster title in 2006 and reached the All-Ireland final. Coincidentally, that run made him the standout candidate to replace Jack O’Connor as Kerry boss.

He accepted, but the club kept going. Eventually when they lost the All-Ireland final, it was on a replay against Crossmaglen Rangers. For months on end, O’Shea was out coaching six nights of the week, club and county.

After Kerry, he came back for Crokes in January 2016. They swept their way to three consecutive Kerry titles. They beat Derry’s Slaughtneil in the 2017 All-Ireland final and they lost at the same stage to Corofin in 2019.

It was interesting to read the quotes of his son Gavin, this week.

Gavin’s football experience would have been as an inside forward, but once his father took over in 2016, he stationed him at centre-forward. The number 11 was on his back, but he’s told to go everywhere.  

Despite his slight frame, Gavin has had the footballing IQ to get the job done. His heritage provides the clues.

His maternal grandfather, Deborah Ann’s father, was none other than Eddie ‘Tatler’ O’Sullivan, the man who managed Pat’s crew of All Ireland winners in 1992.

Originally from Castleisland, his Killarney hostelry ‘Tatler Jacks’ is the Kerry Gaelic football Senate, with unlimited debate and opinions.

Esoteric, philosophical talk would flow from football to life and back around. Sitting at the feet of such men granted the young Gavin a deeper appreciation of the arts.

“My strengths are more from a tactical point of view and smartness, and a lot of that is developed from being around him (Pat) for so long and watching football with him,” said Gavin this week.

“It’s not a case you are just watching a game, you’re discussing a game and why is a fella making this sort of a run. So it’s very in depth.

“We do have a nice, relaxed relationship, it’s not football, football, football, but when you are watching a game, you are picking things up.”

It’s a theme that has stretched back decades.

In the mid-90s, O’Shea and a few others decided to get big time basketball back into Killarney and started playing for St Paul’s alongside Vince Daly and Cormac O’Donoghue.

O’Shea was a point guard. The same position as Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson.

In the majestic ‘Showtime’ by the American sportswriter Jeff Pearlman, Magic’s LA Lakers team mates spoke of how any daydreaming would be shook out of them by a pass from an unlikely angle or trajectory.

There was a bit of that in O’Shea too, says his former team mate James Weldon, a former Fossa footballer who is currently Ireland ladies’ basketball team head coach.

Evan Treacy / INPHO Evan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO

“The one thing I learned with Pat in training was always to run with your hands up because he was always going to be two or three passes ahead of everybody else in his mind. So you could get a ball into the nose if you weren’t expecting it,” Weldon says.

“Just incredible vision. I suppose that made him a very, very good coach as well. He could almost foresee thing. I suppose himself as a footballer, watching him with Dr Crokes, his passing and his vision was incredible as well.”

Along with whatever duo of American professionals they had at the time, along with Brian Clarke, it was a talented crew. Sometimes Weldon just had to content himself with limited minutes as a role player. He took an incredible education out of it though.

Pat was very much somebody that was about high standards and bringing everybody up to that level. The Americans loved him because the nature of the job in Ireland for American players was to put the points up on the board,” Weldon says.

“Their job could have been in trouble and he was able to find them at the right time and give them easy enough opportunities to put the ball in the basket.”

Not since the post-match duties following the 2008 All-Ireland final, the one Kerry lost to Tyrone, has O’Shea dealt with the media.

By not engaging at all, he is undoubtedly the lowest-profile Kerry manager ever.

Instead, in the local scene he will send out a selector to take care of that side of things. Anyways, his own vocal cords take a hammering every match as he keeps up a steady flow of direction from the sidelines, guiding his players through each play. The influence of basketball style of coaching is up front and present.

In 2018, Weldon was asked into the Kerry backroom team by Eamonn Fitzmaurice. One thing he noticed was how O’Shea attended every game and would remain afterwards to discuss and debate.

“He’s somebody that just continues to evolve. He’s a really, really impressive guy to talk to about any sport,” says Weldon.

“I had a coaching friend from Canada over about four years ago. I had her out for a few drinks around Killarney and she has gone on to work for the NBA now.

“It being a Sunday night, I thought I might catch Pat and we went along. I introduced them and he was talking to her for about an hour. It was great to just sit there and listen to him.

“But all-round, very, very impressive guy. I think he’s so admired and respected in the Crokes that there’s not too many people could go back to the well for a third time and could turn things around.

“The players buy into what he brings because he has that track record. He brought them to the promised land. So that has to be respected.”

The promised land beckons once more.