THERE EXISTS NO scale to measure these things, but the pre-match parade ahead of last year’s Munster hurling final was one of the more memorable events of its’ time with the colour and riot of colour in the Gaelic Grounds.
As the Clare team march around Semple stadium this Sunday, they might catch a glance at Paul Kinnerk and, for some, their minds will be transported back to a time when he was in their corner for the 2013 All-Ireland win, or before.
No fewer than eight current Clare seniors in Paul Flanagan, Seadna Morey, Tony Kelly, Cathal Malone, David McInerney, Eibhear Quilligan, Peter Duggan, Shane O’Donnell have been coached as minors by Kinnerk.
As a figure, Kinnerk does not stalk the hurling Badlands. His personality does not lend itself to being a frontline figure. Instead, he is happy for John Kiely to be front and centre as the Limerick manager and figurehead, a role he has thrived in when the livin’ was easy and the goin’ got tough.
But as a coach, Kinnerk has redrawn the terms of engagement of hurling.
Back in 2010, he was coaching the Clare minors. Back in the days before even underage teams were shorouded with a blanket of anonimity and secrecy, parents could sit and watch the sessions.
For Tommy Guilfoyle, a cult hero of Clare hurling that just missed out on the 1995 triumph but wouldn’t be forgotten in the wake of it, he thought he had seen it all in hurling when he brought his son Gary along.
And then, well…
“It would have been revolutionary in the way training went; it was small-sided games, the training used to be all about intensity, three on three, four on four. Keeping the ball and performing the skills under real, real pressure,” says Guilfoyle.
An early sighting of the style that he would refine and polish, eventually imposing it on Limerick as they bid to become the first and only side to do six consecutive Munster titles.
“Again, his coaching philosophy coincided with one of the biggest, most skillful teams we have seen in a long time with Limerick,” explains Guilfoyle.
“A lot of teams, a lot of club teams are guilty of trying to mimic it. But if you don’t have the players to carry it out….”
Generally, Kinnerk has barely featured directly in the media. A rare foray into that world was with Michael Verney in The Irish independent where he got to the nub of what they were doing in Limerick.
“We’re a principles-based approach team in terms of how we try and play, exposing them to that and exposing them to greater difficulty and increasing the complexity at which they’re working within those areas. Ultimately, it is done through games – pressurised opposed environments,” he explained.
Kinnerk’s football background with his Monaleen clubmate Maurice Horan sparked Horan’s interest on what Kinnerk was doing as a side project from his main hobby as a Limerick footballer.
What stood out most of all for Horan was how he and Joe O’Connor – the fitness coach who was alongside Kinnerk at Clare and Limerick – devised and drew up fitness and skills goals. And then set conditioning targets to be able to execute both in harmony.
“Someone said to me that he had coach any sport, based on his coaching philosophy,” says Guilfoyle.
“He is an academic genius. He’s a lecturer in UL now and has written a lot of papers for his PhD and that.
The initial link came from his teaching maths in St Caimin’s in Shannon. There, he became friendly with Alan Cunningham. The two of them got involved with Clare underage teams,but both being sons of Limerick, were keen on helping out their own.
Apart from that 2018 interview with Verney, Kinnerk’s public utterances have been vanishingly rare.
“He is a very private person. He would be very concerned about secrecy in training, but I suppose who isn’t at county level now? But he is, especially,” says Guilfoyle.
“Very early on in his career, I would be involved in the Munster Council with tutoring and so on. He would have come along to refresher days in UL and one day Kinnerk came in.
“Someone asked him a question after Limerick had won their first All-Ireland. The whole chat was about how it was a new way of playing. Someone asked the question, ‘Have you a Plan B, because teams will master Plan A?’
“And he said that he had no Plan B, and that they would just keep getting better at Plan A all through the years. And that’s what he has done.”
On Sunday, neither team will be holding anything back. Having met in the last two finals, they know each other inside out and upside down. The final will come down to a blow of the referee’s whistle here or there, or like last year when it wasn’t used at a critical juncture.
Kinnerk has done more than make Limerick great. He’s made others, like Clare, great when inside the camp and outside.
