His first Championship defeat as Kerry manager reminded Jack O?Connor how much he hates losing. And he won?t want to walk away with a bitter sfter-taste, says Tony Leen.
HOW CAN Jack O?Connor chew on the future when he?s still digesting the past?

Not just the past week. Two years. Two years besmirched by one loss to a great side. There?s a lot to digest.

?Despite the fact we were smiling on the outside after the game on Sunday, giving all the kudos to Tyrone, deep down we were devastated. Maybe we?ll be better for it,? he reflected this week. ?Personally, I might look back in a couple of weeks and find I?m a better manager for losing an All-Ireland final than for winning one last year.?

The issue was already spinning furiously Monday evening in Tralee. When RT? asked, down-in-the- mouth Jack said he?d be inclined to walk away. Two hours later in Killarney, he felt better. By the time he flicked through the video of the All-Ireland final on Tuesday night, he was thawing.

?If we?d won, absolutely, we?d [the management] have walked away. Going out at the top is the ideal scenario. Peter Canavan is after doing it, fair dues to him. It?s probably the right decision. In hindsight, maybe John O?Mahony would say he?d have preferred to get out after winning the second All-Ireland in 2001. The same for Joe Kernan if he?d won the second one in 2003,? O?Connor mused.

?It does take away from the previous winning season when you lose one, but that?s the nature of sport - you?re remembered for your last game.?

He?s convinced there was little to choose between Kerry and Tyrone last Sunday, and has discovered what a bad loser he is - ?a very bad loser?. And he knows if the present management remains, it?ll be for one final hurrah.

?Absolutely one more year. We might get another year out of this team, but you?d have to rebuild after that. In fact, whoever is taking over then would probably need a three-year term because there are a few fellas around 30, and others at 27 or 28 who are in their prime now, but will be gone off the boil in a few years. Realistically, you are looking at another year for this Kerry team before significantly re-jigging it.?

There is understandable anxiety at County Board level that a decision by O?Connor and co to walk away will leave the executive with a huge hole to fill - and little material to fill it.

?There?s no shortage of candidates,? O?Connor insists. ?There?s plenty of fellas with All-Ireland medals, and some knocking around the place who?ve trained county championship winning sides. They [presumably, Eoin Liston] would have had more experience of training senior teams than I had.?

There were moments during the season when the selectors pondered the great leap, effecting significant change to the shape and personnel of the side. But how could they? Whereas Tyrone was moulded by buffetings from Armagh and Dublin, Kerry learned little in the defeats of Mayo and Cork.

?Maybe I should have had the courage of my convictions,? O?Connor admits. ?There were a few areas we were concerned about, but you can only travel the road that?s in front of you. Any chinks in our armour were not exposed until the final. Are you Moses the prophet or do you operate on what you can see? Realistically, you have to wait until those chinks are exposed before you can make your move. Otherwise you won?t bring everyone along - you can?t make moves on hunches or theories.?

He won?t elaborate, but it?s a revealing admission for a manager who has a name for ruthlessness.

?Tyrone seriously re-jigged their team as the year went on, and a lot of those changes were forced on them by circumstances and things that happened in matches. We didn?t have that same battleground to streamline our team. However, I still think we went down the right road with the team for the final - if you win a semi-final by 13 points, you?re not going to performing major surgery on the team.?

The missing minute at the death has filled the airwaves in Kerry, but the coach waves the issue away. Done. However, he believes a lot of the marginal decisions by referee Michael Monahan went against his charges.

?My gut feeling afterwards was that there was very little in the game, and that was confirmed watching the tape. A couple of small things changed it - we missed a chance to level it after Tom?s? goal, then Canavan kicked an unbelievable point for someone who?d just spent 20 minutes sitting down. He won a very dubious free, when there was a point in it, they got their goal from another dodgy decision against Gooch. The small things - the ball comes off a post between four Kerry men and ends up in Owen Mulligan?s hands.

?That had nothing to do with the referee, but if Mr Monahan looked at the video, he might agree that anything marginal went to Tyrone. This was always going to be a tight match, and he didn?t get anything obvious wrong, but the marginal decisions went with Tyrone.?

That sounds like bitching, and O?Connor abhors that. He?ll say that a draw would have been as much as Kerry could have expected from the final, but the benefits of it would have been enormous for a replay.

?They were at a level of intensity we hadn?t come across in any of our games. We knew that, we?d flagged it. I was at their battles with Armagh, ferocious intensity in each of them. We did well out of freshness for the first twenty minutes, but gradually they wore us down,? he accepts.

Was fitness an issue? ?There?s fitness and there?s sharpness - they were more match-sharp because they had more matches, and more matches that went to the wire than us. Fitness was not an issue. None of our fellas were out on their feet. Match sharpness was an issue, that battle-hardness you can?t buy.?

Irrespective, nothing changes the fact that Kerry has lost to Ulster opposition in three of the last four Championships. ?Yeah, it?s grating a small bit at this stage. Some of the experts up north would say that Armagh and Tyrone are ahead of us, but I wouldn?t agree with that. It hurts to lose a final to any county, but certainly they?re not shy in Ulster about letting everybody know when they?re in the ascendancy.

?But you?re entitled to brag when you win an All-Ireland. For us to have won back to back All-Irelands would have been huge, and to beat a side as hungry as Tyrone, who played as well as they did would have been a monumental achievement.

?The one thing that would kill a manager would be if the team threw in the towel. But the lads never looked like doing that, even when they were being buffeted for twenty minutes in the second half.?

Now it?s getting quiet. In his head, around the place. Time to get some family balance back for the winter.

?There?s no balance, is there? Maybe it?s my own fault, because I don?t do things by half measure, I threw myself headlong into this. There were times this year I found it difficult to lift myself. Maybe I burned myself out with South Kerry and Dromid last year, all the way up to Christmas. Nobody knows the amount of time team management put in, there?s a thousand things.

?I?ve no complaints, I wanted to better myself, test myself at the top level, but it take its toll. You invest so much time ... it?s just a ferocious anti-climax when you don?t win.?

Before the coach informs the County Board chairman Sean Walsh of his decision, he?ll need to ensure his management team is also up for one more year.

?We don?t want to leave people hanging on, the county championship quarter-finals are coming up, and people will want to be looking at that. In any management team, you need people you are comfortable with. The players are happy with us, there?s great harmony in the camp. Ger O?Keeffe and Johnny Culloty aren?t quitters either, they lost and won All-Irelands, and know how to handle both sides. Maybe that?s what?s wrong with me - I?m not used to being beaten.

He?s acclimatising though.

?As the week goes on, I?d be more positive about it. We took this on together and we certainly won?t be going separate roads at this stage.?