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Kieran Donaghy retires - A Kerryman's ode to 'Star'

Eoin Brosnan’s hat-trick for Kerry against Longford made up the exact difference between th...

Off The Ball

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Off The Ball

Eoin Brosnan’s hat-trick for Kerry against Longford made up the exact difference between the sides in that famous Round 4 qualifier 12 years ago. Looking at the statistics alone from that afternoon, his tally was the primary reason a stuttering Kingdom campaign was resuscitated. But nobody looks at the statistics from that day. In fact, nobody remembers much about anything from that game (including Brosnan’s goals, unfortunately), except that Kieran Donaghy started at full-forward for Kerry and the path of modern Gaelic football was altered.

There is a lot of synchronicity about Kieran Donaghy arriving at that place. Would a manager other than Jack O’Connor have stationed him on the edge of the square? Would O’Connor have even considered such a move had Kerry won the Munster championship that year? Would Donaghy have even been in the conversation for a championship starting place were it not for the exposure from TG4 and ‘Underdogs’?

A more appropriate question, however, might be: Where would Kerry football have gone in the middle of the last decade were it not for Kieran Donaghy?

Standing at 6’ 5”, it is ironic how Donaghy hid in plain sight for so long. A ‘basketballer’ and a ‘league player’, Kerry fans expected him to be a decent option off the bench if Darragh or Tommy Griffin started to tire in midfield, but the suggestion that a future All-Star Player of the Year was in their midst would have seemed absurd circa 2005.

The fact that Donaghy was 23 years-old before his star finally shone on the national, senior stage may suggest that the intelligentsia on the Kerry sideline did not always rate him. But it is also evidence of the perseverance and tenacity he possessed to hang in there. Whether it was a desire to prove people wrong or a desire to prove himself right, there was a relentlessness that helped him become one of the great characters of modern GAA, and not just one of the great footballers.

Of course, his was a personality that divided opinion. Dublin and Mayo fans enjoyed jeering Kieran Donaghy as much as they enjoyed cheering their own players, it seems. The reasons for him being viewed as a pantomime villain are still a mystery to many Kerry fans, but perhaps there was an element of the role Donaghy enjoyed. In fact, there was something poetic about his ending to the 2017 season, getting sent off after striking Aidan O’Shea. Many thought that would be his last act in a Kerry jersey and many thought that was a tragedy. Maybe it would have been a fittingly dramatic ending, reminiscent of his explosive arrival (if explosive for very different reasons).

But that wasn’t going to be it. He came back for one last year in 2018, setting David Clifford up for that heart-stopping finale in Clones. It failed to lead to any greater consequence in the context of this year’s championship, but the moment might yet be poignant in hindsight; a Kerry legend passing the ball - and baton - to the next potential Kerry great?

2014 was the year that cemented his legend, though. We all thought he was finished, we all thought Kerry were finished in that All-Ireland semi-final against Mayo. He fooled us again, pulling a semi-final right out of the fire, turning it into a replay and cementing it in an All-Ireland win.

It was not the greatest Kerry team to ever win an All-Ireland. Donaghy has played in better teams himself. But that All-Ireland win, I’m sure, provided the biggest dose of happiness many Kerry people have ever felt. For a brief moment of time, we knew what it was like to turn a hopeless situation into one of pure joy, something which Donaghy himself had achieved previously in his GAA career.

It is the moment many of us will remember most fondly from the career of Kieran Donaghy, a career that helped solidify a character that Kerry GAA cannot afford to lose. Maybe basketball will become the sole occupant of his attention, but it is immediately evident that he is future Kerry manager material if it so interests the Austin Stacks man.

‘I’m one lucky hoor’, Donaghy said in his statement today, citing John B. Keane. It’s probably fair to say the Kerry fans share some bit of that luck, given the journey Donaghy helped start on that July afternoon in 2006.