Kieran Donaghy is loved by his own, loathed by opponents

For a man his size, there's a certain irony in the fact that Kieran Donaghy has spent much of his career hiding in plain sight. Starting out, he was a midfielder by trade and vocation right up until the point in 2006 where Jack O'Connor got desperate and tossed him in full-forward against Longford. This summer, he was an add-on, a body at training in a Kerry set-up that had its face turned to the future. And then he came on and burgled them some oxygen against Mayo.

Donaghy is the tenner Kerry have kept finding in the arse pocket of their jeans. Tomorrow he plays in his sixth All-Ireland final. Of the players still lacing up boots at intercounty level, only Marc Ó Sé (about to start his ninth), Aidan O’Mahony (his eighth), Declan O’Sullivan (seven) and Colm Cooper (eight) have lined up for more. No mean achievement for a player who was 23 by the time he got a championship start.

It’s hard to argue that anyone saw this in his future, even as recently as a month ago. Going into the semi-final against Mayo, Donaghy had all but disappeared from view.

In the quarter-final win over Galway, Eamonn Fitzmaurice replaced a midfielder and three forwards without Donaghy getting the nod to go in for any of them. Up to the Mayo game, his 2014 consisted of three minutes at the end of the Munster semi-final against Clare.

He had been recovering from injuries most of the year – a niggly groin and a dislocated shoulder – but even when fit, the impression that Fitzmaurice didn’t rightly fancy him any more was hard to shake. In 2013, he started the games against Tipperary, Waterford and Cavan but was benched for Cork in the Munster final and Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final. Though still only 31, this just didn’t look like Donaghy’s kind of gig any longer.

After the replay against Mayo, Fitzmaurice referenced how bitterly disappointed Donaghy had been to see so many players get a run against Galway ahead of him. Yet in the same breath, he talked glowingly of how positive Donaghy had been in the weeks that followed.

“I’m delighted for him because he never bitched, he never moaned. He was never a negative influence or a negative energy around the place. He was the opposite and he got that bit of karma he was looking for and that he deserved.”

Vibes man

Talk to anyone in Kerry and it’s not hard to see Donaghy in exactly that role. The high-fiving, piss-taking, hoops-loving vibes man. Big galoot grinning out from under a baseball cap. Still with the big townie head on him and the quick townie tongue inside it.

In an interview on Newstalk back in July, Donaghy gave an insight into the kind of squad member he’d like to be, even if game time wasn’t coming his way.

“These young guys are going to be playing for Kerry for the next 10 years. I’d hate for them to be saying a few years down the line, ‘Ah, Kieran Donaghy – what was he like? Sulking around the place for a year or two because he wasn’t on the team’. I’d hate for that to happen.

“I try to be positive around the place. I try to encourage fellas. That’s just my persona. I’d say I’ll be like that when I’m 50 and I’m playing golf with the club, trying to cajole the fella next to me to make the putt that’ll win us a prize.”

Even as his form has dipped since his mid-20s, there’s always been an enduring fondness for Donaghy in Kerry.

“He’s loved because of his personality,” says Dara Ó Cinnéide. “Really and truly loved. Inside in the group, he’s so popular. He could have gone away and sulked but he didn’t. He’s a huge presence, very vocal. He exudes positivity.”

And yet, if you’re reading this and you’ve ever played against him, most likely you’re shaking your head and tutting your tongue to blisters.

It is no secret that Donaghy’s popularity within Kerry’s borders isn’t overly shared widely beyond them. For such a demonstrably likeable chap outside the whitewash, he has a seemingly boundless ability to irritate within it.

He is a trash-talker, a taunter, an incessant mouther from first whistle to last. Has been since his arrival in 2006, when he famously ended up apologising on live TV for roaring in the face of Armagh goalkeeper Paul Hearty after his goal in the quarter-final. Will be until the day he trips off to get the handicap down.

“He does do it,” says Ó Cinnéide. “I’ve seen him, everybody has. Against Dublin in the All-Ireland final three years ago, I had a good view of it. If I was a Dublin player that day, I’d have boxed him.

“That’s a townie thing, that’s all that is. He would have done it to me when he was a kid, maybe 18 or 19. I’d be lining up a free and he’d be in front of me, waving his arms and clapping his hands and mouthing away at me. And within Kerry you’d be going, ‘Ah, well he’s one of our own’, so you’d put up with it. But I’d say if you were from outside the bubble, you’d think differently.”

Ryan McMenamin laughs when you ask him about it. “Well, I can’t really complain that much, can I?” he cracks. “I did plenty of the same. But he wasn’t backward about coming out with the verbals, that’s for sure. He was strong and physical and when he was going well, he wouldn’t be long telling how you well he was going. He will let you know that you’re in trouble.

‘Sent off’

“I remember there was one game where he just started on to me about how I was finished and how it was time to give it up. I started back at him and it was about get out of hand. But the pair of us just looked at each other and we didn’t even say anything but I think we both thought we may quit this now before it escalates. No point the pair of us getting sent off after five minutes, you know?

“But that was just part of his game. He was a different person on the field, no question. You knew when you were playing him that he kind of fed off it. If he kicked a point early on, he’d let you know all about it and he grew in stature straight away. The better he played, the more verbals would come out. At the same time, he was always taking a fair bit of abuse from defenders. That’s what the game was.”

McMenamin is a let-bygones-be-bygones kind of guy. He’d want to be, says you, otherwise it might be a lonely old life. But behind the black beard and the black heart is a keen mind when it comes to what it takes to make it in the game. Not for nothing has he been lined up to work with the Tyrone minors next year.

“I always thought it probably had something to do with the fact that Kieran took a while to get onto the Kerry team as a youngster,” he says. “Like, at the start of his career, he was old enough by the time he got starting for Kerry. And I think it took him a while to realise that he was going to have to be a wee bit more nasty on the pitch than he was off it.

“He probably tried it the other way for a while and said, ‘I’m just going to play football here’. But some players are just better when they do get nastier. It helps them to play on the edge. And Kieran is a better footballer when he’s playing on the edge. He gets as bit of aggression about him and he starts to dominate his whole area like he did against Mayo.”

Ó Cinnéide sometimes look at the game and is quietly happy to have finished up when he did, since the verbals that go on now just didn’t exist to the same degree before he retired in 2005. But he’s sanguine enough too about the lust for it in certain players. Donaghy is who he is, off the pitch and on it.

“I think he’s needed it a bit as well. It helped him and it drove him. I remember the time that he came out and apologised to Paul Hearty – I thought it was totally over the top to do that. Why would he? It was like saying that it’s okay for them to say what they like but not for him just because he was from Kerry. Somebody obviously advised him there but I think it was bad advice. Why dampen a fella’s natural enthusiasm?

“He was being called a cry-baby by the Armagh players and he reacted. So what? All this stuff about it being unKerry-like and we’re supposed to be the standard-bearers and guardians, it’s rubbish. The same people who said it were the ones who called us naive for the way we played against the northern teams and that we’d have to cop on. You can’t have it every way.

High moral ground

“Okay, the way he goes on mightn’t be for everyone but it happens. We should stop feigning surprise or outrage about it. We can’t take the high moral ground the whole time. Kerry do things as well.

“This idea that we’re all Mick O’Connell – sure you’d love to be but the environment isn’t always ideal. Not every full-back is going to play you like Darren Fay and try to beat you fair and square without opening his mouth. Full-backs don’t come that way anymore. Full-forwards don’t either.”

So we can take it that the chat between Donaghy and Neil McGee tomorrow won’t be for delicate ears. Oh, to mic them up and listen back sometime. Alas, we never will.

Instead, the simple pleasure of the year’s biggest game will have to do us. And the intrigue of a player who four weeks ago was staring down the barrel of a nothing summer now finding himself one the key strands to an All-Ireland final storyline through sheer force of his personality.

With all its flavours.