Kerry Trainers

Jerry Savage talks about Kerry's Legendary Trainer Dr. Eamonn O'Sullivan


by Weeshie Fogarty

 I remember the drawn match because the radios were scarce at the time. I was up at my neighbour's and we weren't able to get into the kitchen. We were standing in the porch and we got the message out that the match was won by Cavan, and we came back down the road to the football field and we started playing football and the later comers came to announce that the match was a draw. Packie Boylan's draw was declared legal. The referee gave his decision, the match was a draw. The replay was fixed for Oct. 17th. Miko Doyle was captain in that year, I remember, the Stacks had won the county championship in '36 after a long break, and Mike was captain. He was one of the older of all the players in the team and Purty and Roundy and Tim O'Donnell and so forth. But Dr. Eamon was called to train the team and they were trained here under the guidance of Dr. Eamon, and they went out and won convincingly.

They had a great tuition from Dr. Eamon, who was a doctor and a psychiatric doctor as well. It was mental and physical and it helped to blend the team together, who weren't great in the drawn game because they hadn't much training. But they had training under the guidance of Dr. Eamon. They beat Cavan 4-4 to 1-7,1 think, and Jim Smith was playing full-back that time and Timmy Leary was after poaching two goals, and he warned Timmy never again to come inside that square and all that business. But Miko had reverted to centre-back which he had been in the drawn game to full-forward and himself and Jim Smith clashed and I'll always remember and I'll quote here verbatim, Green Flag gave an account of what Jim Smith said after the match, "My nose was broke, my mouth was bleeding, my eyes were puffed, and we lost the game". That appeared in Green Flag, who was a Kerryman from Ballylongford writing at the time and he was a great reporter. Kerry had a convincing win, came home to a great reception in Killarney, and Billy Myers and Timmy Leary represented the town, it was the start of which should have been our first side in the rovers. 1938 was a different story.

He would be of course, as well at that time, he was a hero as well as the players. They had come through a lean period. Laois had held them for a drawn game in Pairc Ui Caoimh and the replay was in Waterford. Billy Myers, Tadhg Healy and Joe Keohane could have been minors on the same day and they played in both matches and the great Tommy Murphy played that day. He got injured that day. They said he got rough treatment from Kerry, which wasn't a fact, but he was only 16 or 17 years.

He was a vital cog. As I said previously he was a doctor of medicine and psychiatry and the mental approach was correct. He gave every man his own job to do and you did your job and you minded your own part of the field. It's different now, they're running everywhere, the full-back is down centre-field and vice versa but the full-back stood his ground and the full-forward was marking him. It was man to man, it was catch and kick, and he perfected the catch and kick, if you like in the days gone by when they came down from 17 to 15 and so forth. But he was a brilliant man and the record proves it.

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