Liam Kearney remembers getting a phone call from Peter Keane ahead of the 2019 season, the new manager’s first in charge of the Kingdom. It wasn’t a total surprise. The panel was getting a shake up and Kearney had heard from Spa clubmate Niall O’Mahony, an S&C coach in Keane’s backroom team, that they’d been keeping an eye on him.
The journey to that point had not been along a smooth road. He’d travelled the island looking for a solution to a foot injury which had kept him out of action for nearly two years. Despite all he’d done to get there, two-and-a-half years after Keane’s call, Kearney decided he’d had enough and left the Kerry panel.
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In 2014, Kerry ended a long drought, winning the county’s first All-Ireland minor title in 20 years. Kearney captained a team featuring future senior winners Shane Ryan, Brian Ó Beaglaioch, Tom O’Sullivan, Micheál Burns, and Killian Spillane along with current Aussie rules star Mark O’Connor. They were managed by Jack O’Connor. It was the first of Kerry’s five consecutive minor title wins.
“I can’t believe it’s 10 years ago,” says Kearney, speaking from New York where he moved 18 months ago and works with construction company Wesbuilt.
Last Sunday, he was part of the Kerry NY team which dramatically beat Westmeath to win the club’s first senior county title in 10 years. Ardfert’s Bobby O’Regan scored the winning point from a long range free with the penultimate kick of extra-time.
“I think we had 11 or 12 of the starting 15 the last day who were Kerry players,” says Kearney.
“It showed in the way we play. We had that Kerry style.”
A year after winning the minor title, Kearney was part of the Kerry junior team which won the All-Ireland. It was a well-trodden part for those en route to the county’s senior panel. Tadhg Morley, Shane Murphy, Gavin Crowley, Conor Cox and Dan O’Donoghue were all on the Kingdom side which defeated Mayo in the final. It was then that the injury troubles began.
“I missed 18 months to two years with a recurring foot injury and stress fractures,” says Kearney.
“I think we played an intermediate final (with Spa) on a Sunday evening, and then I played a college game on the Monday.
“It’s an overuse injury coupled with a biomechanical issue. It started getting sore and then I played on for a few weeks. It got to the point where you’d be coming off after a game and you wouldn’t be able to walk.
“I was with the U21s at the time. I said it to Jimmy Galvin, the physio, and he thought it was my ankle. We went for a scan.
“I was in college on a Monday morning, he called me and said, ‘You actually have a stress fracture. You need to get on crutches and put on a protective boot straight away’.”
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Kearney visited “just about everyone you could see in Ireland” in his attempts to fix his foot. After it flared up again while playing for East Kerry, he felt it was just about the last straw. Then it was recommended he get some orthotics for his boots and that he see physiotherapist Colm Fuller at the Santry Sports Clinic. The combination of the inserts and changing his running style eased the pain.
“I still had problems,” says Kearney, “even when I went in with Kerry, I was getting injections in my foot just to keep me going for a while.”
Kearney made five appearances in the 2020 National League, starting three games at midfield. Prospects looked good. Then covid hit. Then he broke his collarbone.
The 2021 season was delayed and after four months of training on his own, he began to wonder if inter-county football was worth it. Between the end of the league and the beginning of the championship that July he thrashed it out with friends, family and teammates about what he should do.
“It was the only thing consuming me at that time, how I was going to training and I didn’t want to be there,” he says.
“I just wanted to play games. Training all the time and not playing games wasn’t what I enjoyed. I just loved playing football.
“I talked to a lot of people. They were like, ‘Would you not stick it out?’ There was a month or two left in the summer. I just couldn’t do it. When I explained my reasons, they understood.
“I just called Peter and explained the situation. He was like, ‘Obviously, the door is always open’. He wished me luck. I went back that night training with Spa. It was a load off my shoulders.”
It was Eamonn Fitzgerald, a contact from his days at IT Tralee and now New York GAA’s games development manager, who got him over to the States. Leaving Spa was tough, especially with the club now at senior level but Kearney enjoys the more relaxed approach to Gaelic games across the water.
The season being shorter means there’s less stress being put on that troublesome foot. There’s also time for sporting endeavours outside of football. In January, he’s doing a Hyrox event in Las Vegas with some other Kerry natives. He’d like to do the New York Marathon next year. These are the things being a Kerry footballer precludes but being a New York footballer allows. Last year, he played in the Tailteann Cup against Carlow and this year against Laois. He also played against Mayo in this year’s Connacht quarter-final.
“Towards the end I wasn’t putting in the effort that I was putting in at the start, and that showed,” he says his time with Kerry.
“I was getting more frustrated then that I wasn’t playing and blaming other people when in reality it was just me and the effort I was putting towards it.
“It all came to a halt where I had to decide, ‘I’m either in this or I’m not’, and I wasn’t. I needed to make the decision instead being there when I didn’t want to be there, taking a places ahead of other people who might have bitten your hand off to get on a Kerry panel.
“Football in general wouldn’t stress me out too much. There’s a lot of other things going on in my life that get equal attention. I’m happy where I’m at. I don’t have any regrets about anything that’s gone on in my football career.”
