\n An Pod Gaeilge, a Tuairisc.ie podcast<\/a>, about the sea at St Finian\u2019s Bay. The interview was conducted through Irish.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI had my own incident a few years ago. It\u2019s really dangerous, not suitable for swimming at all, though it looks lovely. There are always people swimming there, even older people, but one day I myself got into trouble.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had just come home from cycling and went in for a quick dip. Before I knew it, I was swept out and spent six minutes in the water. I thought it was the end of me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was two days before the Mayo game a few years ago. It could have been much worse. If I had gone, no one would have known, except the dog. In the end the current pushed me towards the rocks and I scrambled out, badly shaken.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could swim, but when you\u2019re exhausted like that, it\u2019s no good. I just let the waves carry me towards the rocks and got out. Since then, I only go into the water for a minute or two, and if I want to swim properly, I go to the pool.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor also addressed criticism of the Kerry team this year, saying it crossed a line from fair comment to personal attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hits harder when it\u2019s ex-players,\u201d said O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n
\u201cCriticism is fine, and there\u2019s fair criticism, but there\u2019s also criticism that isn\u2019t fair, when it gets personal. I felt that some of the criticism this year was personal.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake Darragh \u00d3 Se for example, he was involved in five or six of those All-Ireland titles, two when I was a selector and three when I was manager. I thought maybe it was a bit strange, some of the things he was saying, because he was being very dismissive of the selectors I had and other things like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fine to criticise tactics, or the style of football you\u2019re playing, that\u2019s fair. But when the criticism becomes personal, that crosses a line. At the start of this campaign, that\u2019s what happened. So yes, it affected me, I can\u2019t say it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were putting in massive effort, even if results weren\u2019t always going our way. It wasn\u2019t from a lack of trying. There\u2019s fair criticism, but there\u2019s also personal attacks, and I think a few people crossed that line.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw something on TG4 last week, one of those who had criticised us was saying afterwards that maybe it would actually help us, that it might motivate the team. Some people might take it that way, but that\u2019s not how it felt at the time. We certainly didn\u2019t think he was trying to help us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kerry manager Jack O\u2019Connor revealed his son Cian saved a swimmer from drowning near the family home in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[10417,10416,18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-27536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-gaelic-football","9":"tag-kerry-gaa","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}