The role of a GAA captain in the last number of years has largely become symbolic.
Nowadays managers will talk about ‘leaders’ being in all sectors of the pitch, and teams who can’t afford to depend on just one man to try and get them out of a sticky situation.
Even still, the honour of being named county captain is a prestigious one that few GAA players ever get to experience, and even fewer still are named captain on multiple occasions.
Bryan Sheehan takes his protein shake today knowing he has joined a rarefied group of players in a county littered with some of the greatest footballers of the last 30 odd years having been named Kerry captain for a second time.
Not even his great idol Maurice Fitzgerald got the chance to captain his county once, and Páidi Ó Sé only got the chance to be the official nominee for a single year, in 1985.
Clip: GAA Archive
Kerry operate a system for the county captaincy where the side who wins the county senior football title decides who receives the honour.
If the nominated player is not a starter, then there is usually a second player given the nod, who would be a regular on the 15, and the armband swaps if the former is selected.
In 2003, for example, Declan Quill was nominated by Kerins O’Rahilly’s, but Mike McCarthy, from the Kilcummin side they beat in that year’s county final captained the team for most of the summer.
With South Kerry winning the title in 2015, and being a divisional side, it seemed likely that Bryan Sheehan or Killian Young, as the most established Kerry players among the winning panel, would be the men in the frame to lead out the Kingdom in 2016.
The finer details would be decided in late December in the South Kerry Championship, as Sheehan’s St Mary’s claimed the regional title and so the forward, and former Kerry minor goalkeeper, was officially confirmed last night as the 2016 nominee.
Bryan Sheehan nominated to be the new Kerry Captainhttps://t.co/LuTWHmtt71
— Kerry GAA (@Kerry_Official) January 10, 2016
Sheehan previously captained Kerry in 2010 when his side lost to Down in an All-Ireland quarter-final in Croke Park, but he now joins some of the all-time greats to have been nominated twice for the Kerry captaincy role.
Declan O’Sullivan is one of only handful of players to win back-to-back All-Irelands as captain, in 2006 and in 2007.
Having been dropped during that summer’s championship, O’Sullivan and Colm Cooper, who led the side in his absence, accepted the trophy together in an unusual move.
O’Sullivan is also one of only four Kerry men to lift the cup twice, after the legendary Dick Fitzgerald, John Joe Sheehy and Joe Barrett, while the list of players in the last 30 years or so who have led Kerry on more than one occasion as the nominated captain is a short, but glittering, list.
Cooper, despite being named captain on three occasions, failed to win lift Sam Maguire between 2011 and 2013.
Seamus Moynihan took the honour in 1998 thanks to East Kerry’s thrilling success, but it was his second stint as captain in 2000 that saw him lift the ultimate prize in Croke Park.
The following year Dr Crokes, who had the honour in 2000 and ’01, had Eoin Brosnan as their preferred choice as captain, but he led Kerry in only one game, the controversial loss to Meath.
Tomas Ó Sé did lead Kerry on several occasions, but never as the preferred choice of the county champions, as he lost out to older brother Darragh, and clubmate Dara Ó Cinnéide.
Sheehan’s biggest issue now is trying to make sure that he will get the chance to cement his place in the Kerry starting XV after missing large chunks of the 2015 campaign due to injury.
Here is a list of some of the more recent successful Kerry captains, up to 2009, from the Kerry GAA website.
