​By John Harrington

In a perfect world, Kieran Cronin’s debut for the Kerry U-21 team in their 2004 Munster Championship first-round match against Clare would have been the start of a long and glorious career in the green and gold.

Instead, a cruel twist of fate ensured it would be the last game of football he would ever play.

Shortly after he scored his first and only point in a Kerry jersey, his life was changed forever by an accidental but devastating collision with Clare’s Enda Coughlan. The Clare centre-forward was left with a shattered knee-cap by the force of the impact as they ran from opposite directions to contest the ball, but Cronin’s injury was much worse.

His neck was broken, the cervical 6 (C6) bone that surrounded his spinal column crushed by the collision. As he lay prone on the Austin Stack Park pitch a fiery pain burned down Cronin’s two arms, but much more worrying was the fact that he couldn’t feel anything when the medics pinched his knees.

Every bump in the road on his ambulance journey to Tralee General Hospital was pure agony, and when he finally got there the 20-year-old was immediately air-lifted to the Mater Hospital in Dublin. For the next 40 days and nights he was placed in traction on a rotating bed designed to alleviate some of the pressure on his neck.

The good news was that the spinal cord had not been severed, the bad news was that there had been significant nerve damage and it would impossible to say for some time what the permanent consequences would be. Cronin couldn’t move his body, but his thoughts wouldn’t stop turning, tortured by the unknowns of his situation and the sheer awful luck that had put him in it.

‘How bad is it? Will I walk again? Why did I go for the ball like that? If only I had done this or that differently…’

He was finally allowed to sit up in his bed for the first time six weeks after being strapped into it, and promptly fainted. An intensive two months in the National Rehabilitation Centre in Dun Laoghaire would follow before he was eventually allowed home to Ballinskelligs in South Kerry for the first time for a short visit. The nerve damage was all down his left-side, bad news for a left-handed person. His football playing days were over, even if it took him a long time to accept that harsh reality.

When he finally did, it hardened his resolve to remain active in the game in a different capacity, as a coach or manager. So it is a testament to his application that he is now regarded as one of the brightest up and coming managerial talents in Kerry football.

He took charge of his home club, St. Michael’s Foilmore, at the age of 26 and promptly led them to two South Kerry senior titles. He coached Macroom in Cork for two years and did so well there that last year’s beaten Kerry county finalists, Legion, have appointed him as their manager for the 2016 season. And before Christmas he gained another feather in his cap when he was employed by Kerry U-21 manager Jack O’Connor to oversee the preparation of the Kerry players that were based in Cork where Cronin now lives.

He has adapted impressively to his life turning on a cruel twist of fate, and hopes his story might help some others who find themselves in difficult circumstances.

“Fate throws something your way and you just have to get on with it,” Cronin told GAA.ie. “A lot of lads have suffered injuries like this to various extents, but you can become adaptable to anything and for me coaching has become the next best thing. Maybe my story will give a bit of encouragement to other lads in a similar position by letting them know there's life afterwards when you can no longer play the game.”

In order to become the best team-manager he could be, Cronin completed a course in Strength and Conditioning in University of Limerick and is constantly trying to up-skill himself in the field of statistics or any other that could be beneficial. But before he really started pursuing a vocation in management, he brought his ‘tick every box’ approach to bear on trying to make a full recovery from the injury he sustained back in 2004. He was willing to try anything, and went as far away as Australia in search of answers.

“I was travelling around and working and then I got to Melbourne and tried hyperbaric oxygen therapy along with other things like needling, cupping, and a whole host of different treatments and medicines,” he says. “I just wanted to try anything at all that might get the nerve pathways flying again. Yerra, look it, I would like to think that brought my body up a bit, but I never got back to full-function in the left-hand.

“Now, you adapt, like every creature does to unforeseen things. I've a small problem in the left-hand since with my grip so I have since changed over to my right-hand. I was left-handed with everything, so now writing and the whole lot is now done right-handed. It doesn't hold me back in any way.

“If I was in the gym I'd have to strap my left-hand onto a dumb-bell just to give that grip. The hand-movement is fine, it's just the finger-movement and the strength that's wasted away. That's the only remaining issue. The left-leg, you'd notice a small weakness, but that's it.”

His determination to make a full recovery was fueled by one overarching desire – that the day he broke his neck would not be the last one he played competitive Gaelic Football. Every expert he met told him a comeback was impossible, but it took him a long time before he finally listened to them and admitted defeat.

“I'd say it was only five years to the day after the injury that I only finally accepted I wouldn't play again,” he admits. “I kept thinking I was going to come back. I got second opinions and then more opinions in Australia, the whole lot. They said, no-way, playing would fire it completely. One bang again and I'd probably be paralysed. I went for so many opinions, and it took every bit of the five years to sit down and say to myself, 'that's it'.

“You'd always be thinking one way or another that you might get back into it. I went training a few times, in and out, and a bit of five-a-side soccer. But I couldn't take the risk of competitive football again. I had dislocated my neck, smashed the bones, and had nerve damage. I'd say one hit again...it was only a matter of millimetres at the time it wasn't a lot worse.

“It was a struggle to leave the football behind, though. Every year I was coming with something else or get another opinion or think I was stronger. When you're born and bred in South Kerry and the culture of football, it was always going to be on the mind to get back playing again.

“But when you can't, I suppose the next best thing is coaching and managing. It's not the same as playing, but, by God, it's the next best thing and it's been fulfilling.”

He was a selector with his home club St. Michael’s Foilmore for a year before he took over the managerial reins himself in 2011. By any measure he was an impressive success, leading them to Championship and League success in South Kerry and cementing their place in the top-four of the County League Division One.

“We had a good productive outing for the three years I was there and I learned the ins and the out of it all, including the importance of the psychology and mental well-being of the players,” says Cronin. “It was a constant learning curve from the start, but you'd get the buzz back from being on the line. You get your wins and you get your performances.

“It's a different feeling to playing because that's more individual. You're looking at yourself more than looking at the team. But as a manager you get a buzz from getting certain players to fulfil certain roles and you're getting them playing to their potential. When you'd see a player that might be written off at the start of the year and you get him playing to his potential and you see his performances coming, I suppose that's the buzz you get at the end of the day.”

He accelerated his own development as a manager by bringing Jack O’Connor on board to help out with coaching the team in Cronin's final year in charge. O’Connor’s two sons, Eanna and Cian, played for St. Michael’s, and Cronin was already well aware of what their father could bring to the set-up because he’d been managed by O’Connor himself when he played on the famous 2002 Corn Uí Mhuirí winning Colaiste na Sceilge school team.

“Knowing him from the two sons playing and from having played for him myself in Colaiste na Sceilge that time, I just decided to give him a buzz and he was happy to come in and help me with the coaching,” says Cronin. “Sure, look, it was always going to be an advantage having Jack on board and learning the ropes from him. His man-management and getting teams to reach their potential and getting them honest and hard-working and playing as a team, you could see exactly why he's been so successful.

“It's a mixture of man-management and coaching and getting everyone playing in the team ethos. That's what stands to him. After he left us he went on afterwards to take the Kerry minors and won two All-Irelands with them. He's no joke, that lad!”

Cronin must have made a positive impression on O’Connor too, because the Kerry U-21 manager recruited him late last year to help train the Kerry U-21 players who were based in Cork. Cronin teaches in St. Colman’s Boys National School in Macroom, and was more than happy to help out.

“There are anything up to 10 lads on the panel who are in Cork, so I just coordinated their gym-work and things like that. Just oversaw it really for the weeks leading up to Christmas. That was just my small part. Jack just asked me to help out and I was happy to. Hopefully now it'll come to fruition this week for them in the Munster Final (on Thursday). Kerry have been tested with their two games in every way really. Cork are very good on paper, very physical, with big, powerful players. But I suppose is there still question-marks over them, we'll see.”

If Cronin’s own managerial career continues on its upward trajectory and he leads Legion to a County title in the next year or two, then it may not be too long before we see him taking charge of a Kerry team himself in some grade. He’s ambitious about the future, but not willing to look that far ahead just yet.

“You're continually learning doing all of this, but I'm looking forward to taking every step as it comes and sure who knows where it will all end up,” he says. “In terms of ambitions down the line, sure you can't look any further than your next game really in this thing in any given year. Hopefully there will be a long coaching career ahead of me, wherever it will take me.”

You need to be determined, resilient, and have the ability to improvise in order to be a successful manager. The future bodes well for Cronin so because he has already proven in his private life that has an abundance of all of those qualities.

“No doubt it has given me serious resilience,” he admits. “Looking back, any challenge you get in life that you overcome stands to you. When you come through the challenge of not being able to walk and then adapting to switching your natural inclination from your left side to your right side. Spending months doing rehab in Dun Laoghaire played tricks with your mind but ultimately it gave me a bit of mental toughness and resilience.

“You'd be surprised you can learn to cope with anything.”