Kerry selector / coach Cian O'Neill has been made feel at home in the Kingdom.

Cutting-edge coach O'Neill was apprehensive about the prospect about becoming Kerry's first-ever outside selector and he remembers vividly his first meeting with the players in 2012:

"I certainly felt like the only stranger in that room," the Kildare man says in The Irish Times. "And a lot of people had said to me, 'there are lot of players there with a lot of jingles in their pockets with their medals, and you're going to find it tough to bring them on board'. But I was very surprised, because what I actually found was the opposite, that they all wanted more.

"What I found from that first meeting that night was a huge desire, a huge drive, for more. And from the first training session thereafter they've been a phenomenal group to work with. And it really helps that we actually all get on very well, personally.

"So any concerns or fears that people might have had that it'll be different now, went out the window that very first night in Kerry - probably because of the disappointment of what had gone on the year before. Maybe they realised you can't do what you've always done, or else you'll get what you've always got.

"I think they felt it needed to be changed and it needed to be developed. So there's never been anyone giving out about it. A lot of these guys wouldn't have been exposed to scientific methods of training and physical development. And they're lapping this up.

"But I just facilitate that, because it's the players who are responsible. A lot of the physical work is done away from the Tuesday and Thursday training nights. Everything we do at training is football-driven, football-oriented. So ultimately the players should take all the gratitude for the physical work that has been done."

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