FOR A 24-year-old, Fearghal Kerin has achieved an incredible amount. Despite his tender years, he has worked as a first-team physio at the top level in the SPL with St Johnstone, been part of Shamrock Rovers’ historic Europa League run and assisted both the Dublin Gaelic football team and the Leinster Rugby Academy.
Having earned a bachelor’s degree in Physiotherapy at UCD* as well as a master’s in Sports and Exercise Medicine at Trinity College, Kerin landed the role of Head Physiotherapist at Shamrock Rovers.
Although Kerin stayed in the position for just under a year, his time there happened to coincide with the most successful period in the club’s recent history. Not only did they win the Airtricity League, they also became the first-ever Irish club to qualify for the Europa League group stages.
In addition to the obvious glamour and excitement that the adventure encompassed, meeting high-profile sides such as Tottenham, Kerin explains how the Europa League stint was an invaluable learning experience for him personally.
“You’re looking to tick as many boxes as you can and for us, we got to travel to Russia, White Hart Lane, Serbia, Estonia, Denmark, so we got an awful lot of travelling done that year. Spurs were very good because one of their physios was Irish. He showed me around and I got see a lot of what goes on in the background there and got to ask a few questions. So when they came over, I met their physios for a drink. You take as much as you can out of these opportunities because [Spurs' physios] are obviously at the very top of their game.
“We went to Rubin Kazan in Russia, and it was minus-18 degrees for the game, so that was a challenge too. You’re not used to working in extreme conditions in football. All of a sudden, you’re thinking ‘how am I gonna handle this?’. So there’s different aspects of it — Europe is great because it just brings so many new challenges to your planning. ‘What are we going to need? What happens if we have a major injury over there?’
“The planning that goes in there and the actual execution is great fun too. St Johnstone played Rosenburg [in the Europa League] and beat them, so that was a great experience. You’re getting everyone as physically conditioned as quick as you can for Europe in pre-season. It came at the start of our season and Rosenburg were in season. So to go and win was a great achievement for us and you can obviously be delighted with yourself after that.”
Michael O’Neill’s departure to become Northern Ireland manager meant all the staff at Rovers left with him, but Kerin quickly got another job working with St Pat’s. Nevertheless, despite O’Neill ending his association with the club, Kerin remained in his thoughts.
“I knew there was also a possibility of going to St Johnstone, because Michael was good friends with Tommy Wright, who was assistant manager over there,” he explains. “He had mentioned the fact that St Johnstone would be changing physio and asked would I be interested, and he just kept me in the loop with regards that. So he set up a meeting with Steve Lomas, who was the manager at the time. Lomas was over scouting players in Dublin one day and he rang and wondered if I wanted to meet him. I said I would but that was it — I didn’t hear anything for a few months.
“So I was thinking they were going to make a change, but then didn’t. In season, I got another phone call asking if I wanted to come over and see the place and do another interview. It was the end of my season at Pat’s, so it was decent timing for me. I went over and saw the set-up — there were decent facilities, it was what I was looking for — proper full-time football and slightly better facilities than I had at Pat’s. So I said it was not going to be something that I’d turn down. So I just started a month before Christmas last year and it’s just coming up over a year now.”
Kerin is enjoying life in this new role, pointing to the trust placed on his particular methods of physiotherapy as one of the main reasons he feels at home in the position. Lomas, meanwhile, has moved on to coach Millwall, with Wright being installed in his place.
“Things have been good under him. They’ve given me a free reign to do it, as I have my own way of doing things. And I would try to work the players quite hard for short periods. Some people would take an injured player and keep them in for six or seven hours and do a lot of massage and lot of treatments, whereas I would get them in to work them hard for two hours, then I’m content that they’ve done enough in that period.
“I’m lucky that our assistant manager, Callum Davidson, is young — he’s just retired from playing. He was at Blackburn [when they were in] the Premier League, so he’s clued in,” he adds. “They’ve got good sports scientists, a good assistant and a good doctor, I’m quite lucky with the staff around me. So if you couldn’t enjoy a job like this, then there’s something wrong with you.”
However, while it is in many ways a dream role, Kerin admits there are some drawbacks that come with the work too — namely, the intensive working hours and constantly being away from his family and friends in Ireland.
“It’s difficult being away from home. The hours are reasonably unsociable and I don’t get to go home much because the team train Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, so they’re off on a Wednesday and obviously have a game on a Saturday. But the injured players will be in on a Wednesday, because you’re aiming to push them to get fit on a Saturday. And then on a Sunday, anyone who’s been injured on a Saturday would be in, so it can end up being a seven-day week sometimes.
“So the hours aren’t long, but can be awkward, so it means you don’t really get home. But as they say, if you want bank holidays, work in a bank. You suck that up. It’s a great job working in football, so you couldn’t complain.”
While Kerin says he counts O’Neill and former Rovers assistant boss Jim Magilton among his friends, and also recently watched the All-Ireland SFC final with the club’s only Irish-born player, Patrick Cregg, he still upholds the strict professional distance that is required between staff and players.
“As a physio, you’re in a position where you can’t become close to the players because ultimately, you’re attempting to make a decision over whether they play,” he explains. “You need to be able to work them hard, you need to have a strong discipline with them, so it’s not something that can happen. You have to know your boundaries.
“It’s something I’ve been aware of at all three of my clubs — because I’m young, you’re the same age as the players, you’re younger than a lot of the players — so you’ve got to create a role for yourself whereby you’re not going to be friends with the players and you’re keeping yourselves out of conversations with players. You’re not going to hear anything you shouldn’t and you’re not going to say anything you shouldn’t. It’s a challenge and because I’m young, and I don’t have my own friends over here, it’s something I have to work on.”
And although Kerin realises that he is obliged to remain as unemotional as possible in all footballing situations, he concedes it can be difficult at times, especially when he has to inform a player that they have suffered a bad injury.
“That’s the toughest part of it, particularly in Ireland where you have players on short contracts — 42-week contracts. So if you have a player who does his cruciate, that’s a nine-month injury. So that player is now injured for the whole length of his contract. So in the off-season, he’s just coming back from injury and you wonder can he get another contract at the club he’s at, or he might have to go pay-as-you-play at another club.
“The cruciate’s the obvious one in football — it’s a long-term injury and it’s common. Your responsibility there is motivating them and making sure they keep going throughout the process. Because I’m young and because I’m enthusiastic, the long-term injuries are somewhere where I’d probably be considered really strong.”
He emphasises that the manner in which he treats the injured players, both from a practical and pyschological viewpoint, can ultimately have a big influence on their long-term well-being.
“It’s a hard process coming back from six or nine-month injuries, so you sometimes have to make a conscious effort to be enthusiastic and to be positive to help guys. It’s very dark, because with players, you sometimes find that if you have three or four players who are injured, you don’t want to call them ‘the injured group’. You don’t want them to change how they see themselves. You’ve got one group outside playing and then you’ve got the injured guys who aren’t playing. So they’ve completely changed how they define themselves.
“People aren’t saying to them ‘how did you play last week?’ People are now saying ‘how’s your injury coming along?’. So it changes how they view themselves. It’s very hard for them with things like mood and confidence being affected. I wouldn’t go too much into the sports psychology of it — I’m not sure how much footballers would buy into it. I just think enthusiasm and trying to make sure you put on a good rehab session for them on a day-to-day basis is important.
“It’s difficult because when someone gets a long-term injury in the first month or two months, it is what it is, and the last couple of months are the best because they’ve just got back to playing and they’re all excited. But that long period in the middle where they’re slogging — that’s really where you earn your corn because you’ve got to be positive and keep things interesting, otherwise it can be difficult for them.”
Kerin has consequently had to adapt quickly and learn how to manage such issues. And at such a young age, he has managed to acquire considerable experience in the game. So does this make him the physio equivalent of Andros Townsend or James McCarthy? Are more high-profile teams lining up to try to sign this promising youngster? Not quite, it appears.
“It seems to be the case that with the bigger clubs, particularly in the Premier League and the Championship in England, a lot of the physios move with their manager. So that seems to be what happens there and how I ended up here was that Michael O’Neill was good to me and was able to recommend me.
“I’m 24, so I’m by some distance the youngest physio in the SPL — I’d say I’m the youngest physio by 15 years in the SPL. So when it comes to applying for a job, the likes of me is never going to get anything by CV because while I have a strong CV, I just don’t have five years’ experience that most places need.
“Obviously, you’d be ambitious and you’d like to work at the highest level with the best facilities and the biggest budget that you could — that’s your aim, just as it is with players. You hope that if you do well, people will know who you are and eventually, stuff will come up for you.”
In addition to his work in football, during his time off from League of Ireland duty, Kerin also worked at various points with both the under-19s at the Leinster Academy and the Dublin GAA footballers. With that in mind, would he ever consider operating outside of football on a more regular basis?
“In football, you become very specialised because you’ll see a lot of bad ankles, knees, hips and groins,” he says. “But you’ll very rarely see dislocated shoulders — you might see one in three years. So that’s a challenge, especially for a young physio like me who’s still developing. You just don’t get as many upper-body injuries, so that’s why when there were opportunities for rugby and Gaelic, I would always try to take them.
“If the opportunity came to work in rugby in the future, that’s something [I’d consider]. Rugby’s my first sport, it’s the sport I played as a young fella. The biggest-budgeted sport in Ireland is rugby, so I’d always like to keep in touch with that.”
At the moment however, Kerin is more than content with life at St Johnstone. They managed the incredible feat of finishing third in the SPL last year, and while they haven’t been quite as successful so far this season (they sit in seventh place at the time of writing), for a club whose playing staff and budget is relatively small compared with other sides in the league, they are still very much punching above their weight. Their current aim, Kerin says, is to be in the top six when the league splits in two towards the end of the season — and anything thereafter is a bonus.
And of course, such success gives the Irish youngster great pleasure, particularly when it involves a player who had faced a race to be fit before kick-off.
“We played last week and won 4-0 against Inverness. We had two players who had been 50:50 and played. When you work hard with a player and push them to get them fit for the Saturday — you’re hoping they get through the game. You’re confident they will, but you’re still that little bit nervy.
“If they do well and score a goal, that’s the best feeling at five o’clock on a Saturday. If the team avoid injuries and the boys have done well, then you can’t ask for anything more. That’s the buzz you get off it, if you’re helping players managing an injury, they’re the ones you’re ecstatic for.”
(All pics used with permission via Fearghal Kerin)
*His time there also encompassed a stint succeeding yours truly as Sports Editor of The University Observer.
