It seems fitting that the League of Ireland's youngest club should also have its youngest-ever manager.
Kerry FC are about to embark on their second season in the SSE Airtricity Men's First Division and 25-year-old Conor McCarthy is at the helm.
The Killarney native was a coach under Billy Dennehy during the Kingdom's maiden campaign but with Dennehy now focusing solely on his sporting director role, McCarthy is in charge of first-team affairs for the 2024 campaign.
This will make him the league's youngest ever boss, taking the record held by former Republic of Ireland manager Stephen Kenny, who took the managerial reins at Longford Town in 1998, at the age of 26.
It's a point of interest for many around the league but McCarthy insists he has been too busy preparing his charges for the year ahead to pay any attention to the chatter.
"I haven't taken much notice of it," he told RTÉ Sport at the launch of the 2024 season in Dublin's Vicar Street on Wednesday.
"The work has just continued on from last year as a staff and a club. Things haven’t really changed. I'm sure it can be a story elsewhere but I’m there long enough now, I’m part of the furniture so I don’t think anyone is getting too carried away about age."
McCarthy has been around coaching set-ups for the best part of a decade, after finishing up playing with his local side.
"I played locally with Killarney Celtic, only a stone's throw from me, I played up to senior level," he says.
"As a coach, I started at 15 or 16, helping out here and there, nothing major. I wouldn’t say coaching, I was just helping out picking up a few cones here and there. As it went on, the club kind of pushed me in that direction. I did a few badges and they supported me through that.
"I was happy enough to do it, as with most coaches, you kind of get that bug for it. Since then, I just kind of progressed year in and year out, trying to take a little step up the ladder every year until I hopped in with Kerry. I’ve progressed from 19s into the first team and into the role I’m in now."
It was only in November 2022 that Kerry received their licence to participate in the following year's League of Ireland season. A 3-2 away win over Athlone Town in May would be their only league victory in 2023, as they finished bottom of the pile with just 10 points.
McCarthy feels that with a chastening first campaign behind them, Kerry can kick on to bigger and better things in 2024. However, he stops short of putting a fixed target in place, as they prepare to travel to Cork City for their opening game.
"I think the way things happened last year, everything happened so fast, the season just happened out of nowhere," he says.
"We’re taking it one game at a time but you never know where things can go. Our main focus is Cork in a week’s time and then we’ll move on to Bray the following week. We do want to improve on things but we’re not looking too far down the line in terms of tallies or points or positions. We’ll try and go as high as we can and do what we can to get there but wherever we end up is where we end up."
McCarthy's ambition to deliver the goods for Kerry FC is reflected in his day job with DPD, a role which balances neatly with his coaching position.
"Early starts, tear into that and then get over to Tralee as soon as possible," he says of his daily routine. "In and around Killarney, I’d be delivering bits and pieces. An early start but the hours are good in that sense, we finish around the two o’clock mark and I get to training at a reasonable time."
Among the attendees at Mounthawk Park last season were David Clifford and some of his fellow Kerry Gaelic football stars. Clifford's GAA talents are lost on nobody but McCarthy can also confirm that the All-Ireland winner had plenty of skills with a soccer ball, having seen him play growing up.
"David would have played in the same team as us, Celtic, when we were younger. He would have been a year under," says McCarthy. "He was a good player so he would have played up. A lot of the GAA boys would have played in or around us. He was good, I've heard people say he could have played at a very high level. If he wants to transfer over, we’ll take him! He’s quite good at everything.
"They’re all fans," McCarthy adds of the Kerry Gaelic football team. "This is something that everyone in Kerry has wanted for a long time, no matter what sporting interest they have, everyone has always wanted it. Everyone has bought into it and everyone is interested, you’d be walking down the street and there’s someone from some code asking how things are going. The public have been brilliant and the fans have been fantastic from day one and they will continue to be.
"I played a little bit [of GAA]. Killarney Legion would have been my club. Killarney Celtic and Legion are only a stone's throw from each other. I played a bit of football but soccer has been my main sport. If there was a decision to make, it was quite an easy one. I'm a Kerryman too so I always have a keen eye on the football."
McCarthy may have to take his eye off the GAA over the coming months as he embarks on his voyage into soccer management. At Turner's Cross on 16 February he will overtake Kenny's record as the youngest manager to take charge of a League of Ireland game, and things didn't turn out too badly for the ex-Dundalk boss in the grand scheme of things.
Age is just a number, after all.
