Peter Keane is an Irish Gaelicfootball manager and former player who is currently managing the Kerry senior football team. As a player, he lined out with South Kerry Championship club St. Mary's Cahirciveen. Keane came from a family of nine. Both of his parents ran the Ringside Rest Hotel in Cahersiveen. His father Tom was a builder who spent time as chairman of the South Kerry board. Peter Keane played football in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He played for St Mary's alongside fellow forward Maurice Fitzgerald. In 1988, the pair won a Kerry under-21 title for South Kerry. However, his county career was limited to minor, county junior and under-21. He spent four years working in a bank before departing to work in retail in Killorglin. He is considered shrewd. In 2009, he managed Beaufort's junior footballers past his own St Mary's club in the county semi-final and led them to victory over Dromid in the final. He began managing his native club St Mary's in 2010, travelling down from Killorglin especially to do so, and led the to victory in the South Kerry final. Keane's younger brotherRay was playing for the team, this before his own foray into management with St Finbarr's. After leading St Mary's to the 2011 All-Ireland Junior Club Football Championship, Keane joined Kerry's youth development system and managed the Kerry under-16s. County minor managerMickey O'Sullivan brought him in as a selector in 2011, telling The Kerryman newspaper: "Nobody knows more than Peter does". This was accidental, only coming about because Seán O'Sullivan left a vacancy by coming out of retirement to play for Kerry. Keane stayed with the Kerry minor team for two years before joining the Killarney-based Legion club as its manager. He led Legion to the final of the Kerry Senior Football Championship in 2015, the club's first since 1946, and experienced a narrow loss. He then managed the Kerry minor team to three consecutive All-Ireland titles between 2016 and 2018. Following the resignation of Kerry senior managerÉamonn Fitzmaurice after the county's loss to Kildare in the 2018 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, Keane was approached to succeed Fitzmaurice. He did so, and recalled Tommy Walsh, Jonathan Lyne and Jack Sherwood to the county team in his first season, and also bringing in Tommy Griffin and Jason Foley from the minor team, as well as old club-mate Maurice Fitzgerald. Kerry were beaten only twice in the 2019 National Football League, and took Dublin to a replay of the 2019 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final.
