SUMMER IN the Kingdom. Part One. The purple reeks preside to the left. St Finan's stark, grey walls look down from the right. Fitzgerald Stadium. The history and the setting scales down every succeeding generation and keeps great men humble.
Down on the rectangle of grass, in the waning light of a fine day, the footballers of Kerry go about their business.
Another All-Ireland beckoning. A better seat in the pantheon on offer. In the stands the usual smattering of cognoscenti sit rubbing chins and judging the form. They are waiting for the evening's finale. At last the bibs are distributed and the game begins.
Kieran Donaghy is watching from the precinct of the dressingroom area, still lugging that treacherous knee around. But Kerry have forwards to burn.
The Gooch comes near corner. Tommy Walsh goes in full forward on Tom O'Sullivan. Darren O'Sullivan out the far corner. No easy options for a back.
"Jesus," you'll say to Tom, "some nights you must get a trimming."
"Ah, no. Maybe vice-versa, all right. You'd worry that you'd knock their confidence a bit. Forwards are like that."
"So if you had to pick one to mark in training?" Pause. Grin.
"Pat O'Shea. Every time."
Those who speak about the crashing intensity of what happens above in Nowlan Park should make more trips to Fitzgerald Stadium in high summer. This is no tea dance.
The ball flies around, obeying patterns which Kerry have conjured in their imagination. Whizz! Bang! The ball hits a space just here in the corner and a millisecond later the Gooch hits that same space, gathers that ball at full pace and cuts inside. He doesn't look so weedy close up and doing 70 miles an hour.
The best contest, though, is between Tom O'Sullivan and Tommy Walsh.
Two years ago at the end of a mismatched All-Ireland final, Tom O'Sullivan and Mike McCarthy stood at the edge of the square at the Canal End in Croke Park and made retirement plans. Mike Mac was as good as his word and exited the stage. Tom was seduced into another season, and then another.
No worries there but he has been forced along the way into periodic auditions for Mike Mac's jersey. It's like making Dylan sing La Bohème. Tom makes a decent fist of it but people keep shaking their heads and saying, "Well, he's no Caruso."
Who is? Earlier this summer he had the latest in a series of close encounters with Cork's tallest sunflower, Michael Cussen. In the second half of the Munster final the sky went dark with the amount of high ball being rained in on Cussen.
O'Sullivan permitted the giant just one clean catch but the breaking ball fell to red jerseys again and again. Tom took the rap for the lack of appetite of those around him. None of the prosecutors were volunteering the names of those who would have done any better, though.
He feels the eyes will see what the brain has been thinking. If the full-back line is under scrutiny beforehand, the supporters and the scribes come to town waiting for a mistake, so they can nod their heads knowingly when the opposition scores. That's life.
So here he is. On the proving ground. In this famous breaker's yard for footballers. Tommy Walsh and himself going for broke. First ball that comes in, Walsh, looking huge and scarily Germanic, breaks first and leaps to take it on the bounce into his chest.
He hits the ground just as Tom O'Sullivan's chest connects with him from behind. The momentum sends the younger player tumbling, the ball is spilled and Tom is on it like a cat on a rat. Pounce. Seize. Dispatch.
So it goes for the next 20 minutes. The impacts between the pair have a comic-book violence to them. Biff! Pow! Take that! Walsh is a quick student and knowing there is a wrecking ball swinging at him every time he touches the leather he makes some swift palm-offs and plays the odd overhead flick into the space behind. O'Sullivan is unforgivingly quick and hungry, though. Quicker and hungrier than a man should be when he is giving a decade to his opponent. Whatever Tommy Walsh gets tonight he earns in blood and bruises.
When it is done, they all do some drills and a warm-down. One by one they troop from the pitch in varying states of exhaustion.
"Another night down, boys," mutters O'Sullivan as he passes through the gate looking like a man who has been working on the chain gang. Another night down.
SUMMER IN THE KINGDOM. Part Two. Tom O'Sullivan sends a text to say he will be a little late. He is in the bank. Five minutes pass and right enough, there he is now sauntering up the side of the square with the odd "hello and how are you today?" to passers-by and the well-wishers.
Whatever All-Ireland finals mean in the Kingdom they aren't playing havoc with Tom's metabolism.
He meets you and greets you, shakes hands and stretches his limbs.
"Where to? Somewhere quiet is it?"
As a suitably peaceful spot is found he makes inquiries as to the well-being of a mutual acquaintance, the south Kerry author and bon vivant Mr Jack O'Connor. Tom deflects any questions about the All-Ireland final in the Kerry vernacular. "Yerra," says Tom, "sure we shall see."
Quietly, he is closing in on his fifth All-Ireland medal this weekend, which would be a stunning achievement in an era of such vibrant competitiveness and one of such draining attrition on players. His 10 years in green and gold have exposed him to some of the deadliest gunslingers in the country. Fast, merciless, hard-bastard corner forwards who'd make ashtrays of his kneecaps if he let them. But he's still standing and took three All Stars out of the trip as well.
There are two sides to him. On the one hand, the world is simple and the skies are blue. You play football to win All-Ireland medals and, thankfully, since winning his first as a vocational schools player for Jack O'Connor in 1997, there has been a steady haul of them. He never wore the green and gold as a minor but won an under-21 title the year after the vocational one, made the fringes of the Kerry seniors in 1999 and won his first senior medal a year later.
On the other hand, he talks a lot and talks amusingly about the sacrifice. He doesn't begrudge it. He begrudges those who won't make it. Yet after 10 years it wears a man away a bit. Erosion. He is talking about how Pat O'Shea has no need to police the behaviour of the current squad. They regulate themselves.
"I don't think there has been a problem. Everyone wants to make the team and make it at all costs. Whatever it takes now at this stage lads will do. Especially going for three-in-a-row in an All-Ireland final.
"But we're living like monks all year from January to September. You are expected to start doing the same for the club then straight away. Win or lose the All-Ireland, we will get a phone call Monday or Tuesday to come back training on Tuesday night with the club. We'll probably play championship the following weekend."
Tuesday? "We were up there last year. Myself and (Aidan) O'Mahoney. We didn't tog out. You're a friend of the manager, though. He lives down the road. He says 'don't let me down'. The lads are the lads. The club is always the club."
He enjoys the cat-and-mouse of interviews. Transcription of the conversation involves harvesting a large collection of unauthorised thoughts we must file under the heading "Don't Be Printing That in the Paper Now".
You think, though, you have him with the mention of the three-in-a-row. Nobody in Kerry mentions three-in-a-row. You pounce on the loose ball.
Pressure? He leans back in the chair and shrugs.
"No pressure for me! Pressure is only for tyres. I'll be honest. Nobody has ever said one thing about three-in-a-row to me all year long. Is that just Kerry people? Players just want to win an All-Ireland. Things like All Stars and three-in-a-rows are bonuses. Not a word. I room with Aidan O'Mahony. Never mentioned once. Before games. After games. Up on the train together. We know what it means all right, though. We just don't talk about it."
What does it mean? Pause. Grin.
"Another All-Ireland medal."
When he went back training with Rathmore this year he was the oldest lad at the sessions. Jerry Murphy came back four months into it and he was relegated to second-most-decrepit. Than a third came out of hibernation and the elderly on the panel were a movement.
He hasn't felt the years slipping by but God, it's two decades since he first went down from the farmland to the club on the front of a tractor . . . no, cycling probably. Five or six of them from three or four miles out the road. He went down. He loved it. Ever since even just kicking a ball against a wall keeps him happy.
None of the lads who used cycle those miles inside to Rathmore are still playing now. Tom, one of the most easy-going of the bunch only revealed his steely side when he had to. They won everything on the way up with the club. He made the leap to doing the same thing with Kerry when he was just leaving his teens.
Declan O'Keeffe was already there from Rathmore. Aidan O'Mahony came along a year or two later. As a young fella, Tom had played mainly with O'Mahony's older brother Kieran, but he recalls Aidan's quiet presence at loose soccer games they played on amber evenings in Rathmore growing up. Jumpers for goalposts and a couple of flighty young wans for goalkeepers.
He only noticed O'Mahony later as a footballer. They grew up about a mile away from each other. Ended up in the same job and the on the same team.
"He was in college in Cork when I was stationed there and I would meet him an odd time. We weren't such good friends then as we are now."
"Sure he probably idolised you?"
"I wouldn't be saying that now."
Pause. Grin.
"But maybe so! Yeah! In his quiet way!
The pair of them have been among the pillars of the Kerry defence through this astonishing run of All-Ireland final appearances. This year has been scarier than most, more flying being done by the seat of the pants, but Tom O'Sullivan isn't tossing and turning at night worrying about such things.
There have been a few scrapes, he reckons, but those are the days you learn and the matches you enjoy most; the ones you relive and retell are the games you win by a point. So what of it all? Here he is going for a fifth senior medal now as unfussily as he went for his first.
Playing Tyrone tomorrow isn't something he makes much of a deal about either. Among the more apocalyptically minded, the game has transmuted itself into something bigger than it is. Two sides slugging it out for the bragging rights to the era. Whoever wins won't just win but will dissolve the majesty of their opponent.
You hit Tom O'Sullivan with 2003 and 2005. Those defeats to Tyrone.
Start with 2003. That loss. That famous picture of Eoin Brosnan lying on the floor. Lunch for eight Tyrone men hovering over him.
How much did that hurt?
"I didn't see that picture," he says, "God, what paper was that in?"
He grins. A corner back's grin. No change today. He looks at you as if wondering whether you really want him to give the spiel. The party line.
"Yerra," he grants after a while, "they were hard defeats . . . There is no doubt Tyrone are a very good team. They were underrated this year as well by a lot of the pundits. They will be favourites for the All-Ireland final after what they did against Dublin and their record against Kerry. We will have our shoulders to the wheel, our guard up. We will prepare as best we can, I suppose."
He segues into a discourse on the Tyrone style of play. The different duties and expectations pertaining to corner back play in Kerry as opposed to Tyrone.
So which defeat hurt the most?
No pause. Grin.
"2002. Armagh." Really?
"Yeah, but you can't take it away. They came back well. You look back on it as another All-Ireland lost. A lot of players like to get to an All-Ireland final but you learn there is no point in getting there if you are not going to win it.
"We have lost a few and won a few and you realise it isn't all worth it just for the day out. Armagh were good that day. They were entitled to their one in a row."
One in a row. No change today.
SUMMER IN THE KINGDOM Part Three: His sergeant out in Moyvane is a Corkman. He cuts Tom a little slack with switching shifts and ducking overtime but Tom has to be careful to stay away from him.
"He does this psychology thing on me," he grins. "Funny thing is when I was stationed in Cork I was out the southside out in Togher. Not too much interest in football out there at all. "
He was five years in Cork. Then back to Kerry. Ballybunion. Moyvane.
He's always a Rathmore man, though. Best part about winning an All-Ireland is that first stop the train makes in the Kingdom on a Monday. Rathmore!
Worst time of his career. Jack O'Connor dropping him in 2004 before the Munster championship game with Cork. In Rathmore, you can smell Cork's confidence wafting over the border. If Jack wanted to reach in past the easy-going Tom O'Sullivan exterior and push a button he found the right way.
Those are the highs and the lows. Each as brief and transient as the other.
Mainly it is just a case of keeping on and keeping on.
He sits in the dressingroom in Killarney. Another night down. The lads are buzzing in and out. His back is to the cool of the wall. His part of the wall. In training he has sat in this same seat, this same square foot of bench, every night since 2000. He thinks to himself he can name every place where every player sits. They sit in the exact same place here and will carry those placings with them to the dressing-room in Croke Park.
"Gooch to my right, then Daniel Bohane, then Diarmuid Murphy, John Sugrue, Brossie, Mahony, Mike Frank, Kieran Leary; around the side, this side of the toilets, Paul O'Connor, Darren Sullivan, Mike Quirke, Tommy Walsh, Declan Sullivan, Darragh Ó Sé, Marc Ó Sé, Donncha Walsh, Anthony Maher, Ronan Clarke, Kieran Cremin and back to myself."
Where are Tomás Ó Sé? Donaghy? Galvin?
"Galvin sits beside Marc usually. The others are in the room next door with Pat O'Shea. We have two dressing-rooms."
It amuses him now as an old-timer that any new players that come in sit right in the corner where he sits. They take the first seat they see and shut up about it.
And then he thinks of the lads who don't come anymore.
Fitzy used to sit over beside where Mike Quirke is now. Moynihan sat over where Sugrue sits. Mike Mac was just here where Bohane is now.
Soon the room will just have to make do with the ghost of Tom O'Sullivan.
He loves it but the years are awful long. January till the end of September for Kerry. The rest for the club.
"We get our holiday at the end of December and the start of January. That is basically it. I was supposed to go to America with Aidan the last two years. We couldn't go because of club commitments. I booked two holidays myself. The things we do for our club and county!"
Retirement is a tricky question, though. Do you give it up early and risk regretting games you could have played in and All-Irelands you might have won? Or do you play till your body breaks and risk a different regret?
He gets older. Perspectives change.
"What am I going to do," he muses, "in two or three years when I retire? The GAA won't pay me. I am a mature man in a mature job. If I am asked to work, I will have to work. Can't say I have a football match for the rest of my life. "
You wonder what happened the devil-may-care hay dog beloved of Jack O'Connor. Life. Football. Those things happened.
Football is more serious now than when he started out. You would notice the difference, he says. Players training on their own. Going to the gym on their own. You have to mind yourself more now. Eat properly. He has virtually no interest in drinking. He is more serious too. The years go by and he has less and less interest in going out and about anyway. He has changed along with the game.
"You know," he says, "If I don't retire soon I'll have no interest in going out at all! That's something else to think about."
And he grins. There is a time for laughter and a time for seriousness. He has the wisdom to know the difference. Talking to journalists is one thing. Playing Tyrone tomorrow is the other.
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