With the burden that comes with being Kerry manager now lifted from his shoulders, a relaxed Jack O'Connor tells Tom Humphries about life in the hot seat.

Noli Sinere Bastardis Carborundum Est!

Jack O'Connor lives in a landscape stolen from a painter's imagination. From the crook of Finian's Bay, the world is majestic and ever changing. When he looks out his window there's a tidy apron of hardy grass separating him from a smooth beach and the corrugated ocean. There is Skelligs Rock and Puffin Island. And, two or three times a year when he looks out, there's the blue-grey bottle snouts of playful dolphins in the water. They usually bring the bad weather with them.

You could live here and obsess about football. You could live here too and never think of it. For three years he has obsessed. More than that really. For 15 years with county teams and being absorbed by them. Any Given Sunday, Al Pacino said. Every waking hour, Kerry asked.

This week the weight is gone, the burden of obsession lifted. He used to point out to sea occasionally and joke to friends that if he lost on Sunday he'd be taking up tenancy in one of the perfect beehive huts that the monks built out on Skellig Michael 14 centuries ago. Yup. He'd be getting dropped off in a boat and left behind there for six months of penance, solitude and contemplation. Joking? Half joking really.

He became senior manger exactly three years ago, breaking a mould which was three decades old. Mick O'Dwyer. Mickey Ned. Ogie Moran. Páidi Ó Sé. The warriors of the golden era were always entrusted with keeping the Holy Grail at hand.

Then the Kerry county board came looking for a guy from St Finian's Bay.

An outsider? Perhaps. Hard sometimes to feel otherwise.

Last January he went to the Gleneagle Hotel for the Kerry Sports Star awards. Big night, big crowd. Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh was master of ceremonies and when the time came Micheál moved through the tables squeezing comments from those who should have something to say.

Jack, when his turn came, supplied the usual hopeful raméis that managers offer up at the beginning of the year. The spotlight moved on and a few minutes later lit upon a table of golden agers. Micko, Deenihan, Bomber and the boys.

At the time, it was being touted about the place that Jimmy Deenihan and Eoin Liston would be commuting to Laois as specialist coaches helping Micko. There was some excitement in Kerry about this. Micko was asked who would win the 2006 All Ireland.

"Tyrone," he said quickly.

The microphone moved on around the table. Jimmy Deenihan said some nice words about his old manager and concluded rousingly, "We all hope that Micko will be brought back to finish out his great coaching career as manager of the Kerry team. We'd love him to finish up training Kerry."

Applause. A few whoops.

Jack O'Connor looked at his plate and wondered to himself.

"Jesus Christ. Am I only imagining it? Do I have this job at all?"

The golden boys were never that comfortable with Jack O'Connor. He wasn't too at ease with them. Back in January, he was no fan of Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh's either. "Micheál would make a play of coming into our dressingroom before matches. Next time he came he got the cold shoulder. He stopped coming in! You have to stand up for yourself."

There were days this summer when the isolation was keener and more purely felt, when every day for the manager, selectors and team was an exercise in just standing up. Days when Skellig Michael beckoned. He'd think of an old headmaster, Con Dineen and the dog latin phrase he'd use in relation to troublesome pupils. Noli Sinere Bastardis Carborundum Est! And he'd grin. Fair enough. He wouldn't let the bastards grind him down. He'd dance.

He read a book this year, see. End The Struggle and Dance With Life. In three years he learned to dance like Astaire.

From the time back when he was learning the steps he tells the Gooch story. It's set in a swish hotel in Dublin, a hotel that will remain nameless. The time is the weekend of the 2004 All-Ireland semi-final. Jack O'Connor arrives down to dinner the night before the game in the company of Colm Cooper and John Crowley. They are about 15 minutes late. The food is gone.

There's a little scrap of chicken nestling beside some soggy veg. No carbohydrates. No food of champions. They stand and look around at the room of sated Kerry players scraping their plates. The county chairman has gone to an awards ceremony in Croke Park. Something has to be done.

Jack O'Connor summons a waiter.

"Where are the potatoes? Have ye any potatoes?"

"They're all gone."

Word of famine is met by incredulity.

"They can't be all gone!" says Jack playing his trump card "Because we have to feed the Gooch here."

He nods towards the Gooch, who looks like the proverbial empty sack that won't stand.

The waiter, a gentleman of Talinn or Warsaw or Vilnius, furrows his brow. "Sorry? What is a Gooch?"

After explanations, bread rolls are offered. Jack O'Connor's feels his blood pressure rising. "Listen the Gooch can't play a match on bread rolls and chicken."

The waiter disappears again. Re-emerges triumphantly a few minutes later. Hey presto! Potato wedges!

"You're joking."

"Is no joke."

So the Gooch hunches over his plate and eats the wedges.

Meanwhile, in Croke Park, Seán Walsh has checked his messages. He calls his manager.

"Jack, what is it?"

"What is it Seán? The best footballer in Ireland is having to eat potato wedges!"

The Gooch plays a blinder the next day as it turns out. Don't fight, just dance. Order the wedges.

COGADH NA MBÓ MAOL. He's always looking for nuggets. From books. From television. From the mouths of others. He spoke to Brian Cody at the 2004 All Stars about keeping a team fresh. This year, Kerry took off when Kieran Donaghy was rethreaded and Seán O'Sullivan, Tommy Griffin and Mike Frank Russell came in. A Cody-style injection of hunger.

And Ger Loughnane, whom he befriended at a coaching seminar in Tullamore, spoke to him about the notion of playing with "controlled fury".

Jack liked the idea and understood.

For training games they picked the match-ups carefully. A week before the All-Ireland final for instance, Kerry went to Cork for the weekend and staged a final trial game in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Five days before that trial game, Jack O'Connor's phone rang. Brendan Guiney on the line, a fine footballer who had broken his wristbone in a college game and hadn't played a minute with Kerry in the league or championship. Fine footballer and a desperate one.

"Who am I marking?" said Guiney.

"Paul Galvin."

"Sound."

After 10 minutes in Páirc Uí Chaoimh Galvin and Guiney are rolling around on the ground. Brian White, who had been invited all the way from Wexford just to referee the game, was standing over the two brawling Kerrymen screaming at them.

"Stop that! Stop that lads! Ye'll be sent off for that in an All-Ireland final."

Jack O'Connor on the sideline catches Darragh Ó Sé's mischievous eye. The two turn away from each other with heads down and shoulders shaking with laughter. This is perfect. Controlled fury.

It seems funny that for final preparations Kerry went back to Cork and back to Páirc Uí Chaoimh, but it was fitting they did. Their summer was as much about Cork as it was about anything else.

"There's a serious case," says Jack O'Connor, "for calling Cork the second best team in Ireland this year". He pauses. "And I know Billy Morgan loves to hear a Kerryman say that to him."

They played Cork three times and it made them. Billy Morgan's moaning about Kerry's "cynicism" seemed to Jack O'Connor to be the soundtrack to the summer. It didn't quite fit the mood, but it was there on the airwaves everytime he turned the dial, Cork helped them find the controlled fury.

Cork came to Killarney the first day and they were all business. They burst out from the corner of the field and immediately claimed Kerry's traditional dug out. Told Kerry in certain terms to shag away off up to the other dug out. One up to Cork.

The game is a bit of a blur. He recalls Cork tearing into Kerry. More aggressive, more hungry. Stronger. Billy Morgan up and down the sideline disputing every decision. At one stage there was an incident on the sideline. Jack sauntered up to see what was going on. A Cork selector threatened to beat him up to the stand if he didn't go away.

"I'm wondering, 'Jesus why are we not at this level of intensity today - are we not right'?"

The game unfolds some more. Anthony Lynch throws a poke at Kieran Donaghy and gets sent off. At half-time, they are in trouble. Once in 2004 against Limerick they had the backs to the wall as well. Then he laid it on the line. Told them they were playing for their futures in the Kerry jersey. He had three years. They had 35 minutes. The sort of card a manager only plays once. This time, though, they are all together. He warns them the referee will try to even things up. Watch for it. Bingo! Towards the end of the game he sees Kieran Donaghy walking out towards him on the sideline.

"Hey Donaghy!" he roars "Where you going?"

"I got sent off."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"I swear to you. Nothing."

The replay is set for a week later. On the Friday of that weekend Kerry selector Ger O'Keeffe is in Dublin Airport. He spots an entourage of besuited Corkmen with familiar faces striding purposefully through the airport towards the exit signs. Ger knows that they know something. They haven't gone up for a Friday night out in Temple Bar. Ger calls Jack O'Connor, who calls Seán Walsh.

"Seán, they're going to get Anthony Lynch off."

"Sure they can't do that."

"They will."

"Is there anything we can do for Donaghy? This will look bad."

"It would have to be very last minute."

Jack calls Donaghy, offers him just a figment of hope. Next morning there's a text on Jack O'Connor's phone.

" Jack, can't really sleep. Make sure you try with that appeal again in the morning. Please. I won't let you down if I get on that pitch. Thanks again. Talk tomorrow. Kieran."

It has been sent at 12.58am.

Nothing works out appeals wise. Cork get Anthony Lynch free, but Kieran Donaghy takes his punishment. Jack O'Connor has seen a side of the kid that he likes though. A short while after the replayed Munster final, just on a whim after training, Jack asks Donaghy to go and stand beside Marc Ó Sé on the edge of the square while he lands a few balls in on top of them.

He's impressed. Walking to the dressingroom, he asks Ó Sé if he is impressed too.

"He's deceptively fast." says Marc who is exceptionally fast himself.

"Hmmm," thinks Jack O'Connor.

A night or two later he asks Kieran Donaghy what sort of ball he thinks he'd like if he was, say, a full forward. "Just float in high, diagonal ball that I can attack," says Donaghy. Jack O'Connor walks away with a grin that runs from ear to ear. You hear a big, tall full forward with character talk seriously about "attacking" the ball and you know that you're in business. Height, pace, strength, agility, football ability. Hallelujah. The kid is an iceberg, he thinks. The football world will get to the see the tip of it for the next few weeks.

The team is working as one metabolism after the Cork defeat. Jack O'Connor and his selectors are happy. The players are happy. They have a decent game with Longford to come. They have a new full forward. The world has a different version of things.

Consider: After the game, the three Ó Sé's are first out of the dressingroom and on to the bus. When the team get back to the Hayfield Manor Hotel they have a hugely constructive and very frank meeting. It goes well, banishing the lethargy that has hung over the summer so far. They decide to stick together for the evening, rediscovering their own company.

After a few pints, Jack O'Connor takes Declan O'Sullivan - who famously has been booed off the field by Kerry fans - out into the gardens for a quiet drink and a chat. When they come back the team has moved merrily on without them. Bemused, Jack calls Ger O'Keeffe. The two Dromid men catch up with the party in Killarney - €100 worth of a taxi drive later! On the night stretches, on and on, finishing there in Killarney, in Tatlers. Fragments of the evening float back. Darragh Ó Sé in fine form grabbing Jack's shoulder and leaning in to make a point to him over the din, Séamus Moynihan jocularly tugging Jack by the wrist to get him away to make a more private, more earnest point in some corner. The usual visual theatre of a team out drinking together.

BY THE NEXT WEEK, the aftermath of the Cork defeat would have unfolded via Chinese whispers. The Ó Sé's had stormed off. The manager and captain had refused to travel home with the team. Later, Darragh Ó Sé had attempted to draw a swipe on Jack O'Connor. Thankfully, Séamus Moynihan had intervened.

Cogadh na mbó maol! A war between hornless cows. Lost in translation somehow.

Is maith é an bád a dhéanann amach an caladh a d'fhág sé Three years with the boys. Sharing the obsession. The 50-mile spin from St Finian's Bay to Killarney. Fifty miles back. Head wiped of anything but football. Towards the end he felt himself getting closer and closer to the players.

"I'd be awful slow taking Darragh Ó Sé off in a game. Or Séamus or the Gooch or Mike Mac. Even if one of them was going through a rough time I'd say this man will come good. That's what happens if you stay too long perhaps, you get too close to players."

He'll miss them. His comrades on the selection committee. The constant plotting and planning and wondering. And the players and their ways. Darragh Ó Sé had a piseog that he won't carry a ball out on to the field. Mike Mac always had to be last into the warm-up room and so on.

Tom O'Sullivan he loved. The greatest character of them all and the most trying. There was a bit of bother with Tom every year. A seasonal rite. "Tom would push to the limit every summer. I think Tom would say to himself, 'how far can I go this time before Jack cracks'? Every year there would be a shoot-out."

This year the shoot-out comes two weeks before the first Cork game. Kerry have a full scale 15-a-side practice match scheduled for the stadium in Killarney. Five minutes before training, Jack O'Connor hears the familiar chirp chirp of his mobile phone. Text from Tom O'Sullivan. Can't make it. Working.

Instantly Jack's fingers are busy with a furious reply. Tap. Tap. Tap. What do you suggest Tom? That I go in corner back myself is it? We had 30 players picked for tonight. You could have told me yesterday when I could get a replacement. What do you think Tom? No reply comes. The next day Jack tries to call Tom O'Sullivan. No answer. No return call.

"It's hurting me now. This is a man who can come out of a defence head up and put it about like Beckenbauer or Bobby Moore. But he's not going to kill himself for me. Tom's the sort of a fella who, if he needed 200 points in the Leaving, might get 201. He wouldn't get 250. And I hate people not returning calls."

So once again. Tap, tap, tap. New text. Tom, You will regret not returning my call. I want no casual footballers in my squad. If you don't think it worth your while to return my call you can fuck off. J.

No reply. No word of Tom O'Sullivan till next training session. Nothing said now either. So the Cork game looms. Mike McCarthy is coming back into the team. Jack O'Connor realises that management have a chance to go for the jugular, a rare opportunity to shake up the star defender. They drop him. The newsflash lights the player up like a Catherine wheel.

"You're dropping me? Against Cork? Cork?" Bonus! Tom O'Sullivan is a Rathmore man. Hard on the border with Cork. This is like being excluded from a family wedding. "Cork?" he says again. "You're dropping me against Cork. Cork? You could drop me against anyone, but not Cork. C'mon.!"

Jack knows he has hit a nerve. It's the first time in three years that Tom O'Sullivan has shown sign of a temper. The manager knows he has won the battle. On the day, Tom O'Sullivan gets back into the side after 20 minutes or so when Kerry feel the need to move Aidan O'Mahony to wing back where he can do more damage.

A SEASON, an All-Ireland is never the product of just one big idea. It's a thousand small adjustments. It's bad days and learning from them more than it's good days and drifting on. It's text wars and rumours and guys just plain surprising you.

Kerry stumbled on. Jack O'Connor chuckles at the thought that he and his selection team brought anything other than a capacity for graft and organisation. There's very little inspiration. Lots of perspiration. It's not what you say at half-time. It's the work you've done for the previous month that wins games. Small stuff. Not grand gestures.

The All-Ireland final was one of those days when almost everything Kerry had planned for themselves happened. The memories of the barricades in the summer, the sounds of Declan O'Sullivan being booed lingered though. In a game of passion and obsession there's a lot of negative interference. Because he knows the man and because he knows the place he's in, it hurts him to see what happened to Mickey Moran, this week. Worries him too.

"Mickey has been left out to dry in Mayo. I texted him and he rang me. It's not for me to be telling Mayo how to run their affairs, but whether they found Mickey good, bad or indifferent, he should never have been hung out to dry in front of delegates. That's not how you do it. His season was the reverse to ours. He was a king after the Dublin match. We were nearly run out of town after the Munster final.

"This is a gentleman. Same with John Morrison. He's a character. He's great for the game. Go and check out the amount of stuff John Morrison has written on the game. Men like that shouldn't be hung out to dry. Not in our game. A few weeks ago they led Mayo out in the greatest game ever played. Now this? There's no balance."

Ah, that Mayo game with Dublin. He watched it in the stand and came away with a notebook full of scribbles about Dublin who he was convinced would win on the basis of the trouble Darren Magee and Shane Ryan had given the Kerry midfield in Killarney in the league. "Shows what I know," he says with a laugh.

The instant chatter about the greatest game ever played bemused him. The greatest game ever played seemed to him to have been free-flowing in parts, but average in many other parts too. Exciting and dramatic, but with lots of mistakes too.

"Myself and the selectors were saying to ourselves, 'was it that good'? There were periods that were quite ordinary."

Still if they wanted to declare the game a classic what of it? The stakes for Mayo would just get a little higher. "It upped the heat on Mayo. Helped us going into the final. Often a old dour battle is much better for you in a semi-final than a great, high-intensity triumph."

When it was all over he knew in his gut he was done. The thought of Tyrone next summer gave him pause at the door, but sometimes when you have a wife and sons waiting in St Finian's Bay you just hear the call of home and you know it's over.

Home. On the day after the All-Ireland they travelled south on the train with the cup in the vanguard. Jack's conversation was interrupted by the familiar bleep of the mobile; Text from a certain player somewhere down the carriage.

"Remember this text Jack? Tom, You will regret not returning my call. I want no casual footballers in my squad. If you don't think it worth my while to return my call you can fuck off. J. And appended one line. From the man who held Conor Mortimer scoreless and saved your job!

Last laugh to Tom O'Sullivan.

Evenings are drawing in, but during the walks on his old trail around the bay he thinks of the text and grins. Three years, for better or worse, but something that will last forever. His own Skellig Michael.