Kerry can play keeps for next few years

On Gaelic Games: Déjà vu. It wasn't just the fact that Kerry won a 33rd All-Ireland title, which pushes the county 11 clear at the top of the roll of honour. The gap back to Dublin in second place stood at only three 25 years ago.

In other words the brisk pace at which Kerry started winning titles just over 100 years ago has been maintained and although football itself is much more competitive its brand leaders show no signs of being reeled in now they've survived the hangover that followed Mick O'Dwyer's team's fantastic success from 1975-'86.

That arguably led to the 1990s being the worst decade on record for the county since it started winning All-Irelands - the only one in which fewer than two titles were won.

In the more immediate time-frame there wasn't huge surprise at the latest win even if its emphatic manner wasn't widely expected.

But there was a more contextual sense of having been here before. Over the years Kerry football has been frequently perceived as at the crossroads.

The second longest gap between the county winning All-Irelands was 10 years between 1914-'24 during which time the War of Independence and Civil War took a considerable toll on the playing reserves. But not alone did football bounce back but the county jersey became both a symbol and vehicle of reconciliation between political enemies.

The first high-profile assault of science on the Kingdom was the famous All-Ireland of 1955 when an innovative Dublin team with Kevin Heffernan as a roving full forward was put in its box by a traditional, fixed-position Kerry.

Down's revolutionary approach in the 1960s was another challenge to Kerry's eminence and an affront to traditional values: free movement and breaking ball rather than catching it at centrefield. But Kerry adapted and between 1960-'70, won as many All-Irelands as their northern tormentors.

Half a decade later, O'Dwyer noted Dublin's emergence under Heffernan and seized on the importance of physical fitness and in so doing harnessed the talents of a remarkable generation of footballers.

So it was last year when the defeat by Tyrone was seen as a companion piece to failure against Armagh in 2002, evidence that the county was being left behind by the technological advances in coaching and team preparation.

But the response has been impressive. It's easy to say the team needed a change in management but the pressure on Jack O'Connor as the new manager was considerable. If a new voice was the sole requirement, then there could be no excuses for not winning an All-Ireland.

The choice of O'Connor was the first smart move.

There had been some grumbling about his under-21s losing to Waterford in last year's Munster final and the handling of one selection matter in particular but overall he was the obvious candidate.

In this newspaper's coverage last Saturday Tom Humphries spelled out the most obvious aspect of O'Connor's CV, the number of All-Irelands he has been involved in bringing to Kerry. Even more interesting is the years in which he wasn't involved.

Although he was one of Páidí Ó Sé's selectors in the two successful campaigns of 1997 and 2000, the only disaster in which he was implicated was the 2001 trimming by Meath.

There was the expected minority of obtuse objections concerning his lack of playing All-Irelands. Yet of the past 10 winning managers, only three - Ó Sé, Pat O'Neill and Billy Morgan - had medals from their playing careers. Even within Kerry the legendary Dr Eamonn O'Sullivan, who shares with O'Dwyer the county's management record of eight All-Irelands, hadn't won one on the field.

But managers operate on the sideline and there, O'Connor has been exceptional. One observer at the Dublin-Kerry league match last February was struck by how clinically O'Connor diagnosed what was going wrong and applied remedy with the result that the team turned around a match that looked gone at half-time.

On Sunday we saw this tactical acumen in full flight on the biggest day of the year with the apotheosis of John Crowley and the traditional values of a catch-and-kick attack that destroyed an unwary Mayo.

O'Connor's low-key style appeared to have the effect of relaxing the team even as the approach became flintier and physically more intense. His comments last Monday about wanting players to enjoy their involvement with the team were an indication of how he had influenced the overwhelmingly positive attitude that has been a feature of Kerry's season and resilient displays.

It must also have contributed to the strikingly impressive ability to surmount the sequence of player unavailability that has dogged the team since the start of the season: from An Ghaeltacht's progress to the club final to the injuries that sent them into an All-Ireland final without Séamus Moynihan or Darragh Ó Sé.

The road ahead for Kerry is clear. Over the past couple of years there have been excellent looking minor prospects and even in defeat on Sunday the swashbuckling attacks of Darren O'Sullivan showed the forward conveyor belt is still trundling. With confidence restored the county must be looking forward to the next few years, including the opportunity to resume arguments with Armagh and Tyrone.

For Mayo the path isn't that smooth. So much went wrong it's hard to know where they start to assess the year overall. Immediately the priority is the under-21 final but there'll be some hard reflection afterwards.

Was their final appearance a freak occurrence or can they build on it? One way or the other John Maughan and his management should be proud of the season. Even on a practical level the county can't win an All-Ireland without learning what it's up against and what deficiencies need to be addressed. Sunday may have been a brutal diagnostic but that's what it takes.