A familiar September ritual but sweet to the taste nonetheless. Kerry came to the smoke, kept their heads low and their aim high. Duly they annexed their 33rd All-Ireland senior football title.
Mayo, forlornly accustomed to the role by now, were swept aside and as they stood listening to the mellifluent Kerry victory speech, they must have felt burns on their back from having been up against the ropes for the preceding 70 minutes.
There were 79,749 paying customers in Croke Park at the start of business yesterday. Before it all ended the number had dwindled to a fraction of that, with a steady stream of Mayo people suddenly leaping to their feet and exiting as if they had just remembered a prior appointment.
The final margin between the teams was eight points but the fact that a mouse always gets some playful pawing before a cat kills it doesn't mean that the mouse was ever a threat to the cat. Mayo were outgunned and outclassed.
There can be few complaints from the losing camp. Having gone behind to a couple of early Kerry points they enjoyed the bracing tonic of a goal and a point within 60 seconds to shoot ahead by two points and mislead people into thinking that the west was awake. Then the roof fell in.
At times it was cruel. Kerry, in the first half, strung together little runs of scores with the knowing calm of men hauling in bulging nets on the strand. The game was laid to rest after just 25 minutes when Colm "The Gooch" Cooper, a lad who looks like the poster boy for famine rather than a Gaelic footballing genius, pulled down a high ball from somewhere near the crowds and then burnt a track past several defenders and planted the ball in the back of the net.
After that sublime moment it was downhill and even those in the press box were tempted to leave in search of other diversions. Kerry kept scoring. Mayo kept floundering. The most poignant moment of the day from a Mayo point of view came with about 20 minutes left to play when Kerry, leading at that stage by 11 points, began warming up substitutes Seamus Moynihan and Mike Frank Russell.
To be 11 points down and to see two of the greatest footballers in the game preparing to come on and finish you off is to know how the bull feels when the matador puts away the cape and reaches for the sword. For Kerry the game was marked by several individual displays of brilliance. Cooper, Dara Ó Cinnéide and Willie Kirby all made huge dents in Mayo morale.
Perhaps the most remarkable performance, however, was that of Kerry manager Jack O'Connor, who in his first year in senior inter-county management has brought the county to a National League title, a Munster championship and now an All-Ireland. It was all so matter of fact that one couldn't help thinking that yesterday was just the beginning of another era of Kerry dominance.