Why, after 37 All-Ireland wins, this one really counted for Kerry

When Dublin County Board launched its planning document Unleashing the Blue Wave – A Strategy for Dublin GAA 2011-2017 three years ago, the vision of the future had the trappings of a sci-fi horror script for the rest of the country: a football All-Ireland every three years and a hurling equivalent every five.

The fear of Dublin tyrannising the GAA with its population and access to commercial funds was crystallised that year when the county won back the Sam Maguire for the first time in 16 years and qualified for four All-Ireland finals.

On Sunday, at the end of a season which had started with low expectations, Kerry and new-generation manager Eamonn Fitzmaurice walked away from Croke Park with the county’s 37th senior football All-Ireland in the 112 years since they started winning them in 1903: almost one third on the button of all titles in that time.

In fact the five years since the previous title is enough to indicate a bit of a famine; on only four occasions in history has the county had to bridge lengthier gaps between championship successes. It’s sufficient volume for Kerry to have ‘favourite’ All-Irelands and you’d imagine that in time this year will be amongst them.

This was a concept I only came to appreciate about 20 years ago when I met the late John Dowling, who come to Killarney to attend a training session a few days before the 1993 Munster semi-final against Cork.

Revered status

‘The Ayatollah’, as eight-times medallist and current All-Ireland-winning selector

Mike Sheehy

(not altogether in jest) termed him, used to hold court over coffee on mornings in Tralee and when I enquired about his obviously revered status it was explained to me that he had been the captain in 1955.

The outsider might have wondered (and in my case, did), given that Kerry had been captained to 17 All-Irelands before 1955 and by that time 13 since, why that particular year was important. I was told that it was ‘a favourite’ All-Ireland.

The reasons sound familiar to contemporary ears. In 1955 Kerry, under legendary manager Dr Eamon O’Sullivan and his strongly orthodox views on football, came up against Dublin’s ‘modern’ and ‘scientific’ game, which was none the less consigned to a traditional fate before the second-biggest crowd ever to watch a final and which laid the foundations for the current Kerry-Dublin rivalry.

On that day John Dowling raised the Sam Maguire.

Three days ago was the county's first All-Ireland final win over Ulster opponents in the qualifier era and only the second in more than 60 years. It wasn't just that they rarely came across Ulster teams because there were five All-Ireland finals during those decades, which Kerry lost to Down (twice), Tyrone (twice) and Armagh.

Adding further piquancy to Sunday was that Donegal’s defeat gave the champions a full set of Ulster scalps in the 14 years of the current championship system with the one enduring – and presumably fairly irritating – exception of Down who in 2010 managed to extend their extraordinary 100 per cent record against Kerry to five All-Ireland meetings in the 55 years since they first played.

Since 2001 Kerry have beaten the other eight northern counties in championship competition. That’s quite satisfying as, throughout history, Kerry have been on the wrong end of a few breakthrough seasons for Ulster counties and more so, because they used innovation against the innovators.

Came unstuck

Go back to 1933 and county’s first five-in-row season came unstuck in an All-Ireland semi-final in Breffni Park, as

Cavan

were on the way to becoming the first northern side to win the Sam Maguire. Fourteen years later and they defeated Kerry again in the most famous of All-Irelands, played in New York’s Polo Grounds.

More pointedly though since the 1960s, Down, Armagh and Tyrone all came with new ways of doing things and a reflex that Kerry represented the old order whereas Ulster football in its taste for the modern was building something innovative and lasting.

It proved too much for former Kerry manager Jack O'Connor – who took the county to a first minor All-Ireland in 20 years on Sunday - when he published his 2007 memoir, Keys to the Kingdom.

“There’s an arrogance to northern people which rubs Kerry people up the wrong way. They’re flash and nouveau riche and full of it. Add up the number of All-Ireland titles the Ulster counties have won and it’s less than a third of Kerry’s total but northern teams advertise themselves well.

“They talk about how they did it, they go on and on about this theory and that practice as if they’d just split the atom. They build up a mythology about themselves. That doesn’t sit well in Kerry where a man with four All-Ireland medals would quietly defer to another man who has five.”

Donegal have been in that tradition with Jim McGuinness's management, deservedly credited with transforming a ragged collective beaten out the gate by Armagh four years ago into an All-Ireland winning team, on the verge at the weekend of adding a second title in the space of three years.

Jack O’Connor spoke to this newspaper last month about his reaction to the Dublin-Donegal semi-final of 2011 and McGuinness’s tactics.

“If I tried to do that with the Kerry boys would they implement it? I’d say there wouldn’t be a chance. The players and the supporters just wouldn’t row in behind it so I was fascinated from that point of view: how he got a bunch of players to follow that template absolutely to the letter of the law was fascinating to watch.”

Cute hoors.