Kerry’s appearance in another All-Ireland final speaks volumes for the county’s remarkable consistency over the last decade

THE LAST football final of this decade is upon us. It’s been a momentous 10 years, which have seen the breakdown of the old sudden-death system and the creation of an All-Ireland championship that is genuinely difficult to negotiate even for teams with a less-than-strenuous provincial competition.

It’s accordingly all the more extraordinary that Kerry have dominated this decade like none other in their remarkable football history.

On Sunday they could be making off with their fifth title in 10 seasons, an achievement that has only been bettered once and equalled once since the GAA’s foundation – and on each occasion by Dublin, whose first 11 All-Irelands (five in the 1900s and six in the 1890s) were won little more than 20 years after the championships began and frequently with teams heavily dependent on residence-qualified players from other counties.

Furthermore, Kerry have never before contested eight finals in a decade. Of course, the qualifier system and the second chance it offers make that easier to achieve in that defeat in the province doesn’t eliminate a team, but it also means that higher-quality opposition awaits in the All-Ireland quarter-finals.

For a county to have reached at least the semi-finals for 10 successive years represents staggering consistency. On Sunday, at most, five survivors from 2000 will start this year’s final, representing a substantial turnover – only Tomás Ó Sé has started every final during the decade to date – and a major feat of management continuity in holding the effort together through four different regimes, allowing that Jack O’Connor is currently on his second tour of duty.

Altogether, Kerry have lost just five championship matches at Croke Park during this period, three against Tyrone and the other two against Meath and Armagh – counties they subsequently beat in the years ahead. Cork have beaten them a further four times in Munster, but, with laser precision, Kerry have yet to let a championship go by without avenging such a loss in the All-Ireland series and are on course to do so again this season.

Tyrone supporters put their own interpretation on the events of the 2000s, seeing in Kerry’s inability to beat them their own claims to be the best team of the decade.

But Tyrone’s championship exits at All-Ireland quarter-final stage or before are in stark contrast to their rivals’ remorselessness. You just know the teams, which defeated Tyrone on those occasions – Derry (2001), Sligo (’02), Mayo (’04), Laois (’06) and Meath (’07) – wouldn’t have come within an ass’s roar of eliminating Kerry.

‘Teams of the decade’ arguments are rarely settled logically, but, in assessing records over a lengthy period, consistency has to be the key criterion. For instance, Down’s 100 per cent record against Kerry, over four championship meetings in the 1960s and ’90s, can’t really be adduced to counter the argument that the latter is the most successful county in the history of the game – statistics tell their own story, baldly but irrefutably.

Kilkenny recently made history by reeling off a fourth successive All-Ireland, capping a decade of unprecedented success, including seven MacCarthy Cups. But that record has been assembled in the context of the county being clearly the most potent force in the game for generations, if not in history, and in an environment without the competitive depth of football. Kilkenny have lost three All-Ireland championship matches, whereas during the same period Kerry have lost just two more than that.

This is not to qualify what Kilkenny have done, but to illustrate the scale of Kerry’s achievement despite the county remaining eminently beatable all the way through the decade. It has been more difficult in one way for Kilkenny as, like Dublin’s footballers, they rarely lose in Leinster and so the second chance is never there to assist them.

Kerry, on the other hand, have pioneered the practice of gradually engaging with the championship and going up the gears from August. It has been constantly startling – not least for Cork – to see the difference in the teams that have lost in the province and the ones that take the field in Croke Park.

Even in years when the outside track wasn’t needed – 2004 for instance – the team still worked its way up to peak performance, even though that meant nearly tripping up against Limerick in the Munster final.

That’s why after contrasting seasons in which Cork have been plainly the form team of the championship, the odds for Sunday’s match are so finely balanced.

It’s the culmination of a most interesting three-way power relationship at the top of football. It wasn’t uncommon to find people in Kerry avidly hoping that Cork would win the semi-final against Tyrone, as they feared the Ulster champions, but were equally certain that they could take Cork.

Tyrone for their part although obviously out of steam and below their best in the semi-final would have had their own difficulties with Cork who, even in less than impressive times, always gave them hard matches in the NFL and for whom they knew their exalted status in the modern game would hold no fears.

So we have a second Cork-Kerry final in three years and a match that hinges on how effectively Cork can ignore the past and the manner in which they have seized-up playing their neighbours in Croke Park and been unable to reproduce the provincial form that has seen them nearly break even against the Kingdom in Páirc Uí Chaoimh and Killarney (losing the decade’s contests 4-5) since 2000.

At Cork’s media night everyone was on message about how pleased about/indifferent to the prospect of playing Kerry they really were. Some pointed to their perfectly decent record at Croke Park and how close they had come to getting a result last year. But beneath the insouciance was the underlying knowledge that Kerry are genetically hard-wired for September football in Croke Park.