SIDELINE CUT: Their team's consistent excellence, that is now bordering on indecent, compels poor Kerry folk to undertake an annual exodus to Croke Park

THE REST of us do not have the first clue about the complexities and difficulties that come with being from Kerry. I sometimes think we should pity them. The obligation the nation has placed on Kerry shoulders has become intolerable. After all, what sort of state would Gaelic football be in if were not for the clans from the Kingdom? If Kerry were not Kerry, would there be any point to the championship at all?

Yet again, a Kerry football team has qualified for the All-Ireland football final. As has been well-flagged, this will be their sixth appearance on the trot, a rate of consistent excellence that is bordering on indecent. If they keep up this behaviour, a generation of Irish children will grow up under the assumption that there is some kind of law decreeing that, no matter what happens, Kerry will be in the final.

It is all very well for those of us from other counties, who can look forward to their representative teams making it as far as September about once every 40 years or so. These weekends can literally become once-in-a-lifetime experiences. But for Kerry folks, it is very different. They don’t really have any choice in this.

This strange excellence with which they play Gaelic football has taken hold of them all and will not let them go.

Who knows how or why it started?

True, we can all blow on a bit about the singular beauty of Kerry – the lakes, the mist, the mountains, all those silver-tongued rogues, the creamy pints of plain, the endless golf courses etc. You always know a city man who has weekended in Kerry: he comes back talking like Robert Mitchum in Ryan’s Daughter and talks dreamily of turf fires and bowls of mussels, all that kind of stuff.

Kerry is a ridiculously famous patch of earth. The census will give the official verdict on the population of the county but we all know that that is just nonsense; in global terms, the Kerry population is just shy of that of China. The hoors are everywhere.

A recent survey in The Economistestimated that three-quarters of the world's pubs are owned by Kerrymen. It is not widely known that world's richest man, Warren Buffet, is descended from the Ballyferriter Buffets. It is not widely known because Kerry folks do not go on about these things. And anyhow, all accomplishments are measured in terms of football. How many medals does Warren Buffet have?

Offaly may be claiming Barrack Obama and Kerry people will concede that because they know whenever the US President eventually makes it to the Emerald Isle, the photograph that travels around the world will show him teeing off at the first in Ballybunion. Revenge for ’82 will be sweet. All famous people end up in Kerry, sooner or later.

But, at the end of the day, Kerry is just a place. There is no godly reason why Kildare or Waterford or Monaghan could not have emerged as the county that came to define itself through its football. Kerry men got there first. Years ago, before the foundation of the state, the great-grandfathers of the Kingdom got it into their heads that they would beat every other blasted county at this Irish big-ball game and they have been obsessed with the idea ever since.

The blame may well lie with the man who coined the nickname for Aeroplane O’Shea. When you invent a nickname that terrific – it is matched only by the flightier nicknames from the NYC basketball ghetto scene – you have an obligation to act as the moral guardian of the sport. So here are the Kerrymen, back for more.

I met a Kerryman on a train recently who told me, with a kind of sorrow in his voice, that he had taken the precaution of booking quarters in the same Dublin hotel for this weekend every year until 2025. The owner – Listowel to the last – had given him a decent rate. He figures it will be needed more often than not.

Beside him, his wife sighed deeply when asked if she was looking forward to this year’s final and gave the Irish reply usually reserved for Christmas: “I suppose I am. But at the same time, I’ll be glad when it’s all over.”

Deep down, many Kerry folks must feel like that. Of course, they feel pride at the aggregate accomplishment of their great teams down the decades and harbour particular affection for the current team.

But this business of appearing in All-Ireland after All-Ireland can take its toll as well. They say that all Kerry children can recite the names of All-Ireland-winning teams by the age of four. At five, they are kicking off either foot. By fifteen, they have become connoisseurs of their heritage and will fussily compare the vintages of ’62 and ’34 on the long journey up to Dublin.

Kerry folks know the city intimately because of their prowess at football. They could act as tour guides of the capital, if they so chose. They are masters at these September invasions. Any Kerry person who you meet will have a brother/sister/both living in Ranelagh. Many thousands more will have an uncle who owns a pub along the quays. They don’t so much as leave Kerry behind them as transport it up to the capital for the weekend.

If you stand outside the Palace Bar at seven o’clock this evening, you are only fooling yourself if you believe yourself to be standing in Dublin. Kerry folks are the truest home birds in the world, particularly after a few drinks. They arrive at Heuston station at three o’clock and by nine they are singing some teary ballad about a lost love in Glenflesk.

And they genuinely miss the place. They hate being away for too long. But when Kerry are in the All-Ireland – which is often – they have no choice.

On All-Ireland football Sundays, the city is peppered with Kerry greats. You hear them before you see them, all those All-Ireland medals chinking in their back pockets. You might see the Bomber strolling up Grafton Street or one of the Spillanes loafing around the gates of Trinity or O’Dwyer himself passing by in a blur on the motorway, devilish grin on his face and a whistle around his neck. (Never Maurice, though. Sightings of the Cahersiveen idol are rare enough to be considered an event).

It is an odd thing to think that, by 3.30pm tomorrow, there will be hundreds of Kerry All-Ireland medal winners spread around the stadium. There are enough of them to make up an entire town if they so chose, a gated community comprised exclusively of All-Ireland medal winners.

Soon, the present team will join them, bowing out one by one. This is a special final for the Kingdom. This is a special September.

Win or lose, though, Kerry are trapped by their own tradition of excellence and by our expectations that they live up to that excellence, year after year. Privately, as they gather underneath the Hogan Stand or wait in the freezing night in Killarney for another homecoming, the Kerry faithful might wonder when it is all going to end. They might wonder when they are going to get a quiet September.

Never, would appear to be the answer. Never.