LOCKERROOM:With Kerry on the cusp of ignominy if they don't perform next year, who would be their coach?

FOR LOVERS of intrigue there is nothing like Kerry football. And for lovers of Kerry football there is no place better to be next Sunday than in Tralee for the county semi-finals.

The most compelling bout on the short bill pits Kerins O'Rahillys of Tralee against South Kerry.

O'Rahillys - or Strand Road, as they are known locally - are managed by Jack O'Connor, the man who has done more than most to identify south Kerry as a nature reserve with a fauna composed mainly of outsiders.

South Kerry are led onto the field by Declan O'Sullivan.

What is extraordinary about these two extraordinary men is their friendship. They would take a bullet for each other.

Not next Sunday, though. In any given year Jack facing down Declan would be a spectacle for the masses. This year is different, though. It is Jack's first year on Strand Road. The Kerry manager's job is vacant.

When it comes to football, be it with Dromid Pearses or at schools, underage or senior county level, Jack doesn't really do failure. His record is extraordinary.

So it was a fantastic plot twist to put him at this time against his native South Kerry.

The cognoscenti will be watching with narrowed eyes.

If Strand Road win, pushing themselves into a county final in Jack's first year in charge, there will be a small clamour for him to get back into the bainisteoir bibs. If Strand Road lose, the clamour will be more modest but just as understandable

Would Jack take it all on if asked, though? Would anybody hoist all that weight of expectation on to their own shoulders, having felt the crushing burden of it before?

Tommy Lasorda, one of the most quotable of baseball managers, once noted that pressure is the thing you feel once you start to think about failure. In that respect, most inter-county football managers can think about failure without any detrimental effect on their pulse rate. Their county history is inevitably one of failure punctuated by the odd manic outbreak of success. Who would want to manage Kerry, though?

First there is that daunting mound of statistics, a testament to the county's unfamiliarity with failure. You can't look down. You can't think about failure in Kerry. You know once Mickey Ned O'Sullivan, one of the wisest and best of Kerryman, started out on his tenure as Kerry manager by expressing the thought that even if his players didn't have All-Ireland medals at the end of the period he hoped they would have grown as people.

Mickey Ned was excoriated.

Then there is the existence around the county of the golden-age players, their presence as ghostly and intimidating as the monumental statues of Easter Island.

Here in Dublin there tends to be little storm in all our teacups when ex-cathedra pronouncements on the state of Dublin football are made in the media by alumni like Keith Barr, Paul Curran or Charlie Redmond, a trinity whose aggregate haul of All-Ireland senior medals comes to, well, three. The 70s team have settled into a benign sort of silence.

I'm not sure Dublin football could cope if there was the constant threat of denunciation from players who have six, seven or eight All-Ireland football medals.

Then there is the county's unusual integration of football into daily culture. Pat Gilroy may be untried as a senior inter-county manager but most of us in Dublin are happy to believe that Pat knows more about managing an inter-county team than we do.

In Kerry, you never know more about football than the next man does, and if you do, you are cute enough not to let on.

Rough f***ing animals, as Páidí put it so impetuously.

And there is the dressing-room. At the heart of the Kerry dressing-room are a group of men who have been playing in All-Ireland finals every year for half a decade. They know the routine so well, the game so well, the metabolism of their team so well they could almost run the business themselves. They see through phonies and bluffers and beaten dockets. Close your eyes and picture it. Is there any football team in the country you would less like to be walking in on and facing for the first time? Imagine yourself standing there telling that team you have a little plan to make them better.

Dublin can afford to take a risk on Pat Gilroy's intelligence and class. Kerry can't really afford a punt on anyone. Tyrone can't be let away like Down were in the 1960s.

Finally, there is the current state of play in the Kingdom. Each of Kerry's last three managers has won at least one All-Ireland title. Páidí Ó Sé was cut loose. Jack O'Connor and Pat O'Shea left without much demur after brief tenures that in any other county would have been deemed wildly successful.

In three years Jack reached three finals, winning two. In two years, Pat reached two finals, winning one. When they got up to leave they got a handshake and a "Thank you" as the "Smart boy wanted sign" was being stuck back in the window.

In Dublin, where we believe our manager to be under inhuman pressure, we talk about getting to an All-Ireland final as being the next step. In Kerry, not reaching the All-Ireland final will be an intolerable blow after such a run.

In Kerry, for the next few years even winning an an All-Ireland or two in a row or three in a row will not be enough. Beating Mickey Harte's Tyrone team in a major championship game in Croke Park is all that matters. Doing it playing fine football would be a bonus. Doing that playing fine football in an All-Ireland final would be preferable.

Throw in all the regional politics and speeches made with forked tongues and you have a managerial situation more fascinating that those of the 31 other counties combined.

Never before have Kerry been on the cusp of abject failure if they don't perform. There are special needs associate with Gaelic football in Kerry.

No space more interesting to watch.