All-Ireland SFC Semi-final Dublin v Kerry: Keith Dugganhears why Kerry manager Pat O'Shea has all the right attributes to bring more success for the county

When Crossmaglen Rangers defeated Dr Crokes in Killarney in the All-Ireland club final replay last March, the immediate aftermath had the potential for petulance and nastiness. The match had been rough and controversial and the Kerry club had plenty of reasons to feel aggrieved after losing out in what was an overtly physical replay.

It was a critical moment for Pat O'Shea. The slender coach had long been a hugely significant figure on the Killarney sporting scene, a highly-skilled forward who kicked a famous goal in the 1992 All-Ireland club final and also an implausibly gifted basketball player on the town's national league team. Now, he had managed the football team back to the great stage of St Patrick's Day and was set to take over as the senior Kerry football manager.

In the minutes after a loss that must have been bothering him deeply, O'Shea was asked if the nature of the game gave the Crokes club reasonable grounds for complaint and possible appeal. "Absolutely not," he said briskly. "That is not our form. The bottom line is that I was in their dressingroom to congratulate them."

Then, he turned his mind to the matter of the county.

Tomorrow, O'Shea will manage in Croke Park for the third time this year. But this will be different. Modern football matches featuring Dublin have become a combination of sport and high theatre, with sufficient substance to match the absurd hype and a genuinely mind-blowing atmosphere.

For the Dublin team and management, Croke Park has become the most powerful "home" venue in all of Europe, with a predominantly city-based crowd of 80,000 caught between adoration and volatility. But it pitches visiting teams into a new realm.

This year's championship badly needed a Dublin-Kerry clash. Although the metropolitans have not won the fixture in 30 years, it is arguably the most alluring and elemental rivalry in Gaelic football. And for O'Shea, facing into his first All-Ireland semi-final, it means the proverbial baptism of fire.

Gerry Fitzpatrick, the trainer with the Waterford senior hurling team, has known O'Shea since he was a teenager studying in Waterford IT, where he played point guard for Fitzpatrick's national league basketball side. Since then, the men have remained friendly and as Fitzpatrick's involvement in Gaelic games deepened, he has observed the Killarney man's progress.

"I have seen a good number of his Kerry games and it is the same old Pat on the sideline. He is watching everything, he is seeing everything, he is staying inside himself and not getting caught up in the emotion of the game. In Waterford, Pat's understanding of basketball at the age of 19 was advanced far beyond his years, even though Gaelic football was his number one sport.

"In any sport, he would be a very perceptive coach. He is confident and he is low key, one of those people you would have great confidence in when you are around them. He has that inner calm which means when the critical moment arises, he is in the right place in his own mind."

That was certainly true in the All-Ireland quarter-final against Monaghan. For an hour, Kerry played second fiddle to the darkling Ulster team who were full of organisation and fearless football. With 65 minutes gone, it appeared Kerry would be fortunate to secure a draw, but in the most vital passage of the match, the champions played their best football.

The Ó Sé brothers deepened their legend, but the substitutes O'Shea made had an immediate and obvious impact, with Bryan Sheehan clipping two quick points that piled an intolerable degree of psychological pressure on the Ulstermen.

Although O'Shea had promoted a shorter, intricate passing game with Dr Crokes, it was noted his Kerry team remained - stubbornly - faithful to the long-ball system he had inherited from Jack O'Connor, bombing the long ball down on Kieran Donaghy. It contributed to Declan O'Sullivan's opportunistic goal, but, apart from that, the Monaghan defence had a largely successful afternoon on Donaghy. Afterwards, O'Shea was inscrutable as he leaned against the wall underneath Croke Park and reflected on what had been a nerve-wracking match for Kerry.

"I suppose I was worried for him," says Connie Murphy, the former Kerry All Star and Dr Crokes player who also shot basketball with O'Shea.

"Even Pat would say Kerry got out of jail that day. But it was no accident they played their best football in the last 10 minutes. Pat was always a very cool kind of personality. I would say he will be the same against Dublin. He will be both relishing it and dreading it. He knew going into this job no county has managed to win back to back All-Irelands in a long time and I suppose that adds to the pressure.

"Games like this are the pinnacle and we are all very proud of him in Killarney. We'd have great faith in him."

Murphy finds it hard to separate whether O'Shea was primarily a football player or a basketball player. He was simply both - and was a tricky, natural hurler in his spare time. They grew up in the same street in Killarney, practically in the shadow of Fitzgerald Stadium and liked to play whatever was going. And football was always going. O'Shea was a terrifically skilful and confident football player.

He led the Kerry scoring charts for several seasons, but despite the acclamation of folk heroes such as Eoin Liston, he never got beyond trial games for Kerry.

"In those days, you had to have size," Murphy reasoned. "That was the thinking anyhow. Pat was in the same mould as the Gooch (Colm Cooper), although Colm would be taller. He was a seriously respected footballer. He would always be looking for the pass inside, he would be guaranteed to create an opening, he would spot the run. And although the Kerry selectors took a look at him, they probably didn't see everything he could do because he had skill to burn. A beautiful football player."

If O'Shea was upset at being overlooked, he never said so publicly. There were plenty of football people in Killarney who believed he had earned an opportunity to audition but O'Shea just got on with the business of playing, exuding confidence.

On the basketball court, he was equally inclusive. As point guard, O'Shea controlled the attack and he saw his primary duty as bringing the other four players into the game. His vision and reading of the game were his great skills: he was the classic, old-fashioned point guard in the mould of John Stockton: a facilitator of the talent - or otherwise - that surrounded him.

"Pat always seemed to know two plays ahead what was going to happen," remembers the current coach of Killarney Lakers, Cormac O'Donoghue. "As a point guard down the years, Pat made an awful lot of average players look very good. If a player was on form, he made sure he got the ball. Pat had this habit of making big shots but the best thing about his game was his passing.

"He made some unbelievable passes. He coached when he was playing, no matter what the sport. As a corner forward in football, he was always moving off the ball. The way that football has gone, the angle of running forwards is very similar."

Over 10 years ago, after a night at the pub, O'Donoghue and O'Shea talked about their grand plans and even then O'Shea mentioned his fascination with training the Kerry senior team. It was something he wanted. He was a seriously diligent student of sport. Years before satellite television, O'Shea had friends in America posting over video cassettes of the NCAA and NBA basketball finals. He read the Street&Smiths basketball magazines that extensively catalogued the best American players.

Later, when O'Donoghue began coaching, he would visit O'Shea to talk about college players that might be suitable for Killarney. Frequently, O'Shea would know the guys he was referring to from the top of his head.

He was an exceptional Gaelic football coach and established a reputation for holding highly organised and inventive clinics. Most of the younger Kerry squad would first have encountered O'Shea at skills sessions. When O'Connor decided to step down from the post after winning a second All-Ireland manager, the Killarney man was the most obvious candidate to succeed him.

Fitzpatrick phoned O'Shea the day the appointment was announced and was struck by the absence of elation. O'Shea was pleased, but quietly so, making clear this was just the beginning of a challenge rather than the realisation of an ambition.

O'Shea became the first Dr Crokes man since the revered Dr Eamon O'Sullivan to be given charge of the Kerry senior football team. In Weeshie Fogarty's recent book A Man Before His Time, O'Shea comments although he never met O'Sullivan, he remains one of his heroes and cites the contemporary relevance of his guide, The Art and Science of Gaelic Football.

He is the second successive Kerry manager to ascend the ladder without the benefit of a glittering All-Ireland playing career. Given the accomplishments of many of the current Kerry squad, that might have made the task more daunting.

"I don't think that would have been an issue," says O'Donoghue. "A lot of the guys on the Kerry team would know Pat from going to coaching camps. And he is his own man. I have seen him down the years giving a piece of his mind to Americans twice the size of him. His knowledge of football is so good that people have respect for him. Tactically, he is very astute and variety in practice was always very high on his agenda.

"That is not to say there is no pressure involved. Anyone who takes the Kerry job is under pressure. Once the county team gets to an All-Ireland semi-final, the public expects them to win. It probably shouldn't be like that but it is. There is pressure. Do I think Pat can handle it? I have no doubt."

The parallels between basketball and football are manifold in tomorrow's semi-final. Donaghy's precocious talent on the hardwood in Tralee has been well documented and Dublin veteran Jason Sherlock was, like O'Shea, a highly regarded point guard as a teenager. There is even a connection between the two managers. In 1989, Killarney played Corinthians in a tense National Cup semi-final in the National Arena. The match went down to the last few seconds and was decided when Gerry Caffrey, one of the great Irish players of the 1980s, hit a jump shot on the buzzer. Gerry Caffrey is Paul Caffrey's older brother.

Tomorrow, Paul Caffrey and Pat O'Shea will be occupy the same stretch of grass while locked away in what will be effectively a private obsession with what is happening on the field. Every gesture and decision will be scrutinised and analysed.

Dublin's need for a place in the September final has become acute and intense. The city demands. With Kerry, that need is not as pressing but it is constant and unyielding. The county expects. Kerry are eternally impatient.

A lot rests on O'Shea's shoulders. With the departure of Séamus Moynihan and Michael McCarthy, an unsung anchor at full back, Kerry are not quite as impenetrable as they were last year and for the first time in Caffrey's stewardship, Dublin are marvellously unpredictable.

The fact that the encounter is so difficult to call seems to tighten the connection between this game and the golden era of the 1970s. Pat O'Shea was just a watchful, cheeky slip of a kid in Killarney back then. Now, the big calls are his.