Jack O’Connor is holding court in a small hotel conference room in Killarney when there’s a knock on the door, then a gentle reminder to start wrapping things up.
“We’re grand,” O’Connor says, “they’re not stressing me too much.”
He’s been here before: six times, to be exact, and Sunday’s All-Ireland Final showdown will be his seventh in all with Kerry, in this his third coming as football manager.
It can be stressful, and all-consuming, but there’s nowhere he’d rather be.
“It’s all-consuming all year round, to be honest,” he says. “But it’s particularly intense this week. That was a ferociously intense game last week [against Derry]. And then you don’t sleep the night of a game, at least I don’t anyway, and I doubt if the players sleep very much.
“It is all-consuming, certainly this week, but very enjoyable. I tell you, I’d rather be dealing with it than be up the side of the mountain talking to my dog and regretting things we did and didn’t do. And the county comes alive, there’s just a great buzz, particularly that it’s Dublin, there’s great history between the two teams.”
It’s only his second All-Ireland final against Dublin, the first since the 2011 showdown, which Kerry lost at the death, having famously taken Dublin apart just two years before, in the 2009 All-Ireland quarter-final.
Kerry beating Dublin in last year’s semi-final turned fortunes for the first time since 2011, though O’Connor isn’t getting hung up on that kind of talk.
“I don’t want to go down that road, it’s not about beefs. But sometimes if you’ve history with a team it just makes it a bit psychologically easier to prepare for, that’s all.
“Look, where you’re in an All-Ireland final there’s no shortage of motivation, so both teams can find angles on each other, there’s no issue there. It was obvious Dublin were hurt last year at the fact they lost that semi-final very narrowly and it took a wonder kick to do it, and they obviously feel if they had Con O’Callaghan and a couple more on the field they’d have won the game. Now they have them back so they’ll feel they have a big chance.
“Kerry haven’t beaten Dublin in an All-Ireland final since 1985, that’s 38 years ago, so we’re well aware of the gigantic task that’s ahead of us.”
This much O’Connor readily admits: Dublin didn’t coax back Jack McCaffrey and Paul Mannion, then Stephen Cluxton, and not forgetting 2011 All-Ireland winning manager Pat Gilroy, as mere passengers.
“Whatever about surprise, it was a signal of intent. These boys were coming back to win an All-Ireland. The likes of Cluxton and those fellas don’t come back after winning eight All-Irelands just to go through motions and say ‘yarra we’ll have another go, we’ll tip away from another year’.
“You come back to win another All-Ireland and separate themselves from the pack of the five Kerry boys that won eight and the slew of Dublin boys who have won eight already. Someone threw a stat at me that the lads who were missing last year had a combined total of 24 All-Ireland between them.,That’s fair experience to be bringing back into the dressingroom, isn’t it? And God only knows how many All Stars, so it would appear from the outside that Dublin are throwing the kitchen sink at this.
“Obviously those [Dublin] boys still have the hunger and still have the talent. Gilroy is a very respected man in Dublin football circles, and he was the fella who masterminded the breakthrough in ‘11. So that tells you they were going to leave no stone unturned on and off the field to get this right.”
