All-Ireland SFC final: Toughest job in football? No bonus points for this one. A day or two after Kerry played Dublin in the championship this year Jack O'Connor picked up the phone and called Tommy Lyons.

O'Connor felt an instinctive sympathy for Lyons. Dublin had been beaten. Lyons was being pilloried. It wasn't all words of comfort though.

"I said, 'Tommy you think you have it hard up there, getting slated after losing. I'm getting slated after winning. That's the scenario, down here'."

And he laughs. Dublin is a job that can make a man. Kerry is a job that eats men.

They don't know him. Not many of them. Not well. Not many of the strange, exotic, football-feasting animals who make up the most demanding constituency in football, know him well. They notice that his pockets don't jingle with All-Ireland senior medals and they find that odd. Páidí, Ogie, Mickey Ned and Micko. They all came with Celtic cross accessories fitted as standard.

What else? They know that Jack O'Connor's Kerry side are hard and resilient and watching them can be a bit of a roller-coaster ride for the purists.

They know that O'Connor lost his first game as a manager to - well, no point beating around the bush, to Longford. Their eyes are narrowed and their faces are thoughtful. They'll tell you what they think next week. In The Kerryman, in phone calls to Weeshie, in learned conversations about football.

They should know that O'Connor had absorbed much of the character of the county he loves. He's a South Kerry man possessed of the quiet, laconic confidence that marks the species. Genetically mistrustful of showboaters and the terminally flamboyant.

And he speaks in the vernacular. Winning. All-Irelands. Those words punctuate his speech and form his thoughts. They don't know him, but they'll like him.

He sits down and hovers over a cup of tea and a crab salad sandwich. He speaks slowly and thoughtfully until the tea has cooled and the crab's relatives are beginning to have thoughts of a reprieve.

He gives you a quick run through his curriculum vitae. He's quiet about it, but as he draws breath and goes onto his second paragraph you begin counting.

Started teaching in Waterville Vocational School in 1981. Then went to Scoil Uí Chonaill, another local vocational school for three or four years. After that he took off to America for three years, lived in New York from '86 to '89.

Came back and built a pub. Went at that game for a few years.

He'd been training teams as far back as 1992. Trained the Kerry vocational schools when he was teaching in Cahersiveen. Won a couple of All-Irelands. Then Páidí roped him in with the county under-21s in 1993. Surprised but pleased, he went in as a selector. Spent a few years at that. Reached the All-Ireland final the first year against Meath. Won an All-Ireland in 1995.

Páidí went to the seniors in 1996 and tugged him along again. Lost an All-Ireland in 1996, won an All-Ireland the next year. Stayed with Páidí till after the 1997 win. Then pulled out.

He stayed with the under-21s though, and won an All-Ireland again in 1998. Came back in with the seniors in 2000. Kerry won the 2000 All-Ireland. He stayed awhile, then got out after 2001 and that bad day against Meath. Kept on the under-21s.

Oh and his school, Coláiste na Sceilige? Three All-Irelands.

Still counting? Jack O'Connor's years are about All-Irelands. Winning them. He's no dilettante. He might not have been to the same school as the four-in-a-row team, but he met the scholars. Played under Fr Gerry McAleer (Sigerson, Maynooth) Micko (three years with Waterville.) Worked under Páidí. Played with Jack O'Shea (the South Kerry v West Kerry county final of 1984 still rankles). And yet last winter, the time of Páidí's discontent, he came into the toughest job in Gaelic football and doubts beset him like a virus.

"We went up to Longford and lost our first league game. There would have been a few scribes about the place who thought I was a bad appointment and a few former Kerry senior players had things to say. My last match in charge of the under-21s we lost the Munster final of 2003 to Waterford. So I was the fella who brought Kerry teams out to lose to Waterford and Longford."

The doubt lasted for six days. The weekend after Longford, Kerry played Cork in the league under floodlights in Tralee. Won by a couple of points.

"After Longford the odd finger of doubt was pointing in to the picture. I'd have to give a lot of credit to the players. (Séamus) Moynihan and Dara Ó Cinnéide, they were leaders. Dara played against Cork even though he was probably under a bit of pressure from his club not to. We knew there was something in the team then."

O'Connor's honesty and quiet diligence were rewarded by enthusiasm. That's what he remembers from the period, basically the enthusiasm. A meeting at training after the Longford defeat, a vow that they wouldn't lose to Cork.

Moynihan especially amazed him.

"He's an amazing man. He'd be revered in Kerry as a leader. The way he was playing he inspired people around him. That's the sign of a leader. When things are going badly some fellas stand up . He dragged the team up with him. He was fantastic in Tralee. After a rough first half the next week against Dublin he played himself into the game. We beat Dublin up there in the league for the first time in 18 years. We knew then we'd turned a corner."

O'Connor's life is full of corners. He likes to go at something for a few years and then try something else. Football is the one unbroken thread.

Having taught for a few years in Kerry, he threw his name into the lottery for the Donnelly visas back in the dark mid-80s. Duly his name came out and he hiked it to New York city, where he worked in construction for three years and played football and collected bruises in Gaelic Park at weekends.

Having a green card, he reversed the trend and played football under his own name. Going with the flow, though, he often worked under another name. The football got him membership of the carpenters' union before he knew how to bang a nail, and he worked often as Benny Walsh. Somebody learned his real name and he was rechristened Jack Benny.

He lived in the Bronx and worked on scaffolds high in the canyons of Manhattan. Worked on a crew for a while, and then set up his own outfit with a fella from Cork. One Bridie Moriarty who he'd been seeing at home refused to be given the slip and followed him across the sea. They got married out there. He had no real notion of coming home, but nurtured a little fantasy of building a pub back in Kerry. Opened a pub in 1989, then sold the share in 1995 and moved back to where he is now.

"I got this romantic notion to build a pub. My brother ended up doing most of the building. I saw it on a Wednesday. It opened on Friday. I came back to buy the site and didn't see it again till two days before it opened.

"My plan then was I'd come home for two weeks, get it started, and then go back. It got so mental in the pub we never went back."

Before he'd set off for the New World he'd had something of a falling out with his old club, Dromid Pearses. When it came to the business of training they weren't as regimented as he. So he'd gone to Waterville for three years and played there under the tutelage of "the maestro".

Safely installed back in Dromid, he enjoyed life again. There was the church, the pub and the football field. His old headmaster, Con Dineen, persuaded him to begin a little teaching again.

So he never returned to New York. Well, not until 1997, when he went back with the boys with the Sam Maguire.

The pace of living in Dromid grew surprisingly Manhattan-like. He was tending bar, teaching kids and training three teams. Bridie was rearing the kids on her own. Something had to give.

It couldn't be the football. It couldn't be the teaching. They were the only two things he was qualified for. He sold out of thebar. Moved on. Life was good.

Last October he got a call. At the time he was the man who'd lost the Munster under-21 final to Waterford, so he was surprised to hear from the county chairman.

Then, too, there'd been the unseemly bit of rumpus with how Páidí finished up. Kerry managers never have happy endings to their stories.

"It wasn't a clear-cut scenario for me. I'd worked with Páidí for a long time. It wasn't an easy situation. I had to think. Páidí's situation complicated it. He'd given me my break. I'm from a small club which for the most part was a division four or five club in the county for years. I was glad to get a break at intercounty in 1993, and I had a lot to be thankful to Páidí for. Páidí's situation was finished by then, though. He wasn't going to stay and fight. I decided I'd have a cut."

Of Páidí Ó Sé he can't speak highly enough. Jack O'Connor's mother passed away on the night he was being ratified for the Kerry job. She was being waked at what should have been a good time. It was a tough period, O'Connor was a shaker of mixed feelings. Páidí drove down and spent an hour with his old friend.

"He'd been through a tough time himself. I was very appreciative. He was able to move on. He's done a fantastic job in Westmeath. We'd still talk. I called him before the Derry game because they'd played Derry."

O'Connor has moved on too, though. There would be no stasis in Kerry football. No subservience to the old ways or genuflecting to the pantheon from where the gods of the great O'Dwyer teams survey the scene.

"The punters are hard to satisfy. There were suggestions this year that we have been introducing an alien style, that we are 'getting men behind the ball'. I've never used the phrase 'men behind the ball' to a team in my life.

"We're trying to get them to work harder as a team when we don't have the ball. I don't care what you call it. Call it the 'Northern style' if you want. It's always been the philosophy I've had on football."

He believes the Kerry team of 2002, which reached the final against Armagh, played the best football any Kerry team of the last 15 years have produced. He observes that at the end of the day they had no medals to show for it.

"We're trying to strike a balance."

There's a pivotal moment from the 2003 semi-final, of course. That passage of play under the Hogan Stand when Tyrone players buffeted Kerrymen into submission until finally the ball was surrendered cheaply. The game hinged on those moments.

"We've been working very hard this year to get the players to come out of defence with more purpose and more drive.

"Maybe players weren't expressing themselves to the extent that they should have. They are extremely comfortable on the ball, our defenders, we encourage them to use it. We have defenders who can come out and play football. Last year Tyrone worked extremely hard and stopped us coming out with the ball, forced us to kick it away."

There are other changes. O'Connor is a different personality to his predecessor. Lower profile, some would say.

"Not as charismatic or as extroverted," he says.

He talks all the time with players, picking their brains, planting seeds.

"We allow them meetings. We want them to take responsibility. We allow them talk pretty freely with the media. If you give players responsibility off the field they'll handle responsibility on the field as well."

Just as well that O'Connor harbours such beliefs. At half-time against Derry last month he sat in a dressing-room where Darragh Ó Sé was getting into his street clothes and Séamus Moynihan hadn't changed out of his.

"We were facing the second half without the two guys who have been our spiritual leaders for six or seven years. We spoke about that in the dressing-room that day. About taking responsibility. The young players have really stepped up and taken it on another step."

He recalled a pivotal moment from this season. Kerry in Killarney. Tough, sceptical crowd. Stephen Kelly of Limerick scores a goal after 10 seconds. Crowd gets tougher, more sceptical. Limerick scoot further ahead until young Colm Cooper feeds a perfect pass to Eoin Brosnan who scores a great goal. Crowd leans forward. Interested.

"There's a lot of scepticism in Kerry about this team, but people are beginning to see that they stand up for themselves, they fight. It used to be said that if you stopped Séamus and Darragh playing you were well on the way to beating Kerry. That's changed."

That's been the way of Kerry's season. When they've had to fight, they've stood and fought. When they've needed resilience they've found it in themselves. What manager could complain about that?

Jack O'Connor emerges into the light, unblinking, content.