All-Ireland SFC Final: We now know there are two ways to win an All-Ireland football title: the Kerry way, and the other way. Or as Jack O'Connor can now say, two out of three All-Ireland finals prefer to end in an easy triumph for Kerry.

So, for the third year in succession we find O'Connor in the lobby of Jurys, Ballsbridge, the morning after the football final. Successful in 2004, defeated last year, now successful again, by the look of him the obvious question concerns the difference between a winning hangover and a losing hangover. "One is agony," he says, "the other is ecstasy."

From the outside they appear the same, O'Connor always carries victory the same way as defeat. There was no ranting or raving when Tyrone beat Kerry last year, and he reflects on Sunday's win over Mayo with the same air of composure.

"In many ways it was the hurt of losing last year's final that drove us on, especially when things weren't going right for us. It made us redouble our efforts to have one last go at it, and try to win it back.

"I mean as late as Sunday morning they were throwing salvos at us. We were being portrayed as a team in crisis and Mayo were being portrayed as a happy family. It does make it sweeter when you can answer that on the pitch."

Straight after Sunday's final O'Connor said the victory tasted 20 times sweeter than 2004. This morning he's changed his mind about that: "It tastes 40 times better today. I know I sat here last year, and really didn't know about my future. Some people thought I was being a bit coy about it, that I was doing it to take the heat off myself.

"I know now that losing an All-Ireland hurts so badly that you do just want to pack it up. But I thought about it for a few days, decided we'd go again, because you'd hate to walk away with that taste in your month."

Inevitably then, the question of O'Connor's next move surfaces - and should he stay or should he go now? "The temptation is to go out on a high. But another part of you says we've a good thing going here, and we don't want to leave it go. There's a great bond in this team at that moment, and that took a bit of work. We'd be a fairly tight bunch and you don't like walking away from that either. You'd miss that. But whatever the management will do we'll do together.

"And this is not an old Kerry team. Look at the forwards, most of them 23 or 24. Some of them have a good share of football played but they're certainly not an old team. But the one thing you would miss in the likes of Darragh Ó Sé and Séamus Moynihan would be leadership. You could get two good men to take their place, but leadership is a funny thing. You can have a great player that mightn't be a great leader, and those two men were great leaders for us. Certainly the likes of Darragh and Moynihan owe Kerry nothing and if they did decide to go they can look back on their career with great satisfaction, and will go down as Kerry legends."

It's put to him that some unfinished business against Tyrone would be another reason to stay on: "Ah, there's always an angle, isn't there? Look it's not a good time to be asking me that question because the head isn't great. Sure you can always find an angle to stay on if you want it . . . We'll see."

What is clear is that O'Connor enjoyed the build-up to Sunday's final more than he expected, especially given the criticism he took after the Munster final defeat to Cork. But he'd made up his mind he wasn't going to let that criticism get the better of him.

"You have to decide if you're going to let this crack you, or use it to your advantage. And it really brought us closer together. There was some wild stuff flying around, but we said we'd shut up shop. Just tell them they're right, there's chaos here. That's the best thing to do.

"Last Saturday week we played a last practice game in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, just to get out of the county, one last session on our own. And there was a fair bit of scalping in that one. That was a great sign. It showed players were up for it, not just going through the motions.

"In the end we were amazingly relaxed coming into this. I thought maybe at times too relaxed. But we were still very focused. We'd a fantastic meeting on Saturday night, staying up at Dunboyne Castle Hotel, and a very relaxed Sunday morning. It was almost a surreal build-up, enjoying it. But that's the best way to go into an All-Ireland final.

"I really think the fact Mayo got those goals before half-time was a good thing, because it kept our lads on their toes. If we went in 12 points up what could you say to them? Get stuck in or else we'll take you off? I don't know how we'd have motivated them.

"So all I had to say was that if they come from seven points down against the Dubs why wouldn't they come from six points down against us. So we certainly weren't going to defend the lead. We were going to drive on as much as we could, and I think in many ways our second-half performance was better than the first. It wasn't as flamboyant but it was more controlled, and we defended better.

"And I mean players like Paul Galvin did phenomenal work all over the field. And Aidan O'Mahony has been moved around a lot this year, and could have got cranky about that. But he's a great bit of stuff, and I think for an unheralded player like him to get man of the match in the company he was in is fantastic."