Having won their first Kerry title in 45 years, Bomber Liston's KerinsO'Rahily's team now have their targets set on Nemo Rangers. Seán Moranreports.

Kerry football can sometimes seem too big, too much of a conglomerate to generate much in the way of heart-warming stories. Glenflesk's progress to a Munster final two years ago was an exception. So too is this year's re-emergence of Kerins O'Rahilly's. Having bagged a first county title in 45 years, the Tralee club tomorrow make their debut in the province with an AIB Munster semi-final against the biggest name in club football, Nemo Rangers from Cork.

O'Rahilly's are the pet project of former Kerry colossus Eoin "Bomber" Liston. For seven years he has nurtured the club through survival in Division One, to consolidation, to real progress, capped by this month's major breakthrough.

Tralee has traditionally been a powerhouse of the game in Kerry. Its three big clubs - Stacks, Mitchels and O'Rahilly's - have all enjoyed sunshine eras, but O'Rahilly's had to reach back furthest. Mitchels recorded the county's only five-in-a-row back in the 1960s. Stacks were dominant the following decade and won an All-Ireland club title in 1977.

In recent times the town influence has faded and the 2000 All-Ireland winning team featured no players from Tralee. Kerry and

Ireland coach John O'Keeffe - and a member of the celebrated 1970s Stacks collective - believes there will be improvement in the local fortunes.

"The town used to be renowned for its forwards but hasn't supplied them of late. That will probably change because a lot of attention has been paid to under-age football in Tralee and that's paying off on Strand Road."

Down on Strand Road there is a sense of novelty about the whole enterprise. O'Rahilly's have had to make the usual calculation about how hard to greet such an epochal success and how serious an attempt to make on even bigger things. A little less celebration, a little more action.

"We've been working hard," says Liston. "They were off the drink by Thursday and we're hoping to give it a real shot."

The manager's legend as a deeply scary full forward - all that hirsute menace and the shattered reputations of a generation of full backs - was always offset by his affable nature. Such conviviality might have made him an unlikely candidate for coaching, but Liston has demonstrated a range of aptitudes from a willingness to learn to sheer dogged perseverance.

"Bomber's a great student of the game," according to O'Keeffe, "always looking at the latest coaching developments and improving his own training methods. There's been a lot of trial and error, but he's brought on the same players with a lot of confidence building and self-belief. He's finally instilled that into the team and given them a distinct style of play."

It began not too long after the end of a garlanded playing career. In keeping with his nature Bomber came out of intercounty retirement in 1993 to try and help his pal Ogie Moran, who had just become Kerry manager, to settle a young and rudderless team.

The plan didn't really work and when reality made its final intrusion, Liston had to be substituted in that year's Munster semi-final against Cork in Killarney. To an extent it ended happily as the attendance rose spontaneously to grant one of the county's iconic figures one final ovation.

There was some unfinished business on the playing field and two years later he called it a day. "In my last year I was player-manager of Shannon Rangers and Laune Rangers beat us by a point the year that they went on to win the All-Ireland."

By then Liston was living in Tralee, managing the local Irish Nationwide office and about to become part of the town's footballing heritage. "The following year John Dowling was onto me all the time and the chairman Pat Healy asked me would I get involved. My son Eoghan had been playing there since he was four or five."

Dowling was one of the Brahmins of Tralee football. Described by Mikey Sheehy, with alternative religious imagery, as "the Ayatollah", Dowling captained Kerry to what is widely regarded as their most famous All-Ireland - the 1955 Kulturkampf against Dublin. Not even Bomber was going to resist such pressure indefinitely.

Now in his seventh - and he says, last - year in charge, the early seasons were a struggle, initially notable for the strange migration of Vinny Murphy from Dublin to Tralee. There he did sufficiently well to excite rumours - albeit vehemently denied - of a Kerry call-up.

"Vinny Murphy came in and did a job for us," says Liston. "He kept us in Division One and allowed me blood young fellas. I put some of them in at under-17. The team has been developing. Some are very experienced. Ken Savage and Morgan Nix have been there since the league win in 1985."

The gap since that win was bridged in 1999 as the team began to stitch together a reputation for competence and dependability.

"They're much improved," says O'Keeffe. "There's been a real progression under Bomber. They've really improved and have been knocking on the door of a big success. They've been a very consistent league team, finishing high up in Division One. It was a matter of time before they broke through."

Liston traces the incremental advance from solid base to the summit. "We reached the (county) semi in 2000. In 2001, we played good football and were seven up against South Kerry with five minutes left in the quarter-final, but they got a draw and tipped us in the replay. This year was now or never. The players believed that they could win, that they were serious competitors. They were willing to make the sacrifices and happy to allow us monitor them.

"This year we lost our first match in the league and that was all. We'd been winning all summer until we played An Gaeltacht two weeks before the championship semi-finals in the club competition (specially for clubs with no divisional teams).

"In that we were four up and they got a goal, went three up and they got a goal, went ahead again and again they got a goal. It was crazy - we hadn't conceded any goals in the championship, but we ended up losing 3-7 to 0-15. We knew then that we could be a serious force and that if we played them again we'd be confident."

The irony is that An Gaeltacht weren't there at showdown time. The west Kerry club's curious under-achievement - local observers believe the club should be challenging for All-Irelands - was helped by its large inter-county contingent who looked washed out at the end of a draining year.

Whatever. They lost to little fancied Kilcummin in the semi-finals while O'Rahilly's were springing a second, milder surprise by wiping out any trace of the anticipated Crokes-Gaeltacht final. So instead of getting pumped up for An Gaeltacht, O'Rahilly's were now favourites.

"It meant that we knew we had to deliver," says Liston. "Like any team that's been knocking on the door, we knew then that we had to burst through. We were back training the night after the semi-final. If we were going to be beaten, we said, let it be because we're beaten by a better team not because we got sucked into the hype."

Tomorrow afternoon the club have the chance to spring another semi-final surprise. Victory over Nemo would be an ideal springboard to greater achievement, but defeat will close a chapter in O'Rahilly's refurbished history. "I'm taking a break," says Liston. "I've loved every bit of it - as much as playing. More. You don't have to train."