It was jersey day on Friday at the school which can lay claim to be Kerry GAA’s football nursery. Holy Cross Mercy School in Killarney was where Colm “The Gooch” Cooper learned to play, along with four other members of tomorrow’s football team.

Two teachers at the school also played with senior teams: male and female.

The roll of honour includes Cooper, Johnny Buckley, James O'Donoghue, Jonathan Lyne and Brian Kelly, along with minor Ciarán White.

Speaking in the midst of a riot of green and gold decorations, deputy principal Breda Courtney Murphy who taught The Gooch in his first year at the school remembered him as “a cute little lad” and “a good little boy” whose talent with the ball was obvious even then.

“I taught him to throw and catch. We didn’t do much kicking in junior infants,”she said.

The deputy principal has no fear for the future of football in Killarney. “There are a number of rising stars, male and female.”

Rival clubs

Teacher Mairéad O’Donoghue, née Finnegan, played with Kerry senior ladies, while

Mike Frank Russell

, five times All-Ireland winner, teaches first class. Yesterday he had a lámha suas of who was Crokes and who was Legion, the two rival Killarney clubs.

The class of 26, which includes several nationalities, was evenly divided. Practically every pupil was a member of one or other club, religiously attending training every Saturday morning.

“There’s great rivalry, but it’s a healthy rivalry,” Russell said.

And his prediction? “Kerry, but very close. And I won’t rule out a draw.”

The annual pilgrimage from Kerry to Croke Park – as distinct from Croagh Patrick – begins for many on Saturday morning, the procession snaking through Castleisland and on to the Limerick Road.

But this year it has a special start: the Dooneen roundabout, the last roundabout before leaving Kerry and the first on the return journey, was officially named the Mick Galwey Roundabout last night.

Galwey won an All-Ireland medal with Kerry in 1986 before becoming an international rugby player.

All-Ireland decorations, however, were low-key across the county in what was a traditionally understated approach.

“Kerry dreads losing; that’s why it is, what people think is cute in its approach beforehand,” said Radio Kerry broadcaster Jerry O’Sullivan. “A year without a title in Kerry, it’s a bad year. It is blacker even than in Mayo. People tend to forget that while no one has won more All-Ireland titles [37], they have lost more too [20].”