LOCKER ROOM:Kerry's game against Galway was the best of the season and left us grasping for superlatives, writes Tom Humphries
LET US now praise famous men. Kerry - though they will writhe and flinch in the spotlight, it being this side of September - have been the best quality and the best story of this generally woebegone football championship.
Saturday's game with Galway, played in a monsoon under a charcoal sky, was the best of the season so far and we came away in our kayaks gasping at the longevity of Kerry.
It's one thing for Cork and Kilkenny to have had a modern rivalry stretching back to that 1999 final. Hurling is still a less physically demanding game and the number of times a year when you face a genuine threat to your standing and physical wellbeing is limited.
Kerry, on Saturday, were qualifying for their ninth All-Ireland semi-final in succession. Since the inception of the quarter finals they have played at that stage eight times and won each time. Very few handy options either - Dublin 2001 and 2004, Galway 2002 and 2008, Armagh, Monaghan and, well, Mayo and Roscommon.
Their modern pre-eminence includes All-Ireland final appearances in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and the draining celebrations following four of those finals.
If you are Darragh Ó Sé you can throw in the win in 1997 as well. They are eternal.
In 2001 Páidí Ó Sé and Jack O'Connor and the boys sat with their heads in their hands as Meath dismantled them. They saw Meath into recession. And Galway too. They went mano-a-mano in the puke-football era, swallowing with difficulty the hubris of counties winning a first or second All-Ireland at their expense. Learned to deal with them and saw them off the premises.
They must have noticed that as they came out to deal with Galway yesterday there were still a lot of men in orange shirts sitting in the stands with their tails between their legs.
They never cease to astonish you. How many half-time cups of tea have been drunk in Croke Park by people shaking their heads and noting gravely that Darragh Ó Sé is "gone"? And there he was again on Saturday in the closing stages driving Kerry on and on through the rain.
War horse, the term most popularly used to describe Darragh, doesn't do him justice. Noah's Ark didn't carry enough varieties of beast from which to draw metaphorical comparisons.
What appeals about Kerry is the county's stoical resistance to the ravages of hype. Tommy Walsh, for instance, has been slipped into the team with much head shaking and many yerras and half-apologetic promises that he will be ready in a year or two.
Lawdee! If he were a Dub he would be a folk hero already, almost drowning in the hysteria.
And on Saturday they casually slipped Daniel Bohane into the edge of the square in the second half when the going was tough and Galway were hungry.
Kingdom watchers will know that Bohane plays just about anywhere for Austin Stacks, a versatility that can be a curse when trying to break through at county level.
He had the misfortune last year to break a finger in the warm-up of his National League debut against Cavan in Breffni Park, and then when he got going again two months later he was dropped in at centre back, a decision which was the final straw to Eamon Fitzmaurice, who promptly resigned his bench-warming residency.
Bohane was overshadowed and generally forgotten about.
Then on Saturday he comes in when Kerry are struggling following the arrival of Joe Bergin and he cleans up. He just takes over the defence like he is the new sheriff of Dodge City and every miscreant has three minutes to leave town or face the consequences.
Kerry keep on winning virtually as a by-product of their search for excellence and football perfection. Should they grasp the three-in-a-row which hangs for them from the branches right now talk will turn to the four-in-a-row.
Only in Kerry would the Gooch, a wonder of the world if ever there was one, be left to fend for himself on scraps as the team experimented with the twin-towers forward line of Donaghy and Walsh.
For several years Kerry have made an art out of creating the space to pop ball in for the Gooch to chase down and then convert into scores.
Now, for a while at least, he can live off the crumbs. Only in Kerry would an underage talent like Paddy Curran still be so far down the pecking order as to be barely visible or David Moran not be tried or Dan Doona be left to spend his good years away in the New World without being hauled back by the ear and forced to play for the county.
Only in Kerry would the passing of a Maurice Fitz, a Séamus Moynihan, a Michael McCarthy not be cause for widespread despair. The absence of the talismanic Paul Galvin will be dealt with and absorbed. In Kerry somebody else has always worn the jersey with more honour than you on greater days than yours and when you are gone somebody else will do the same.
That's the one truth you have to grasp before you go bigging yourself up.
Every day when Darragh Ó Sé walks to his office in Tralee he passes and often calls into Mikey Sheehy just a few doors away in the same business. Darragh is going for his sixth All-Ireland medal this year. Mikey, who waves out the window, has eight. So has Uncle Páidí. Not hard to keep yourself in perspective in that company.
So they roll on. Yet another semi-final with Cork beckoning. And probably unless the world changes shape another final to get ready for.
Two in a row might be their lot. Three in a row? Four in a row?
They compete against themselves and their own history and excellence.
It's our honour just to watch them and to learn and to crash like the tide against the great rock that is their history and tradition hoping for once not to be repelled.
