A week that was spent in remembrance of times past wound up yesterday with a result well in keeping with historical precedent. Kerry, the most storied football tribe in the land, beat Cavan to reach an All Ireland football final for the first time in eleven years.

It was the eighth time Kerry have beaten their old rivals Cavan in nine semi-final meetings. Any wonder confident Kerry people were outnumbered by a ratio of four-to-one in the Croke Park, crowd of 60,072.

Can it really be eleven years? Mike Frank Russell, the Killorglin youngster who scored the decisive goal in yesterday's encounter looks like the archetypal Kerry footballer yet he has been reared on other people's memories. He was just eight-years-old the last time Kerrymen paraded on All Ireland final day.

They were giants then and they may be again if they lose the tentativeness which rendered this attractive game a few intangibles short of a classic.

The final scoreline (1-17 to 110) flattered Kerry slightly and owed as much to Cavan's inability to stick to their own gameplan as it did to Kerry's moments of undoubted brilliance.

Cavan, who attended to every precise detail in their Ulster final victory against Derry last month, found themselves failing to break even at midfield yesterday and worrying about a creaky defence. In the end their forwards suffered the most from the panic further back. Kerry merely kept the faith.

With the exit of Cavan, the championship may have lost a little of it's colour and a lot of it's novelty but Kerry's re-emergence can't but be good for football. Regardless of the opposition in the All Ireland final there is much to look forward to.

Maurice Fitzgerald, arguably the greatest player in the country, certainly the greatest never to have played in an All Ireland senior final, will grace a September Sunday with the sublime skills he let us glimpse yesterday. We might also see the unfolding genius of Mike Frank Russell, who at eighteen had won every category of football All Ireland except senior.

What a significant moment that pair conjured up yesterday in the 66th minute when Fitzgerald took a clean catch near the middle of the park and, from instinct rather than calculation, swivelled and poured a pass 35 yards into Russell's hands.

The youngster had the sort of possession which most forwards would hope to exchange for a point or perhaps a free kick. He spun and slotted the ball into the Cavan net putting his side more than two points clear for the first time in the second half. Fittingly, it was Russell and Fitzgerald who added the two final scores of the game. Grace notes.

In the aftermath, Kerry were keeping things as downbeat as they done all week last week. One or two Kerry officials were red-eyed from the sentiment of it all and some mouths opened with tape recorders around but their was caution in the words. No hostages handed to fortune or headlines, just quiet expressions of pleasure at being back in the big leagues again.

Paidi O'Se, defender of legend and publican of Ventry has brought them here. His passion is the emblem of this side and his acquired caution the chokelead.

In the tunnel under the new stand yesterday, Paidi was mixing the pride and the caution as usual. No cutting loose. Heart bursting but brain standing guard at the tongue.

"We are delighted to get back into the final. Delighted to have beaten a very, very good side and we are delighted to have beaten them playing good football. It was a very open game and we are proud of that."

His team have come through 1997 unbeaten in either league or championship football. They haven't look like world-beaters but quietly they have developed the confidence which will make them a good even money bet to lift this year's All-Ireland.

"We said at the start of the year we'd try and reach the knockout stages of the league," he reflected yesterday, "but then we won the league. That was a major confidence boost for all of us, players and management. We built it all on that. We have the experience now. Somebody said to me during the week, a guy who rows in from the Blasket Islands regularly, he said, `you know, if you row in from the Blasket Islands once, the second time you row in it will be easier'. Well, we were up here last year, we knew the stormy seas and this time we knew how to get around them."

Just one leg of Paidi's epic voyage left. Enough romance in that perhaps to lift the hearts of some of his lethargic countyfolk who stayed away yesterday.