Locker Room: I was in a record shop in Tralee last week, browsing in the easy-listening section. My finger had just come to rest on a tasty-looking James Last album when I was distracted by the conversation of two youths. Judging by their haircuts and jackets, they were of the type who would dismiss James Last and all his works as suitable only for short and unavoidable elevator rides.
The lads were talking football though. Not Man U or Chelski but Kerry football. They were dismissing certain players as too light, too windy or too slow. They were talking about club games and county stuff. I tuned in in case they had some opinions I could pass off as my own later that day. It was good, informed football talk which in some circles would be dismissed as bitching and in others would pass for journalism.
Now in its heyday one could have spent a long time lurking in the easy-listening section of, say, Freebird Records in Dublin before happening upon two similarly hirsute young men discussing the merits of Gaelic footballers. But that's Kerry. To be born there is to know and breathe football.
It's often said Pillar Caffrey has the most high-pressured job in football. Maybe he does. Certainly if swearing turns out really to be a sin and there transpires really to be a hell Pillar is looking at a fate even worse than first-round exit in Leinster. That's pressure. But for me Jack O'Connor has the least enviable job of all. He works in a land where everybody is an expert on football.
And Kerry football is always on the brink of crisis. Consider Jack's position. He arrived in 2004. Won the league and the All-Ireland in his first year. Proceeded to 2005 and went all the way to September, to be thwarted by Tyrone. In Kerry through the jury is still out on O'Connor.
It's not just winning an All-Ireland that matters in Kerry. It's the manner of the winning - and what it leads to. This is a county which has five fellas walking around with eight All-Ireland medals each in their pockets. Having six or seven All-Irelands is nothing to brag about. Being on a one-in-a-row team isn't even CV fodder.
It's a hard constituency to please. There is an acceptance of course that the occasional All-Ireland won't be won but the applause in Kerry for the novelty of new dynasties starting up in other counties is always polite to the point of being muted.
Many of the county's most satisfying All-Irelands haven't been mere September triumphs; they have been emphatic reassertions of the Kerry way of doing things. Perhaps the most storied of those was the 1955 win over a charismatic Dublin team which had brought elements of science and trigonometry to their attacking play.
Kerry came to town though and played the catch-and-kick game and Dublin were put back in their box, just like Antrim four years previously and Kildare a couple of decades earlier. There would be no revolution without permission from the Kingdom.
Thus Down always irked Kerry through the otherwise hippy-dippy 1960s. Down developed a blithe habit of coming down to Croke Park and forgetting to genuflect.
Kerry never got to settle those scores but thoughts of revenge have been shelved for a while now. The raucous upstarts of Tyrone and Armagh have to be dealt with.
Like Northern teams before them Tyrone and Armagh have a lot to say about the business of being champions. That almost all of it is interesting is beside the point to an audience in Kerry where reticence is recognised as the hallmark of class.
In Tralee on Saturday night the greatest cheers were for Darragh Ó Sé and Kieran Donaghy for the occasional high catches. Ó Sé pulled down eight or nine circus catches. Donaghy, six and a half feet of potential, will in time have the ability to do the same.
Will it matter though? Tyrone lost just about every midfield battle last summer but won the All-Ireland. If Kerry view winning an All-Ireland as just the prelude to making a statement for posterity about what sort of team you are, then Tyrone view the catching of high ball as a mere clearing of the throat.
What can you do with that ball when you come down with it? In traffic? Especially if you are caught up in that sort of Northern traffic which swarms all over you. Is the high catch impeding the speed of breaks? Is the cleverly broken ball now the weapon of choice in the middle third of the field?
Armagh and Tyrone have perfected a new game of quick transfer and athleticism. It doesn't go unnoticed that Kerry have been among the victims for Tyrone's two All-Irelands and Armagh's single victory. The Kingdom badly needs an All-Ireland which involves beating one or both.
Not just that; there's the secondary question of how such an All-Ireland might be won. Will Kerry adapt to survive or triumph with a more traditional style. For many in Kerry it would stick in the craw to win an All-Ireland by aping another team. Only not winning one would be worse.
It's a curious crossroads to be at. O'Connor has to decide on a style of attack while also mustering the squadron to make that attack. He will have to cope without Dara Ó Cinnéide and perhaps Séamus Moynihan and Liam Hassett. Strong rumours persist that Tadhg Kennelly will come home after this year's Aussie Rules season but in the meantime Jack has to play the hand he is dealt.
Unlike many other counties, the Kerry County Board doesn't operate a development squad or an academy. Footballers appear above ground like saplings in the spring. The county has five secondary schools playing A-grade football. Players will come. What if they don't though? On Saturday Paul O'Connor, a minor from 2004, and Darren O'Sullivan (a lively sub in last year's All-Ireland) both made appearances.
Both are talents. Both are small and fast though. Kerry would like an Owen Mulligan or a Steven McDonnell to be gifted to them. And a Dooher. Even Kerry's extraordinarily mobile and talented forward lines of the 1970s weren't complete until Eoin Liston had been installed in the number 14 jersey.
Kerry will emerge this summer with a very decent defence. Beyond that who knows? Darragh Ó Sé will still be scraping the skies but feeling the gravitational pull of age. Donaghy could be beside him. But Saturday night, when Donaghy was at wing forward, suggests even in Kerry they are beginning to wonder if midfield is the best posting for a 6ft 6in player.
Darren O'Sullivan and Paul O'Connor finished the game on Saturday playing in the wing-forward spots. For all their undoubted talent that's not what Kerry want just now. They want a couple of big strong, athletic wing forwards to materialise. Quick.
You can envisage the flowering of a full-forward line with Declan O'Sullivan at 14, the Gooch (Colm Cooper) in one corner and any one of Mike Frank, Darren O'Sullivan or Paul O'Connor in the other. But a half-forward line without the strength of Liam Hassett looks anaemic. Mickey Harte will be right now rubbing his chin and smiling at the thought of McGuigan and Dooher in full flight and young Raymond Mulgrew arriving to complete the line.
Kerry lost last week to Cork in the McGrath Cup. They lost on Saturday to Mayo in the league. They travel to Páirc Ui Rinn next weekend to play Cork again, knowing full well Billy Morgan is putting together a serious side.
It's February and none of it should matter too much but this is Kerry and it matters. O'Connor abandoned the Tomás Ó Sé midfield experiment after 20 minutes on Saturday. In any other county he could have persisted until Easter knowing Tomás has the class to come to grips with job.
The crowds this weekend were more numerous in other venues. There is about Tyrone a certain fundamentalist following, about Dublin the sense of razzmatazz pending, about Laois and Meath the hint of possibility. But in Kerry those who stayed away from Austin Stack Park will have been soaking up the evidence anyway. Everyone will have an opinion. My bet is O'Connor would swap jobs with Caffrey tomorrow.
