GAA:  Tom Humphries assesses the current mood in Kerry as the pressure mounts before today's crucial All-Ireland qualifier against Longford in Killarney

Perhaps Páidí Ó Sé was right. The Kerry football supporter is a rough breed of animal. Loath to travel in large numbers unless it's September, hard to please and quick to pour invective and contumely on the heads of those who are perceived not to be up to scratch.

The treatment of young Declan O'Sullivan as he came off the pitch in Páirc Uí Chaoimh a few weeks ago was a singular act of roughness, the fingering of a fall guy. For a team that has been to the last couple of All-Ireland finals and which looked to be in decent fettle in this spring's league run, the alarmism, criticism , the sheer fatalism around has been hard to credit. The appetite for recrimination has surprised a few.

"It is different to anything I ever experienced before," says former goalkeeper Charlie Nelligan.

"As a player I never took any notice of that sort of stuff and I don't think the present crop of players should either. There's more talk on the street always than there is in the dressingroom or the team. They keep their distance and that's good. There has never been so much talk and so many different stories. Bunkum."

At work in his coffee shop in central Tralee, Nelligan catches a fair few of the yarns and rumours which are doing the rounds. If you listened to them all you would have the impression that not since the years after Ballyseedy have Kerry sent out a team so riven by fundamental division.

No allowance. This is Kerry where excellence is the default mode and it matters little that the county side feeds itself off a struggling development system or that Kerry's presence almost every August when the big dances begin in Croke Park means that a little fatigue and a little drop in form are bound to take their toll sometimes. Or that Colm Cooper is still grieving his father.

The first Munster championship Kerry have gone through without scoring a goal. Indeed they have hardly threatened to do so, making goalkeepers virtually redundant in four successive games.

The point is, though, this afternoon none of it matters anymore. The rows, the walk-outs, the hissy fits, whatever you're having yourself fade into insignificance in Fitzgerald Stadium today. Kerry are playing the most important game they have faced in years.

A win places them right back in the fast lane with an imminent trip to Croker and the prospect of Armagh. If there's a unifying factor in Kerry football it is the desire to give Armagh a pasting. Heading to Croke Park under cover of underdog status would focus minds powerfully.

A defeat places Kerry in the doldrums, with the management team most unlikely to hang around and several senior players likely to join them in the ride towards the sunset. The county doesn't teem with fresh young talent right now and assembling a top class Kerry team from the debris will be tough. Kerry need this win badly.

For Jack O'Connor, a shrewd and tough man who knows his Kerry football history, this has been a hard week in which he took some tough decisions. He's not the first Kerry manager to be faced with the difficulty of reconciling Kerry's tradition with Kerry's insatiable appetite.

In the past, with the challenges of Antrim back in the 1940s or Dublin in 1955, there was a demand in Kerry that the new, "scientific" style of football be put to the sword by the use of catch and kick. It was.

Antrim notwithstanding though, northern teams have always been something of a bother to the Kingdom.

Down floated like butterflies and stung like bees in the 1960s and Kerry never got the satisfaction of knocking them to the canvas. Down never bent the knee and their captain had the hubris to produce a book on Gaelic football for champions.

When Kerry scraped the skies in the 1970s and 1980s Down ducked away again and re-emerged in 1991 to beat a nascent Kerry team in Croke Park. Famously on the bus ride home after the 1991 All-Ireland an interloper on to the Down bus singled out full back Conor Deegan and gave him the great benediction, "You're as good as John O' Keeffe". Deegan turned and asked in genuine mystification, "Who is John O' Keeffe?" So the emergence of Armagh and Tyrone with their particular style of play, whether you regard it as innovative or as puke football, was always going to be a particular challenge to Kerry.

What to do about style? To match them and better them? Or to play in the Kerry tradition. The sight of Kerry players on the deck in Croke Park surrounded by swarms of hungry northerners, unable to get the ball away, made up many minds.

Kerry would have to match Armagh and Tyrone.

There was precedent for such a change in style. In the 70s when Mick O'Dwyer, like Jack O'Connor, began his reign with an All-Ireland win followed by a defeat in a final, there were those in Kerry circa 1976 and '77 who pronounced themselves to be suffering nausea when they watched Kerry's short passing game unfold. O'Dwyer once said he felt as if Kerry were playing against 31½ counties, so vituperative and persistent was the level of criticism at home.

For a year and a half Kerry have looked to play a version of the game played by their conquerors.

Watching them train in winter on a shortened pitch in Fitzgerald Stadium, the ball flying about in short passing movements, the players busting tackles with muscular enthusiasm, it would be easy sometimes to confuse them with a rugby team.

At times the experiment has worked well; at other times, like the second half of last year's All-Ireland final, one wondered if Kerry would have been better off playing the game in the style they began, hitting quick, early ball into spaces.

This summer though, the wheels came off. O'Sullivan, who was a score-taker at school under O'Connor in Coláiste na Sceilge, showed increasing desire to be a playmaker and distributor in Kerry's new style. Eoin Brosnan, whose understanding with Colm Cooper has been honed at club level, hit a trough in form. Gooch himself went into a slight decline, the symptoms of which was an inability to win games single-handedly.

The level of criticism directed at the Kerry management suggests they were looking at a crisis on the scale of global warming and failed to act over a period of many decades. In effect, Kerry had little choice but to hope that the permanence of class would eventually prevail over the frailties of form. Kieran Donaghy's dismissal in the first Cork game effectively tied the selectors' hands as regards opting for a full forward who might serve as a target.

Other things they could do little about. The dips in form of Brosnan and the Gooch would have to be worked through. Ditto Séamus Moynihan. He could always be relied upon to come good in the end. Mike Frank Russell, a confidence player, could probably have done with a little more tenderness over the past couple of years but the Tour de France is one of the few places in the world where a man can buy pace from a chemist.

What speed Mike Frank had back in the days of an outstanding underage career has been used up. His trademark turn and over the shoulder style point-taking has been figured out. Today the hope is his intelligence as a footballer will buy him the spaces in which to exploit his tremendous accuracy.

The new kids have all been tried. Bryan Sheehan has an excellent footballer inside him trying to get out but for now the work-rate has proved inadequate. Paul O'Connor can be a major talent but the temperament needs to come around. Darren O'Sullivan, who starts today, has pace and can shoot. When he grafts a sidestep on to his repertoire he'll sting defences.

This afternoon the Kerry public and the Kerry management seem to be on the same page.

"Have they picked the right team?" asks Charlie Nelligan. "Most people are saying that anyway."

"We were kind of aware that the Gooch is suffering a little lack of form," says selector Ger O'Keeffe "We needed assistance in there. We were looking for a ball winner. Fellas doing well in training, we have given them their chance. Tommy Griffin has been around but he is playing well. He did well against Cork when he came on. He has earned it."

Griffin is one of those well-regarded players whose career pattern has been dogged by injuries and unfortunate associations. In 1996, he replaced John Sugrue right through the minor championship only to suffer an ankle injury himself before the final to let Sugrue back in. Kerry lost to Laois.

Griffin was part of the Kerry side which exacted some revenge, beating Laois in the under-21 final a couple of years later but in 1999 was there for the county's defeat to Westmeath in the under-21 final.

And he was on as an early sub when Meath dismantled Kerry in Croke Park in 2001 and was even picked for Jack O'Connor's first competitive side in February of 2004 which they lost - to Longford.

Far from being a Jonah, though, his lack of progress has been as much down to injury and the form of Darragh Ó Sé as anything else. There is a strand of opinion in the county which suggests he and Ó Sé aren't compatible (as much as personalities as players) in midfield but reports from training are the pair are functioning well.

Many moons ago Mick O'Dwyer found, after a couple of fallow seasons during which Kerry patience had been worn threadbare, that a big full forward would provide an option which would keep other sides guessing. Would Kerry run or would they play the quick ball? He brought Eoin Liston in from Ballybunion and worked on him for months on end.

Kieran Donaghy, who has spent his short career apprenticed to the midfield trade, has no such luxury. He starts work on the claustrophobic office space around the square today.

"He is an international basketball player," says Ger O'Keeffe. "He knows how to catch a ball. Time will tell whether he is a full forward of note. You would like to think it will be a successful transition for him."

Those who have seen Kerry train in the past couple of weeks have been impressed. There is a lot of ball inside the 21-yard line. Even Donaghy, not normally prized for his shooting, has been scoring.

It has been a strange summer in Kerry and the relationship between the team and population has been strained at times. The decision to hold a training session behind closed doors in Killarney on the night Munster final tickets were being made available in the venue deprived many of the chance to run a critical eye over their favourites and didn't sit well.

On the other hand, the criticisms have been wounding. O'Connor, a stubborn man by nature, must have felt a defiant reflex which would have led him to pick and play Declan O'Sullivan to the death when he heard the poor reception afforded to the latter O'Sullivan in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

Kerry comes first, though. O'Connor picked a team for today without any players from his beloved South Kerry. The captaincy leaves the division too and moves to the shoulders of the Gooch. The composition of the team represents a change back to more direct football.

"It's quite obvious what they'll be doing," says Nelligan "The crows in the sky will tell you that. They had to change; it was dire the way it was. Even against Galway in the league final there was only one person playing and that was the Gooch.

"When Kerry made the changes the last day they improved."

Big gestures all the same and bold gambles. There's a lot riding on today. If Kerry are healed they will be formidable once again. Meanwhile there's nothing for it but to go for broke.

"Ye'll be hanging us or ye'll be making us All-Ireland favourites at five-o-clock," says Ger O'Keeffe. "We're always optimistic, though. We don't believe any of this stuff that is written about us! It's going to rain in Killarney but we've put up with enough of rough stuff for the last few weeks that a little rain won't kill us either!"