Jack O'Connor: Dubs didn't bring back cavalry for the craic

On the Monday after the 1985 All-Ireland semi-finals - another foursome which contained Monaghan - a weary Paddy Downey wrote in the Irish Times that, "Nothing changes in the football championship, except the numbers. Another year passes, the scores vary, the mould remains unbroken."

Kerry-Dublin deciders occurred with more relentless regularity in those days. That was the second on the trot and the sixth in the previous 11 years.

They had flirted with some novel alternatives that year, with both semi-finals going to replays, which possibly explained Paddy's exasperated disappointment.

The '85 final, as it happens, would be the last Kerry-Dublin final until 2011 and the last championship meeting of any description between the pair in the 20th century.

Jack O'Connor was already in the middle of his second stint as Kerry manager back then and pursuing a fourth All-Ireland title. Two years earlier, he had masterminded the most lurid humiliation in the modern history of Dublin football in 2009, aka, the startled earwigs game - a match which may have ended up doing more harm than good from a Kerry perspective.

In his brief nod to the upcoming final, O'Connor observed that he wasn't the only throwback to that era on the sideline in a fortnight's time.

"I do feel we need to improve. Tis very obvious that that Dublin team have been gearing up for two weeks time. From well back.

"They've brought back the cavalry. They've even brought back Pat Gilroy.

"They didn't bring those fellas back for the craic, you know."

The weekend's All-Ireland semi-finals wound up confounding much of the apathy which preceded them amongst the wider public.

It was telling in advance that so many neutrals were publicly expressing their hope for a Dublin-Kerry