‘I never in my life saw Micko as cranky’

‘I never in my life saw Micko [O’Dwyer] as animated and as cranky in his entire life.

‘I remember meeting a guy and he saying to me… John Egan God rest him, he was captain. I met him on the street – he was from down in south Kerry and this was the Friday before the game. He says, “Whatever ye do now, make sure yourself and all the Tralee fellas are down in Sneem on Monday night” [as part of the homecoming]. I looked at him and said “What? We have to go and win the game first”.

‘There was the fuss over the jerseys as well. We were training in these Adidas jerseys, lovely green ones with these vertical stripes.

‘Then word came from Croke Park that we couldn’t use them. Then we had to get this set of jerseys on the Saturday night that came down from Donegal or somewhere.’

And he admits that the whole circus around the match took its toll. ‘I am only talking about me again personally, but it does get into your psyche. I missed a penalty at a crucial point in the game – I would have said that day that I just didn’t feel right myself. And I kind of felt it was a tension thing that I felt drained.’

He looks at Dublin and how Jim Gavin ‘is a different animal’. As for the significance of Kerry’s win last Saturday night, he counters: ‘You are judged by AllIrelands in Kerry, not by Leagues.’

He is cautiously optimistic that five minor All-Irelands in-a-row will provide a tipping point in terms of bringing back the Sam Maguire Cup for the first time since 2014.

‘That’s too presumptuous but we would like to think so.’

One Kerry player who he was delighted for on Saturday night was Tommy Walsh, in his second coming since returning from the AFL after opting out under the previous set-up.

‘Tommy just walked off the panel himself in fairness to him, and I think we made a major mistake with Tommy as a management in 2015 when he came back,’ Sheehy adds.

‘We probably should have let him go and play with his club maybe six months, but we kind of threw him in at the deep end at the start of the League.

‘I don’t think he started the first game, but he came on in games and you could see he was struggling a bit. He was outstanding playing club football