Jack O’Connor has had an eventful rivalry with Dublin over the course of his three managerial spells to date with Kerry. Between league and championship, the counties have played 14 times before this weekend. O’Connor has faced four different Dublin managers; Tommy Lyons, Paul Caffrey, Pat Gilroy and Dessie Farrell.
Kerry have won seven (three championship) of those meetings, Dublin five (two) and two were drawn, both in the league.
Even the league fixtures have been notable. In O’Connor’s first campaign in 2004, Dublin was the third match, in Parnell Park. Kerry’s 1-12 to 0-12 victory was their first win in the capital since the 1985 All-Ireland – and the first there in the league since 1978.
In his memoir, Keys to the Kingdom, O’Connor recalls the win as being “celebrated like an All-Ireland. I remember the chairman grabbing me and swinging me around. There was some amount of steam bursting out of the valves that evening.”
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In 2010 at Fitzgerald Stadium, Dublin’s first win in Kerry in 28 years also unveiled the prototype team that would dominate the decade.
O’Connor was fascinated by aspects of the Dubs phenomenon. In 2006, with Kerry already safely in the All-Ireland final, he watches Mayo beating Dublin in the other semi-final, observing: “The Dubs have this thing going where they think they are getting strength from the Hill ... marching down, linking arms ... they think they’re being empowered. To me it looks phoney and orchestrated.”
In August 2008, he was speculatively associated with the Dublin job after Caffrey stepped down. Greatly amused – and in no hurry to dispel the rumour – he was quickly reappointed for his second tour of duty in Kerry in succession to Pat O’Shea.
That second term was when the Dublin challenge became serious. In the 2011 All-Ireland final, they beat Kerry in a first championship win in the fixture since 1977, covering nine meetings. For context, in their decade of plenty, from 2011 to 2022, Dublin went unbeaten in just six successive championship matches against their old rivals.
In the four years when O’Connor has led Kerry to the All-Ireland, they have never lost to Dublin in the preceding league fixture. These are those matches.
Division 1A: February 15th, 2004, Parnell Park
Kerry 1-12 Dublin 0-12: The visitors recovered a six-point deficit at the break to win. “It looked bleak at half-time,” said O’Connor. Kerry would go on to win the league and to beat Dublin again later in the year, in the All-Ireland quarter-final and from there to reclaim Sam Maguire, the manager’s first, with a win over Mayo in the final.
Division 1A: March 6th, 2006, Fitzgerald Stadium
Kerry 0-13 Dublin 0-13: Colm Cooper returned to the Kerry team after the sudden death of his father, Mike, to help to engineer a draw. Again, the county defeated Galway in the league final and Mayo in the All-Ireland.
Division One: March 29th, 2009, Parnell Park
Kerry 1-15 Dublin 1-15: A goal by Aidan O’Mahony was part of a late and unanswered 1-2 from Kerry, which tied up the match in the first season of O’Connor’s second coming. The league was won against Derry and the following August, the All-Ireland quarter-final ended in the thrashing of Dublin on the day of the “startled earwigs”. Kerry beat Cork in the final.
Division One: February 5th, 2022, Stack Park, Tralee
Kerry 1-15 Dublin 0-11: O’Connor’s latest return to management featured this, the biggest win in the fixture for Kerry since 2009. It was a prelude to beating Mayo in the league final and finally putting a stop to Dublin’s championship run in the fixture, as Seán O’Shea’s epic free tilted the All-Ireland semi-final before Galway were defeated in the final.
