GAA managerial Mount Rushmore: The two bosses waiting to have their faces carved alongside all-time greats
It is fashionable to dismiss comparisons with the past because every generation likes to believe it is unique. Yet history is the only meaningful yardstick we have
Jack O'Connor is preparing for his ninth All-Ireland senior final.
Read that sentence again. Nine.
Add the two All-Ireland minor titles, the Under-21 success and another losing final at that grade and the scale of the achievement becomes even harder to grasp.
Then look across at John Kiely.
Five All-Ireland hurling titles. Four National Leagues from four finals. Seven Munster championships in eight attempts. A team that won four All-Irelands in succession when almost nobody has managed it in nearly 140 years of championship history.
History matters.
It is fashionable to dismiss comparisons with the past because every generation likes to believe it is unique. Yet history is the only meaningful yardstick we have. Without it, greatness becomes little more than opinion.
Kiely's Limerick won four consecutive All-Irelands.
Only five county teams have ever done that at senior level in the GAA.
Wexford.
Kerry. Twice.
Dublin - who went on to win six in a row.
Kilkenny.
Limerick.
That is the company they keep.
Now over the next fortnight Kiely stands on the brink of a sixth All-Ireland as manager while O'Connor is also chasing his own sixth senior title, spread across three different reigns with Kerry.
That isn't simply success.
That is permanence.
The modern inter-county manager has really existed for only half a century. Kevin Heffernan changed the role. Mick O'Dwyer redefined it. Since then, hundreds have occupied the hottest seat in Gaelic games.
Very few have stayed there long enough to build anything lasting.
Only three men — Brian Cody, Mick O'Dwyer and Jim Gavin — have won more senior All-Irelands than Kiely and O'Connor.
That tells you everything.
Winning one All-Ireland is enough to guarantee your place in county folklore.
Winning two makes you exceptional.
Winning five puts your name in the history books.
Winning six moves you into a conversation reserved for the immortals.
What is often forgotten is the environment these men inhabit.
This is elite sport with amateur economics.
Premier League managers are paid fortunes to absorb pressure. Inter-county managers receive nothing remotely comparable, yet the scrutiny is every bit as unforgiving.
Every substitution is debated.
Every tactical decision is replayed.
Every interview is analysed.
If television doesn't dissect it on Sunday night, somebody in the supermarket queue on Monday morning certainly will.
There is nowhere to hide because these managers live among the people judging them.
Lose in Liverpool and you can disappear behind the gates of a mansion.
Lose in Limerick or Killarney and you'll meet the critics filling the car with diesel or buying the Sunday papers.
The pressure is relentless because it is personal.
And success is never as straightforward as people imagine.
Donegal beat Kerry this summer.
Cork beat Limerick.
There are always moments when doubt arrives disguised as common sense. Change everything, people say. Tear up the plan. Start again.
That is where great managers separate themselves from merely good ones.
They don't panic.
They don't chase headlines.
Most importantly, they trust themselves.
Neither Kiely nor O'Connor possesses the oversized ego that has become fashionable in professional sport. You won't find touchline theatrics or manufactured feuds.
Nor would they survive long if they did.
The GAA has a habit of puncturing inflated reputations very quickly.
There is something revealing, too, in the way they present themselves.
O'Connor patrolled the sideline in shorts on Sunday. Kiely did much the same during Limerick's recent media day.
It sounds trivial.
It isn't.
There is no costume required to look authoritative.
Watch this football World Cup and managers often resemble investment bankers about to address shareholders, sweating through expensive suits because somebody once decided authority had a dress code.
The best GAA managers have never needed that disguise.
They look comfortable because they are comfortable.
Confident enough not to perform confidence.
That may be the greatest compliment you can pay either man.
Jack O'Connor and John Kiely do not need another All-Ireland to prove they belong among the greatest managers Gaelic games has produced.
That argument has already been won.
But sport has always had another category beyond greatness.
Legacy.
A sixth senior All-Ireland would not simply add another medal.
It would carve their names a little deeper into the granite, alongside Cody, O'Dwyer and Gavin, on the Mount Rushmore of GAA management.
MOST SUCCESSFUL GAA MANAGERS
1 - Brian Cody - 11 All-Irelands
2 - Mick O'Dwyer - 8
3: Jim Gavin - 6
4: John Kiely and Jack O'Connor - 5
6: Sean Boylan - 4
