The night after Ballincollig surprised everyone by stepping over Nemo Rangers into a first Cork county football final, manager Michael O’Brien sat his management team, some players and members of the club’s executive down, writes Tony Leen.

At the outset of every Cork football championship, Ballincollig are pinpointed as dark horses.

It was the renowned sportswriter Hugh McIlvanny who spoke of the the larcenous nature of death, its habit of breaking in on us when we are least prepared for it and stealing the irreplaceable. He was speaking of Jock Stein, but the feeling can seldom have been more painfully experienced than on the roads and boithríns around West Kerry last night.

My earliest memory of Páidí Ó Sé is of a young lad in perpetual motion with ball in hand playing against the gable end of his house in Árd a’ Bhothair or soloing up the cosach, that picturesque little byroad to Dunquin.

PÁIDÍ Ó SÉ will warmly welcome Maurice Fitzgerald back into the Kerry team should the Caherciveen star decide to return.