Páidí fears capital punishment

PÁIDÍ Ó SÉ may finally have shown his eight All-Ireland winning football medals to the world but he has a nagging doubt his county won’t be adding to its total this weekend.

For one day only, the colourful Kerry football legend displayed his eight Celtic crosses, kept safe in the most famous USA biscuit tin box in Ireland, at his well-known pub, Páidí Ó Sé’s in Ventry.

But — and it’s a but that pains the former Kerry manager — Ó Sé feels that there is a chance Dublin could surprise the GAA world with a victory over his county, and his two footballing nephews, Tomás and Marc, in tomorrow’s All-Ireland football final in Croke Park.

“Everybody seems to think that Kerry are going to win this game and people are all very, very definite about it but I am just wondering, and alerting people, that the element of surprise might just help Dublin upset the odds,” Ó Sé mused in Ventry yesterday.

“If you look at the manner in which Dublin beat Donegal, even though it wasn’t a pleasant game of football, at the same time it was a very thought-out game plan by Donegal that was broken down by a Dublin team with 14 men. That game will stand to them, as will their games against Tyrone, Meath and Kildare.

“Kerry have had a much easier passage and they haven’t been stretched at all, apart from Cork in the second half.”

So, is there a danger that Kerry are walking into an ambush, with the country talking up the Kingdom’s chances?

“It could easily happen, yeah,” came the educated response; not easy words for a proud Kerryman.

As for his Celtic crosses, it’s back under the bed for them. They’ve had their moment in the spotlight, he said.

“When I was winning the bloody things, my mother used to keep them under the bed in a USA biscuit tin. That’s where I always kept them and that’s where they’ll stay.

“I never showed them to anybody. Partly the reason why I don’t show them off is because people might think that I will get a swelled head from them,” he said, although a Dublin win on Sunday would be the cruellest of Kerryman jokes for Ó Sé, his nephews and an entire Kingdom.