TODAY WILL BE no less than Colm Cooper’s 10th county final with Dr Crokes, but they still get the juices flowing according to the eight-time All-Star.

Austin Stack Park will play host to The Kingdom’s most successful GAA club when they face 2015 champions South Kerry (throw-in 3pm), with All-Ireland champions Crokes seeking to reign supreme for the sixth time since the turn of the decade and South Kerry aiming for a third county title in 10 years.

The Gooch knows the scéal, at this stage. Even at 34, and perhaps especially while retired from inter-county football, today is the be-all and end-all. He’s cognisant, too, that he has team-mates chasing a feeling he first experienced as a teenager 17 years ago.

“Sometimes in Kerry it’s perceived that when you get to a lot of them, you’re sick of them, but that’s never the case,” Cooper says.

“I suppose we’ve lost some of them in the early part of our career as well, so we know how important they are, and getting to the final and playing South Kerry, who we’ve built a big rivalry with over the last number of years as well – it’s going to be a big challenge for us.

“We’re delighted to get there. We’re on the go now about 20 months after winning the club, and we’re straight back into the Kerry club scene after winning the All-Ireland, so it’s brilliant for the players to keep going. And we’ve a lot of younger guys breaking through as well, so for a lot of players its their first county final [that they have] been involved in.

Like we always say: ‘there’s no point in being in them. You want to win them.’

“That’s the most important thing for us at the moment,” he adds.

It’s a novel experience for Cooper, too, in a sense: this is the first year since his underage days in which he’s representing his club minus the bumps, bruises and mental tax carried over from the inter-county season.

And yet, for all his experience, he’s still only a youngfella himself relative to a couple of the high-profile team-mates he’ll line out alongside in Tralee today.

“I’m fresher from that point of view; I haven’t had the rigour of inter-county training five or six times a week, so I’ve enjoyed the season.

“I still feel fresh – getting older but I don’t think we can do anything about that. My body’s in pretty decent shape, so it’s great.

The likes of Eoin Brosnan is still around, and ‘Rose’ O’Donovan – we’re kind of the older guys in the team, and the younger guys coming in would really freshen you up. They’ve no fear.

There are former Kerry team-mates elsewhere at similar career junctures, of course. In an April league match, Gooch found himself being ‘Marced’ when Crokes faced An Ghaeltacht.

A pre-game handshake with old friend Marc Ó Sé would later become a mid-game conversation as the two Kerry veterans kept each other in check – a reality check as much as anything. For Cooper, the experience was somewhat surreal.

“Yeah, absolutely! I think that was a week or two after I retired, and myself and Marc were marking each other. I said: ‘this is what we’re reduced to now, county league games.’ And nothing wrong with it.

“But look, both [clubs] have done really well. They’re in the Intermediate final at the end of the month as well.

Look, when the inter-county door closes, another opportunity opens, and that’s the way myself and Marc have done it. We’re both in county finals, so while Kerry’s over for both of us, there’s a lot more to come, hopefully. As long as our bodies can stay intact, we’ll keep enjoying it.

The comedown might have been made all the more severe by the month which had preceded that league encounter between two stalwarts. Crokes’ first All-Ireland title since 1992 on Saint Patrick’s Day will forever remain etched in Cooper’s memory – he has no qualms in admitting that.

Life comes at you fast, these days, however, and while there remains a residual benefit to thew Lewis Road club’s landmark success at Croker, Cooper is wary of being caught on the hop later this afternoon should he or his team-mates not park that high for the time being.

“There was a whole pile of pressure,” he says of Crokes’ famous victory over Slaughtneil. “It was a monkey on the back and all of that. We had come so close, but weren’t quite good enough on any occasion to get over the line. But thankfully we did that, and I think the players are enjoying playing with a little bit more freedom, now – the pressure’s off.

“We’re back in a county final and things, and we know we’ll have to improve on what we did the last weekend, but we have the players to compete again. That’s what the challenge is, and if we can retain our county championship after winning an All-Ireland, it’d be fantastic.

Saint Patrick’s Day was a very special day for everyone in the club – players, members and families – but amazingly, it’s nearly five, six months ago now. I won’t say it’s forgotten, but it’s on the back-burner. It’s the next competition, always. County final.

His 10th county final arrives 17 years after his first, when rank outsiders Crokes shocked a Ghaeltacht side containing stars such as Darragh Ó Sé, Dara Ó Cinnéide, Tomás Ó Sé and Aodain MacGearailt.

Having started playing alongside his brothers, Gooch has seen players of a similar stature come and go since, and is quick to big-up “the next generation of Crokes players” in David Shaw, Micheál Burns, Jordan Kiely and their fellow whippersnappers.

He has played in more county finals than all of them combined, winning six. Particularly pertinent to today’s entry, all three of his final reversals have arrived against South Kerry.

“And probably by a point,” he interjects when that stat is put to him.

“Absolutely, there is rivalry there. They had an amazing team back in that time, when you think Maurice Fitz played with them, Declan O’Sullivan, Brian Sheehan – and Brian is still playing, obviously. They had fantastic teams and they’re still producing. They always produce quality.

“They’ve worked their way back to the top table now, they won a title two years ago so they’re fighting for another one. So they’re back to stay. It’s great. Hopefully it’ll bring the best out in our guys, too.

The defeats were very difficult at the time, because we were putting in huge effort. But when I think back now, we were a very, very young team, and probably hadn’t developed. We had an awful lot of quality, but when I think what we achieved in those years, like – we even got to an All-Ireland club final in ’06 or ’07, but we were a team of early-20s and mid-20s.

“And now we understand the development you go through,” he adds. “Those defeats hurt, but inevitably, they’ve definitely made us stronger. We look back on those days and learned an awful lot from them.”

In his recently-released autobiography, Gooch, the five-time inter-county All-Ireland winner singled out club manager Pat O’Shea as having borne a massive influence on his 17-year senior career and beyond.

Indeed, Liverpool fan Cooper compares O’Shea to perceived innovators such as Reds manager Jurgen Klopp and New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, such is his penchant for off-beat and unusual training methods combined with a demand for not just excellence, but perfection.

It has resonated not just with Cooper, but with Crokes’ up-and-comers, so says the man himself.

“Pat has probably had a huge influence on everyone in the club, because he’s so involved from underage level; he could be training the U16s one morning and the senior team the following morning, you know? It’s incredible.

“Like any player, you learn from guys you’re dealing with all the time, and I’ve worked with Pat both with Crokes and with Kerry, so inevitably they’re going to have a big influence on your career, and he’s certainly had that with me for the last 20, 25 years. We’re still working together and we haven’t killed each other yet!

He’s always looking for improvements. He has very high standards, and when they’re not met he’s disappointed – and it’s because he knows we’re capable of better. That’s probably been the one thing that he’s gotten through to players in recent years: you can always be better, and you can chase perfection a little bit.

“There’s coaches in every sport that think a little bit differently, and Pat is certainly in that box.”

This came to the fore last winter, when O’Shea, wary of potential burnout, went off-piste with Crokes’ training regime. This, Cooper believes, made all the difference in Croke Park a few months later.

“We did basketball stuff, we did soccer stuff, we did some short runs, long runs, and I think that was the key, probably, for players, because there was a fear that maybe if we did all that training – would we be fresh?

“Because the training was different every day we went up, I think that was the key to our success. When we went back training in January everything took off again, because guys felt fresh just by tipping over during Christmas.

“Look, it obviously had a major impact on us going on to have success on Saint Patrick’s Day.”

Having enjoyed remarkable club success, crowned properly with a first All-Ireland club win seven months ago, one might forgive the all-time Gaelic football icon for resting on his laurels somewhat, though it would scarcely be expected.

Ahead of a milestone fixture in Tralee, The Gooch remains as appreciative as he’s ever been, his six county championship medals notwithstanding.

“I’ve always been fortunate in that way, that even when Kerry campaigns are over, I’m going back to a club competing for county finals,” he says. “And the setup is very, very professional. I feel honoured and I feel privileged, because not everybody has that opportunity.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d play in 10 county finals.”