WHEN THE ALL IRELAND series was being launched a couple of weeks back at the grounds of club champions Glen in Maghera, Derry, the announcement came.

Before the competition was officially launched, the Kerry representative, Ruairi Murphy, was already on his way to the airport to catch a flight down to Farranfore in an attempt to make it to Kerry training.

The Listry player is certainly one for the future, and a promising 2023 had him playing league and championship, but a horrendous and complicated hamstring injury first harmed last December has meant he is beyond the backstage of Kerry football by this stage.

If this was Jack O’Connor controlling the narrative – sending an injured player who has not achieved national recognition – yet – then he played it well.

Because there are years when Kerry simply cannot do right for doing wrong.

What we mean by this, is despite the kind of performances they put in, no matter how much they beat good, honest teams by, the squadron of Kerry voices with prominent media platforms will immediately go to work in playing the whole thing down.

Such as Darragh Ó Sé in his Irish Times column after Kerry beat Monaghan in Killarney by ten points. Rather than praise the Kerry performance, he did not mention a single Kerry player’s name, nor deliver an analysis on how they were going.

Instead – and to his credit as it was a far more interesting angle – he recounted his experiences whenever he played on teams that were stuffed.

After Kerry beat Meath in Navan by 15 points, Eamonn Fitzmaurice in his Irish Examiner column was dampening down any sense of hype, saying, ‘Sunday’s facile victory in Navan had very much the feel of a challenge match about it. While heat may have been a factor, the match was played at a pedestrian pace.’

And so, the annual festival of Yerrah commences and we are constantly fed the line that Kerry have no idea what the true measure of their form is, and they will struggle to get to the pace of an All-Ireland quarter-final.

Never mind that they beat Tyrone by 12 last year.

Mayo by eight the previous year.

You have to go back to 2017 for the next quarter-final after a couple of years of format shifting. But that year, Kerry beat Galway by eight at that stage.

Clare by 16 the year before.

Kildare by 21 the year before that.

We could go on, but we’ll park it there. The point is, Kerry always show up ready for action at the quarter-final stage.

There has been talk about Derry, how they have suddenly gathered themselves up by beating Mayo in Castlebar.

As impressive as the mental resilience was to snatch the draw – and from venerable defensive stalwart Chrissy McKaigue getting the equalising score – they are still off-colour.

Right now, they are playing off memory of a picture that a previous coach painted. The move of Mickey Harte and Gavin Devlin might have worked out well, but in a different time, in a different place. Not one where they succeeded Rory Gallagher.

This is the game Derry want. There’s a chance they can beat Kerry – that’s what they will be telling themselves. They will point to last year’s performance in the semi-final and tell themselves that only for the way Shane McGuigan and Gareth McKinless were treated, they would have been in an All-Ireland.

The other side of it is this; Kerry don’t want another whitewash quarter-final. It’s not that they are bad for their health, it’s just that they want to be taken into the last ten minutes with the teams close to level and the adrenalin pumping.

Everything in Kerry is geared towards facing Dublin. That’s just how it is, every year, not just this.

And they will continue on their route on Sunday.