On the Monday after the 1985 All-Ireland semi-finals - another foursome which contained Monaghan - a weary Paddy Downey wrote in the Irish Times that, "Nothing changes in the football championship, except the numbers. Another year passes, the scores vary, the mould remains unbroken."
Kerry-Dublin deciders occurred with more relentless regularity in those days. That was the second on the trot and the sixth in the previous 11 years.
They had flirted with some novel alternatives that year, with both semi-finals going to replays, which possibly explained Paddy's exasperated disappointment.
The '85 final, as it happens, would be the last Kerry-Dublin final until 2011 and the last championship meeting of any description between the pair in the 20th century.
Jack O'Connor was already in the middle of his second stint as Kerry manager back then and pursuing a fourth All-Ireland title. Two years earlier, he had masterminded the most lurid humiliation in the modern history of Dublin football in 2009, aka, the startled earwigs game - a match which may have ended up doing more harm than good from a Kerry perspective.
In his brief nod to the upcoming final, O'Connor observed that he wasn't the only throwback to that era on the sideline in a fortnight's time.
"I do feel we need to improve. Tis very obvious that that Dublin team have been gearing up for two weeks time. From well back.
"They've brought back the cavalry. They've even brought back Pat Gilroy.
"They didn't bring those fellas back for the craic, you know."
The weekend's All-Ireland semi-finals wound up confounding much of the apathy which preceded them amongst the wider public.
It was telling in advance that so many neutrals were publicly expressing their hope for a Dublin-Kerry final, in a country where identification with the underdog is supposed to be strong.
O'Connor had himself contributed to stirring up some of that apathy when he bluntly said he "wasn't expecting a classic" at the Kerry press night last Monday.
"I'm delighted I was wrong," he admitted with a smile.
"It wasn't a great game for the heart, now. But as regards the way the crowd got into it there for the last quarter of an hour, it felt like a great battle.
"And it was a great battle. You'd have to take your hats off to Derry. They played some great football out there.
"We were expecting that they'd try to get goals. That's a big part of their gameplan, try to get ahead of you and then play you on the break a bit.
"They've an awful lot of good footballers. I've been saying that consistently for the last while... They were as good if not better than we expected.
"We had to be incredibly patient. There were plenty of mistakes in the game, no doubt about it. We made loads of mistakes. We forced it a bit at times.
"I remember a few balls were kicked in, they overshot the runway and went harmlessly wide. But that was coming from the fact that Derry were a tough nut to crack.
"Hats off to our fellas, they found a way. They made mistakes but they kept at it."
For O'Connor, this was a seventh All-Ireland semi-final win in seven attempts as Kerry manager - he's reserved his occasional championship exits for quarter-finals or finals.
With six-seven minutes remaining, however, it looked like a grim scene for the champions.
Kerry fans reared in the noughties might well have had that sinking feeling.
Derry appeared to be cusp of joining Tyrone, Armagh and Down among the ranks of northern 'upstarts' to inflict a sickening defeat on Kerry in the 21st century.
By this stage, the Kerry manager was getting increasingly agitated at the difficulty of getting messages onto the pitch, the subject of a monologue during the press conference (more later).
"Were we a point down with five minutes to go? Were we? Jesus, lads. I'll have to look back on it because it was so intense that it's hard to know. With the amount of (injury) time he played, there was 12 minutes to go.
"(The message) was to put heat on the kickout. We had to put heat on his (Lynch's) kickout. We had to win a couple of his kickouts. That was the only way we were going to get momentum.
"Because if Derry got it off short, you won't see that ball again for three or four minutes. So, that's what we're trying to do. Make it a contest.
"Remember that one that went out over the midfield and Tadhg Morley won it. I felt at that stage the tide was starting to turn."
Even when Kerry galloped clear, O'Connor couldn't relax.
"I was worried until McQuillan blew the whistle.
"I was worried at plenty of stages in that game. Jesus, there were times I looked down the field down the end and all we needed to do was kill the ball and you felt that the referee might blow.
"And there was a ball knocked into the goalie, another one that someone (David Clifford) tried to pass across and it was intercepted. You're saying to yourself, Jesus, wouldn't ye just kick it wide, like. Because the last thing you want to do with Derry is give them a counter-attack score. Yeah, I was worried plenty of times."
Post-match press conferences have become a forum to utter peaens of praise to David Clifford. After a scratchy and inaccurate performance in the quarter-final, the viral pass to Tony Brosnan notwithstanding, Kerry's gift from the footballing gods was back in full flight.
He finished with nine, four from play. There were gasps of alarm when he misplaced a handpass in the frenetic endgame. And still the play ended with him sauntering forward to notch another point, thanks to Brendan Rogers who was possibly feeling the pace at that point.
Derry boss Ciaran Meenagh said afterwards that they best they hoped to achieve was 'manage his impact' and insisted that their much feted man marker Chrissy McKaigue had done well in the circumstances.
O'Connor wasn't inclined to stint on the praise afterwards, though he set particular store by Clifford's second half efforts. No disrespect to his five point haul in the first.
"An incredible second half performance. It was like he was willing the team to get over the line.
"This is a man that's playing under pressure, with all the expectation on him. Double/triple marked, he still finds a way. What a great performance.
"I'm not saying he was poor in the first half! Anything but because he scored freely and was giving fierce trouble to our man Chrissy.
"But it was just the fact that he came out the field and the last quarter of an hour and he was back in his own full-back line and he was just doing things that I’d never seen him doing before, winning ball inside in his own square and stuff like that.
"It was almost like he said 'whatever happens, we are not going to be beaten today,’ so that’s what I was referring to. I’m not saying he was slack in the first half either..."
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