Six days after last year's All-Ireland final, Kerry GAA tweeted a much shared photo of Jack O'Connor visiting Mick O'Dwyer in Waterville, with the Sam Maguire placed beside them on a kitchen chair.
Notwithstanding the homely backdrop, the scene had a presidential feel. Like when a recently re-elected world leader meets an elderly Pope.
It was a meeting of the two most successful Kerry managers (in the modern sense of the term) in history, two men who were on notably poor terms in the early part of O'Connor's managerial career.
O'Dwyer's status as the greatest Kerry manager has remained unassailable and set in stone for years and years. He is synonymous with Kerry's finest side.
Could it possibly be on the cusp of changing? O'Connor has continually delivered as Kerry boss under huge pressure.
Already, his strike-rate is right there with Micko. O'Dwyer won eight All-Ireland titles across 15 campaigns from 1975 to 1989. O'Connor has four from a cumulative total of eight seasons in charge from 2004 up to now.
He's also achieved in three different spells, with two entirely different teams - David Moran was the only survivor from 2009 to win in 2022 and he was a sub in the former.
When Micko got a visit from his lifelong friends SAM & Jack #ThisIsKerry 💚💛 pic.twitter.com/cFUkI4Mtre
— Kerry GAA (@Kerry_Official) July 29, 2022
In Keys to the Kingdom, O'Connor's bracingly candid autobiography published back in 2007 in the wake of his first spell as manager, he fired potshots in every conceivable direction.
Everyone got it in the neck.
The self-regarding "nouveau riche" northerners who boasted they were revolutionising the sport. The peacocking Dubs with their "phoney and orchestrated" antics in front of Hill 16. The 2000s Armagh team and their "supposed aura". Even his own players, with their occasionally slack training habits.
But O'Connor's most resented foes were the Kerry 'establishment', which included the made men of the 1970s and 80s. O'Connor hadn't been part of that particular clique and never played for Kerry. He was never getting a part as a talking head in one of the several thousand documentaries on the era.
He bristled at the fact that neither O'Dwyer nor any of his golden era players had contacted him when he got the job in 2003. He even recounted that O'Dwyer had 'blanked' him on the sideline when he was still a selector under Páidí Ó Sé.
There were more slights. At an awards night when all the Kerry luminaries were present, Jimmy Deenihan, former corner-back and then TD, told the crowd he wanted to see O'Dwyer get another crack at managing the county. Sitting in the audience alongside his family, O'Connor was seething.
After the book was published, there was a hand-wringing editorial in the Kerryman labeling the book a 'kiss and tell' and 'unprecedented' for a Kerry manager.
O'Connor's willingness to take jabs at O'Dwyer - or Dwyer as he's called in south Kerry - is especially notable given the reverence for the latter. (Some years ago, when this writer was writing a long article on Kerry's lean stretch from 1987 to 1996, whatever criticisms were uttered of O'Dwyer's role were done 'off the record'.)
The general conclusion of most readers was that here was a man with no interest in that job ever again. (As a pitch for returning to the Kerry manager's post someday, it was akin to George Costanza in 'The Opposite' telling Larry David's George Steinbrenner he'd made the Yankees a laughing stock.)
This notion proved to be very dramatically wrong.
Micko was still a relevant presence even before O'Connor's second term. Aengus Fanning reported in the Sunday Independent that Dwyer had been 'sounded out' about whether he'd be interested in a sensational return to the Kerry job in late 2008. But O'Connor returned to the post, any awkwardness from the book evidently smoothed out. The Kingdom had more pressing problems after another sickening final defeat to Tyrone.
In some respects, O'Connor's self perception as an outsider in Kerry left him suited to the task of adapting the county to the challenge laid down in the 2000s.
The story of inter-county Gaelic football in the last few decades is the outsiders and the innovators, mainly in Ulster, brainstorming ways to take down the traditional powers.
Kerry, as the face of the establishment, are forever in reactive mode, responding initially with purist grumbles before adapting to the new reality, modifying their game as quietly as possible and then reclaiming their perch.
This was the principal narrative in inter-county Gaelic football between 2002 and 2009.
O'Connor, with no track record as a county player and less of an attachment to the legacy of the 70s/80s teams, was more open to outside influences than your standard medal-laden Kerry aristocrat.
In his first term, he brought with him Waterford sports science lecturer and former sprinter Pat Flanagan as a physical trainer. His wonkish and new age methods were considered a bit outré by some of the Kerry leading lights of the day.
In his book, O'Connor instanced Darragh Ó Sé as being one of the Kerry alpha dogs who was inclined to question the new direction of things.
But the embrace of the new brought results. O'Connor guided Kerry to a league and championship double in 2004 (a common theme in the first year of his term) and then another in 2006. The fact that they hockeyed Mayo in both All-Ireland finals left O'Connor disputing the charge that he'd presided over two 'soft' All-Irelands, a gripe probably unique to that county.
Despite the 'nouveau riche' jibe, he was particularly open to soaking up lessons from northern coaches and was keen to pick their brains on what they were doing in training.
Jim McGuinness referred this week to O'Connor's comment in the 'Jimmy's Winning Matches' documentary that he'd have got 'bata agus bothair' had he organised Kerry to play as Donegal had in the 2011 All-Ireland semi-final. That certainly would have been true in 2011.
Three years later, Kerry, under O'Connor's old sidekick Eamonn Fitzmaurice, won a dreary All-Ireland final after essentially mirroring Donegal's approach in the decider.
On taking the job a third time, he immediately installed Paddy Tally on his backroom team. The Tyrone-born coach had long been caricatured as the type of defence-obssessed northern bogeyman that Kerry diehards would have instinctively recoiled at - even in 2021. Giovanni Trappatoni in a bainisteoir jacket.
In the brutal aftermath of Kerry's sickening loss to Tyrone in the '21 semi-final, some Kerry supporters of a younger vintage felt O'Connor's hasty re-appointment as a backwards looking move, regarding it as a bit of a 'Make Kerry Great Again' gambit.
But O'Connor, not wedded to any particular approach, has always been agile and quick to evolve. His preceding two-year stint in Kildare - another parallel with Micko - had been deemed underwhelming by the locals, though they were hampered by Covid and did still wind up in Division 1 at the end of it.
It was significant, however, that O'Connor had become Kerry's go-to manager at times of acute need. The 11 months between the 2021 semi-final defeat and the 2022 final certainly qualified as that.
Any fears have gone quiet by now.
O'Connor, a great pragmatist who has still produced Kerry teams of abundant flair, once again delivered on his promise of immediate success. By 2022, O'Connor was proudly leaning on his reputation as a winner. In the wake of the semi-final, he knowingly remarked "Maybe I know some of the pitfalls in the build-up. Especially in Kerry - they tend to get a bit carried away."
Even when the hard numbers do tilt in O'Connor's favour, it's hard to see him being placed above O'Dwyer in the public mind. The Waterville legend is a vivid reminder of an era in Kerry football that is forever immortalised. The nostalgia vote is certainly unlikely to abandon him any time soon.
But the data boffins and the football anoraks may take a different view and may be more open to the idea that O'Connor, taking everything into account, is the most impressive Kerry manager of all.
The photo with O'Dwyer sealed O'Connor's transformation from being one of Kerry football's outsiders to being one of its revered chiefs. But with an outsider's keen eye for the threats still lurking.
Watch the All-Ireland Football Championship final, Dublin v Kerry, this Sunday from 2.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, follow a live blog on RTÉ.ie/Sport and the RTÉ News app or listen to live commentary on Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio
