Tyrone 2021 rather than Liverpool 1997 is the model to follow for the Kerry managerial brains trust of Darragh Long and Declan Quill, the duo hoping to steer the Kingdom to their first All-Ireland ladies crown in 30 years.
The joint-manager model has not generally been favoured by traditionalists across a variety of football codes ("Only one man can run a football club," Brian Clough cried in his booming Middlesbrough tones) and was previously thought to be a recipe for division and confusion.
So, when it comes to the Long-Quill double act, who indeed is really in charge?
"I'm the boss," Long blurts out.
"I'm the brains!" chirps up Quill.
The exchange is typical of their relationship, which is more Reeves and Mortimer than Evans and Houllier.
It was Long, a former Kerry minor and U21, and an Austin Stacks stalwart who was initially approached by Sean Walsh to take the Kerry minor ladies job in 2018.
He immediately contacted his longtime Kerins O'Rahilly's foe and two-time All-Ireland winner with Kerry, Declan Quill - "why he came into my brain, I had no idea!" - asking him to join him in the endeavour.
"He sold it to me," says Quill. "He said it would probably only be six months.
"So this is five years later and we're still at it."
"Ah no, we get on exceptionally well," says Long. "We've been playing against each other since we were under-six.
"We were at two rival clubs inside in Tralee, Austin Stacks and Kerins O'Rahillys. For years we probably wouldn't have talked to each other even. We were with Kerry minor and under-21 squads together.
"We happened to marry two girls who are next door neighbours in Waterford.
"Our roads were always going to come together at some stage. He was involved in the ladies side of his club; I was involved in the ladies side of mine.
"We got an opportunity then from the past chairman, the great Sean Walsh from the men’s side of the house. He rang me one day and said would I do the Kerry minor ladies? I was down in Waterford in the People's Park and I said to my missus what do you think?
"I said I’d do it but I’d only do it if one person would do it with me. Why he came into my brain I had no idea - but I rang him within five minutes and the rest is history."
While the pair swiftly agree that it's hard to envisage Jack O'Connor sharing equal billing in the Kerry's men's set-up, Quill says the joint-managerial template translates particularly well to the women's code, where some of the basics in terms of logistics can't always be taken for granted.
"I couldn't imagine doing it without Darragh. And I suppose he'd say the same about me because there is so much to it. It's all consuming.
"The ladies side of it, I couldn't imagine Jack O'Connor doing a lot of the things that we do from collecting food and organising food, pumping balls, washing bibs - there's an awful lot to it.
"Darragh has an easy job in the bank so he spends all day doing the administrative stuff - [cue eye-roll from co-manager]. I have a very hard job as a teacher so I don't get on the phone much till after three o’clock!
"He has his strengths - there are things only he will deal with. And then there are things I will deal with. You have to share the load.
"The girls we have with us, Cassandra Buckley, Geraldine O’Shea was on the last team that won an All-Ireland medal, and Ann Marie O’Donoghue, they’ve been around ladies football. The three have all played for Kerry. They have advised us so much over the last five years."
How does the dynamic work in practice? Particularly when the two bosses may not be on the same page. Whose view trumps the other?
The self-professed brains of the operation is humble enough to share an example where he was outvoted.
Quill says: "We might be having a bit of a pow wow - it happened during the Mayo game. One of the substitutions we had to make, I had one idea, Darragh had a totally different idea. The three girls came down and said we think we should do this and they were obviously on the same wavelength as Darragh.
"I was obviously wrong. Not so much wrong but a substitution made more sense from the way they were looking at it."
Kerry captain Siofra O'Shea, confined to the sidelines this weekend due to an ACL tear, credited the lads with bringing stability to a set-up which had been undermined by constant change in the years previously.
In 2022, they reached the All-Ireland final for only the second time since their last title in 1993. The previous final in 2012 fell slap bang in the middle of Cork's long run of dominance in the women's game.
Last year, they were back in the decider, standing in the way of Meath's back-to-back tilt. Despite rustling up 1-02 early on, they imploded afterwards, the champions burying them in a hail of goals and running out nine point winners.
It wasn't until the new year that they could bring themselves to watch it back.
"We didn't watch it until February," says Quill. "Look, we had other things on our mind before that but it was actually a request from the girls themselves that we would sit down together and watch it. I have to say, I wasn’t too interested in doing it.
"It was a dirty cold morning, Sunday morning in Brosna GAA Club as a group, the whole lot of us sat down.
"We watched it, there were tears, there was laughter, there was honesty, there was criticism but going back to what Dec said, I think that game has made this group.
"There’s a steeliness, a mental toughness to this group that we have shown countless times this year.
"We’ve used the hurt from that day massively. It still hurts. It’ll probably hurt to the day we stop managing teams and till the day that the girls stop playing, but we’ve used that and we’ve taken the cork off that bottle a couple of times this year and we’re just hoping that there’s enough hurt there and left for Sunday."
What was the chief takeaway from the meeting?
Quill: "I suppose, for me, it was and I think we highlighted a lot of things that day that we had planned for but we didn’t carry out and I think that since then, I think that when we come up with a game plan, I don’t think the girls have diverged from the game plan that we had very much all year."
Long adds: "John Kiely said after the Limerick All-Ireland win that sometimes sticking to the process is the hardest thing.
"Sticking to the game plan is the hardest thing to do because it’s easy to go off script and I think we have become very good at sticking to the process this year. We’ve had patches, yeah, where we have gone off script and things have gone a bit pear-shaped…"
Quill: "Don’t write that we said 'sticking to the process’ - we didn’t say that!"
Kerry were once all-conquering in the ladies' code, winning nine in a row between 1982 and 1990, back before it enjoyed the profile of modern times. When that run commenced, GAA HQ didn't even up its doors to them. It was until 1986 that the finals were moved to Croker. They added another in '93 but nothing since.
"Not often in life do you get second chances. We had Kieran Donaghy in with us a couple of months ago and he spoke to the girls about all you can ever want in a sporting group is a chance to be in the final, a chance to be at the big dance and we've fed off those words for the last couple of months. We've got that chance but that's all we've got.
"As I said, hopefully we can end that famine on Sunday but who knows. We might be sitting here in front of you in 12 months' time talking about it being 31 years. Hopefully that's not the case."
