He says there is no sense of unfinished business, but of course there is. Mickey Harte is not staying on as Tyrone manager to win next year's All Ireland; he is staying on to become the first coach since Billy Morgan to win back-to-back All Irelands. Clearly, O'Connor has a lesser compulsion with history, but a part of him would have liked another crack at it too. And of course O'Connor wanted to overcome Tyrone on his beat, just as his body language after this year's All Ireland quarterfinal portrayed just how desperately he wanted to eclipse Armagh too.

He is a proud coach, one who relished testing his wits against those of Morgan, Harte and Kernan, and in his time, Harte beat him 3-1. O'Connor would love to have played Tyrone this year, preferably this September.

But it wasn't his fault that never materialised. In two of the last three years, Kerry lived up to their side of the bargain. Tyrone didn't. As he put it himself, he couldn't wait around all his life "waiting for a particular opposition to show up".

And what if he had? What if he had put his family life on hold for one more year, had Kerry playing the kind of irresistible football they did so often in 2005, and then Tyrone beat them by a point in the 2007 final? In Kerry, you are literally only as good as your last game, only as good as your medal collection. The bottom line says it all. Three years, two leagues, two Munsters, two All Irelands.

How he won was just as impressive as what he won. O'Connor was what was all good football managers should be: both a purist and a pragmatist. At times in 2004, Kerry were accused of playing prosaic, hardnosed football, especially during the gruelling series of games against Limerick, but O'Connor would claim it was merely a means of survival. It didn't fit comfortably with him and there was a sense of moral indignation in his comments the following year when he spoke of "physical and verbal intimidation" from opposing teams that "needs to be cut out of Gaelic football" and that opposing managers seemed to be adopting the Sam Allardyce philosophy of engaging in battles when they're up against superior teams. By Sam Allardyce, the inference was to Liam Kearns. It's doubtful if O'Connor has any regrets about not announcing his departure prior to his most obvious replacement teaming up with Laois.

He never curbed Paul Galvin's worst excesses either, but Galvin was one of O'Connor's greatest triumphs, personifying so much of what was good about Kerry football as well as what's bad. Ultimately O'Connor can stand over how his team played and was right to do so again on the eve of this year's All Ireland final when Billy Morgan's constant claim of Kerry being the most cynical team in the country was put to him.

Of course, he had the players to play the game the right way, but even then it took someone with O'Connor's technical knowledge and communication skills for Kerry to play so well so often in his reign. "What Jack brought was coaching, which had been lacking big-time, " said William Kirby. "Before with Kerry, you were just told to go out and play because we were county players, we were expected to know how to play. You might be going up for a ball and facing your own goal, and you'd try to catch it and land and then try to do a u-turn to go back the other way. Jack would say sometimes it's better to bat it down to a half-back facing that way. Or if you do land with the ball, give a little pass;

don't be trying to do it all yourself."

He also had an easy, personable charm.

Three years ago county chairman Sean Walsh spoke of his fear that Kerry had become "the unfriendly face of football" because of Paidi's reluctance to engage with the media. O'Connor wouldn't have been the most comfortable dealing with the media prior to taking over, but like so many things, he embraced it and chose to see dealing with the media as another part of his growth as a manager and as a person.

Occasionally he was stung by some media reports, like this paper's preview of this year's Munster final replay, but that was an understandable, impulsive, human reaction. For the most part, he was a co-operative, mature and fascinating interviewee, something he was to the last with John O'Mahony on last Thursday's GAA show on Mid-West Radio, when he said of this year's Munster final replay, that "for the highs to be high, the lows have to be low". Between his own personable way and the magnanimous way Ger O'Keeffe and Sean Walsh accepted last year's All Ireland final defeat, Kerry is no longer the unfriendly face of Gaelic football.

He says he leaves Kerry football in a better state than he found it. That's questionable.

Once Cormac McAnallen died, Kerry were always the side most likely to win the 2004 All Ireland. As of now, Tyrone are in a better position to win the 2007 All Ireland. But he's right that the future of Kerry football is bright. Last Thursday night he told O'Mahony that Kerry need to try out six or seven new players in the league but that they have those six or seven young players to try out. They might have lost McCarthy and Moynihan but Tom O'Sullivan and Tom O Se can switch to the centre and youngsters like Padraig Reidy can come into the flanks. O'Connor also namechecked Sean Walsh and Ogie Moran's sons, Tommy and David, who combined so well in midfield for the county minors this year, and young forwards like Bryan Sheehan, Darren O'Sullivan and Paddy Curran. We must also remember, Gooch is still only 23. So is Declan O'Sullivan. And so is Kieran Donaghy.

"Donaghy is the key, " O'Connor said on Thursday night. "If he stays healthy and keeps his feet on the ground he'll transform Gaelic football. You can have all the tactics in the world, but with his hands and athleticism he'll be very hard to stop. Gaelic football will constantly change and other counties now will be out to find their Donaghys."

It was O'Connor who found the original of the species. And while he won't be on the sideline when Donaghy does finally come up against Tyrone, his legacy will.

Last Thursday night, when O'Mahony asked O'Connor would he ever manage an inter-county team again, O'Connor delightfully turned the tables.

"What about yourself, John? !"

"I'm asking the questions here, Jack."

"You're the favourite up there, I hear!"

"Have a good Christmas, Jack."

"Good man, John!"

That light-hearted banter articulated a serious truth. While there is no obvious replacement for O'Connor, there is a glaringly obvious replacement for Mickey Moran in Mayo and his name is John O'Mahony.

It was clearly evident throughout last Thursday night's radio programme that Moran leaves Mayo on good terms with the Mayo public, and with his dignity intact; O'Connor seemed to be speaking for them when he said that Moran and John Morrison were "good, genuine football men; not mercenaries". It was also clear though that O'Mahony, a co-host on the programme, was much more comfortable asking questions than answering them, and more at ease speculating on the nature of Moran's departure than speculating on his possible successor. What we could detect though was that whatever about wanting the job, O'Mahony wants to be asked.

"This whole thing has just come up for discussion in the last few days, " a cautious O'Mahony said. "Obviously I've been busy in areas other than sport. The first thing is you have to be asked and like everything I've done in life, when I'm asked I'll make it clear and definite what I'm doing and that point hasn't come yet. And I don't think it would be right to make any major pronouncements. Any [answer to any] request will be made in due course but at this minute in time, we'll see."

You can be sure of a few things. The Mayo county board will make that call, even though their advances were spurned 14 months ago.

They will also have to assure O'Mahony that suggestions they were unhappy about the expense of running the county team this year were unfounded. Moran and Morrison did insist on the best logistics and accommodation ahead of all Mayo's league games last spring, something that should have caused no conjecture in county board circles; it was ironic that on the night that callers to O'Mahony's shows were asking for greater clarity on why Moran departed Mayo that a television programme that same day was highlighting the Club Tyrone model where supporters help raise the finance to ensure the inter-county team's preparations are not compromised by cost. O'Mahony, or whoever is Mayo's next manager, will similarly insist on the best.

The hunch in Mayo is that O'Mahony will relent to public pressure and that the county board will relent to his demands. Part of it will be the pragmatist in O'Mahony: if he passes on the Mayo job, it won't just be put to him on the doorsteps ahead of next year's general election; it will be held against him too.

But if he takes over the Mayo hotseat, then he'll very likely land a seat in the Dail too.

Instead of compromising his political ambitions, the county job will enhance them.

And part of it will be the romantic hidden somewhere within him. As clinical and as calculated as O'Mahony is, there is only so much time you can spend in a TV studio when you can be on the line instead. Ger Loughnane realised it. O'Mahony senses it.

And in a few years' time, Jack O'Connor will too.