Last autumn, buoyed by his team's demolition of Mayo, Jack O'Connor questioned the quality of the vanquished's mesmerising semi-final shootout with Dublin. O'Connor is one of the most knowledgeable men in the country when it comes to football and its history, and as a winner, it's his right to write it, but the view here is he was mistaken; just because time would prove that Mayo were well short of being great does not mean they weren't great that one day.

Last Sunday was in keeping with that recent tradition of vintage semi-finals. True, it was probably short of the classic status we'd confer on Armagh-Tyrone '05 or DublinMayo and the Armagh-Kerry quarter-final last year, but it was still stirring, seismic stuff. Dublin were heroic, the only blot on their honour being that tasteless in-your-face taunting that one of its early-summer victims, Niall McNamee, predicted would not work against a top-four team; their one misfortune being to come up against the only side in the country with even more firepower than themselves. Last Sunday, both sets of players produced the most gripping game of the football year, and the '77 classic apart, the most satisfying Dublin-Kerry championship match of the last 50 years.

As you'll find elsewhere on these pages, not everyone in the Tribune agrees. Even though it featured more scores from play than any Kerry-Dublin championship match in history . . . Kerry notching 1-13 from play, the Dubs, 0-10 . . . Liam Hayes claims it was not a "thriller' which could compare to the "contests" of the past, despite the fact only one of those five famed clashes of the '70s was decided by less than seven points. Whatever it is about the way the planets are aligned at this time of year but when Liam has to assess KerryMayo, Mayo-Dublin or Dublin-Kerry, he tends to go into an orbit and solar system all of his own.

It's unfortunate. Throughout this summer he's made a lot of bold but prescient judgements. As far back as May he stated Armagh wouldn't even make the last 12, that Tyrone wouldn't make the last four, and three weeks ago declared a Masters-less Cork would still beat a Meath side that had yet to pay its dues.

Even with matters Kerry he's made a lot of valid observations, rightly speculating whether the county in the post-Darragh era would be better served with Kieran Donaghy in midfield; foreseeing that Monaghan would scare the living daylights out of them in the quarter-final. And heretical as it may sound in Kerry, it is time that someone in football has prompted the kind of debate about Seamus Moynihan and Maurice Fitzgerald's assumed greatness that hurling has long held about DJ Carey's (Football Knowledge, Higher Level, Question 1: 'Maurice Fitzgerald had as many poor performances in Croke Park as good ones and all Seamus Moynihan had over Cork's Ciaran O'Sullivan were his Celtic Crosses.' Discuss).

Ultimately though any analysis of the last 20 years would conclude Maurice would walk onto a team of the '90s and ditto Moynihan onto that of the '00s.

Reports of Colm Cooper's demise these past two seasons have also been greatly exaggerated . . . and not just by Meath's finest. Last year Cooper was the league's third leading scorer from play and in the final set up both goals to secure the win over Galway. The AllIreland quarter-final win over Armagh turned on a couple of plays of his before half-time, he scored 1-3 from play in the final and then embarked on a run that would inspire Dr Crokes to a county final, Munster club title and All-Ireland final. In the Crokes' march through Munster and right through to Croke Park, he scored five goals before putting on a masterclass on Patrick's Day; in truth it's hard to think of a better one-man campaign in the history of that competition.

Then he turned right round to dictate his one league match with the county this year and then nearly single-handedly win the Munster final in 10 minutes, taking the best defence in the country for 1-2 from play.

About Cooper's only brush with mediocrity over the past two years . . . actually make that six years . . . was last month's game against Monaghan and last year's Munster championship, a performance and spell every player experiences. We may have seen some forwards as good as him . . . Canavan, Connor, Sheehy . . . but we have never seen better.

What was particularly baffling about Liam's post-Monaghan match assessment was that after being the one commentator to foresee the potency of the Ulster side's challenge, he then dismissed it, attributing Kerry's scare solely to the champions' shortcomings. But Kerry were always going to struggle after a six-week lay-off. Between 2001 and 2004 in hurling and football, when provincial champions had to routinely wait more than a month for their next game, only seven of those 28 champions won that next game.

If Kerry beat Cork in a fortnight's time they'll become the first team since Meath way back in 1999 to win the Sam Maguire winning every game en route. Every other champion either drew or lost somewhere along the way. They all had a blip. Monaghan was Kerry's blip . . . and still Kerry won.

Too often we resort to lumping and comparing the Kerry footballers of the last 10 years with the All-Ireland winning sides of yesteryear, and spiel on about the tradition of Kerry, ignoring the state of Kerry football these players inherited and the tradition they've carved out on their own. From 1987 to 1995, Kerry were a distant second in Munster. But under Paidi, they regained power in Munster to the point it was assumed. No one, upon his appointment, could have foreseen such dominance. Or seven All-Ireland final appearances in 10 years. Or as is the case now, eight All-Ireland semi-final appearances in eight straight years when Tyrone have managed only two.

The time has come to say it. If Kerry win this year's All Ireland, it will confirm the Kerry side of the '00s as definitively the most consistent and probably the best team football has seen or spawned since Mick O'Dwyer's incomparable Team of All Talents.

And park that side of O'Dwyer's for a minute:

has there really been another Kerry team better than the one of the past seven years?

Radio Kerry commentator Weeshie Fogarty, who has been watching Kerry All Irelands since 1955, contends the Kerry side of this decade is probably the second-best Kerry side of all.

Of course they've been beaten. By Armagh . . . in a classic they contributed handsomely to.

By Tyrone . . . twice. In truth, in 2005 when the Big Three were all in their prime and football had its great gathering, Kerry finished second, and there's a case they were even third.

Maybe that's Liam's point. That Tyrone at their best were better than Kerry at theirs.

Ditto Galway at the turn of the century; even Moynihan declared on the podium in 2000 that his friend Ja Fallon's absence was probably the difference between him collecting Sam and not. But look at all the players have to do without and replace this decade. In '02, Maurice. In '05, Crowley. In '06, O Cinneide and Hassett, . In '07, Moynihan and McCarthy.

And yet in each of those years, they were playing into September. Just like the Liverpool team of the '70s and '80s, they've kept evolving and winning, never leaving the top three this decade.

No one else can say that. Kerry never beat Tyrone but they've outlasted Tyrone. They've beaten Armagh more than Armagh have beaten them. Galway had five times to beat them in major games and failed every time.

And the thing is, when Kerry lost, it was only to fellow champions. They've never lost to a Fermanagh, a Sligo, a Monaghan, a Roscommon, even a Laois or a Mayo, the kind of teams that have tripped other temporary members of the Big Three up. It's easy . . . if justified . . . to highlight Kerry's soft passage through Munster but this past seven years there's been a backdoor and All-Ireland quarter-finals, and every Kerry side negotiated that quarter-final, beating fellow heavyweights like Galway, Armagh, Dublin and Mayo.

All through this decade Kerry have been The Standard. Occasionally teams like Tyrone and Armagh have surpassed it but Kerry were their measure, their achievement. If you mock Kerry, then you deride Armagh and Tyrone's achievement. Yes, Kernan and Harte's forces brought an unprecedented intensity to our game but just as significant as that and just before that John O'Mahony's Galway and Paidi's Kerry brought sexy back from the dark place football was in the hurling revolution years.

In the past 20 years there has been no team better to watch. And in this writer's view, no one better, period.

Scorn not their consistency, Liam. It's the hallmark of greatness.