It’s raw, full of emotion. This may go down as the GAA book of the year. For that we have Jack O’Connor and Tom Humphries to be grateful to.

Get yourself a copy of Keys to the Kingdom as soon as you can, and devote the three or four hours it takes to devour its content. The combination of O’Connor and Humphries is perfect, providing us with an insight into what made Jack O’Connor the man and manager he is. We also get a unique view into the world of the modern inter-county manager, warts and all.

De Scribe didn’t know who had ghosted the book, for nowhere on the cover, or back, or foreword, does it indicate that Humphries lent his gifted pen to this work. It is only at the conclusion, when O’Connor is dishing out his thanks, that the Irish Times writer is credited.

But there are clues throughout the piece. The writing has the scent of Humphries, transporting the reader vividly into each event, each scenario that shaped O’Connor. This is a clever book and is one of the few GAA publications that would appeal to fans of other sports.

It starts with O’Connor speaking of his dying mother’s last words to him – “Johneen a chroí, don’t take that job at all, they’ll be giving out to you”. This was just before O’Connor was ratified as Kerry’s successor to Páidí Ó Sé. And throughout the book we learn that those words of Jack’s dying mother were to prove quite prophetic.

What shines throughout the book is how much pressure the job of Kerry senior football manager carries. It is illuminating to witness O’Connor’s self-doubt along the way, his searing honesty that at times he wasn’t exactly sure of where his team was going, what the next step should be.

In these sorts of books it is often the case that there can be a hybrid of subject and writer. Remember how Roy Keane escaped the wrath of the FA when he claimed the infamous quote in his book – “Take that you c*nt” was actually the mind of the author, Eamon Dunphy, at play. Keane claimed the words, and therefore the premeditation for the tackle that injured Alf Inge Haaland, were not his. It was Dunphy who had played foul…

Looking back with the benefit of now knowing that Humphries was involved in Keys to the Kingdom, it is interesting to seek out where the writer may have taken poetic licence with his subject. There are at least two references to Brian Clough and his managerial philosophy that seem to be pure Humphries and the mention of Dublin does seem to have the Humphries bias attached. Perhaps at times the writer works too hard to give us an image of who he feels we should think O’Connor is, rather than allowing the Kerryman’s true self shine through.

But that is probably just this writer being too pedantic on a work that will still appear fresh in twenty years time.

There are a number of members of the Kerry football family who will not be best pleased with this book. Páidí Ó Sé is dealt with in a no holds barred way as O’Connor lets it be known in no uncertain manner that he feels the Gaeltacht man is a bit of a loose cannon. Ditto for Mick O’Dwyer, and indeed for the members of the Golden Years side, who O’Connor feels slighted him by not offering any advice or encouragement when he took over the reigns. Two incidents stick in the Dromid man’s mind. Firstly, there is the time when Mick O’Dwyer, then Kildare manager, warmly welcomes Ó Sé prior to a league match, but totally blanks O’Connor, who was a selector at the time. O’Dwyer is from Waterville, a neighbouring village to O’Connor, and to be ignored by a man he grew up admiring obviously still hurts.

The second incident is at a function that had O’Connor and some of the players from the Golden Years in attendance. O’Dwyer was there too. At this function, Jimmy Deenihan callously, in Jack O’Connor’s eyes, states that he hopes to see Mick O’Dwyer one day back at the helm of Kerry football. O’Connor is so vexed that he considers walking out, such is the slight he feels.

This insecurity, this knowledge embedded in Jack O’Connor that he is somehow seen as a lesser mortal because he has never played senior inter-county football for Kerry, emerges throughout the book. But it is that honesty and acknowledgment of his insecurities that makes O’Connor such a likeable and interesting subject.

Spats with players are revealed in all their gory details – the three Ó Sé brothers are regular bugbears on O’Connor’s radar. It is a continuous battle between the Dromid man’s need for discipline and the Gaeltacht boys’ free spirit.

This book has caused stirrings in the Kingdom, with much criticism thrown at O’Connor. Unfairly, the former manager was accused of timing the release to coincide with the Munster Final in Killarney. But as O’Connor himself explained, that was out of his hands. Once he had signed the contract, it was at the discretion of the publishers to choose when to release the book. Logically, they chose the time of Kerry’s annual joust with their nearest neighbours.

Speaking of Cork, Billy Morgan is another to receive the sharp end of O’Connor’s tongue. It is obvious that neither man has much time for the other, and there is a revealing picture in the book following the replayed Munster Final of last year, which the Rebels won. The image shows O’Connor looking away from Morgan, a pained expression on his face as he shakes hands with Kerry’s arch nemesis. You don’t have to be a body language expert to see that there is not much love lost between them.

What most evidently stands out in this book is the importance of place in the world of the GAA. O’Connor explains that for him it goes much deeper than just Kerry, deeper still than South Kerry. His place is Dromid and its beautiful isolation. Dromid has always been the poor relation of South Kerry football, and South Kerry has always been the poor relation of Kerry football. That’s the equation that O’Connor throws in. Couple that with the fact that the man never played at senior level for his county and you have a character who always feels that he has something to prove.

We know how it ends before it begins, but that doesn’t make this book any less compelling. Rather it offers a fascinating insight into a man who previously for many of us was just a face on the sideline, a person we knew through snippets in the media.

After Keys to the Kingdom the door into the mind of Jack O’Connor has been thrown ajar. But, as a consequence, what may have been shut are the Dromid man’s chances of returning to the throne of the Kingdom.

Buy Jack O'Connor's book here.