“They’re (Cooper and Donaghy) definitely back, as far as I can see,” he continued before becoming a little more circumspect when asked if it provided a boost to the set-up. “You don’t like that uncertainty so it is a good boost, yeah.”

Losing Marc Ó Sé and now O’Mahony are blows, Walsh accepts, but ones Kerry can absorb. “I suppose the whole ethos in the dressing room and the culture that Éamonn (Fitzmaurice) has grown over the number of years, it’s up to the players to be the leaders so as good as Aidan or Marc were, we have plenty of leaders in the dressing room. I don’t think we’ll be found wanting in that regard.”

Walsh, 33 in June, had little hesitation in making the commitment for another season.

“You just found yourself just planning for football unknown to yourself, so the mind made itself up, that, ‘Yeah, I feel good’. As long as the body feels good, I’ll keep going. That just made my mind up itself, really.

“I made my championship debut in 2008 so I didn’t come in straight off of minors and U21s so maybe I haven’t as much mileage or years playing senior inter-county. I know coming from a physio background, the strength and conditioning side of things and how best to look after my body when I’m not on the field.”

Some stats have him clocking up 12 to 13km per 70-plus minutes. But Walsh views the figures differently

“I know it looks like I’d be doing a lot of mileage but it’s all about smart running now rather than trying to put up miles on the clock. You need to be running in the right areas and that’s what I’m hoping to do rather than just running aimlessly around the place.”

Kerry open their 2017 season in earnest with a trip to Donegal on Sunday week but it’s Dublin who have defined their last four seasons, the only team to beat them in Championship football in that period.

“A bigger challenge for Kerry” than toppling Tyrone in the 2000s, is Walsh’s viewpoint of the Dubs.

Obviously, he, his team-mates and management place an emphasis on Jim Gavin’s men. “It is very easy to become obsessed with them. Every night you go out for training you could just totally focus on them. But we’ve the first round of the Allianz (League) against Donegal up in Letterkenny and if you’re not 100% focused on that game, you’ll be getting a hiding.

“They’re always going to be at the back of our minds, Dublin, 100%, and they have been since we lost the semi-final to them last year. That’s grand, they can stay there at the back of our minds and until they need to be at the front of our minds.”

Apart from 2015, it’s their finishes that have cost them most against Dublin. That shouldn’t be happening, says Walsh, “because we have such a strong panel we believe that we should have as strong a team finishing a game as starting a game”.

Walsh believes Kerry learned something from how Mayo physically put it up to Dublin in the drawn final and replay. The gap between Dublin and the chasing pack is narrowing, he claims. “I felt Dublin played almost a 9/10 to beat us and then Mayo had managed to pull them back. Dublin didn’t play as well in those two All-Ireland finals and that was probably Mayo not allowing them to play as well as we allowed them to play. I think there’s something in how Mayo were maybe able to match them for that physicality on both days and if we had had that, that physicality, we might have brought their performance down a peg or two but, yeah, I think teams are coming up to their level.

“I don’t think Dublin’s level is dropping. I think other teams are coming up and they are the target, they are the limit at the moment, they are the milestone that other teams have to get to so I think other teams are improving.”

Walsh agrees Fitzmaurice has issued a statement of intent with the strong sides he has fielded in Kerry’s last two McGrath Cup games. “Yeah, he’s gone with the strongest team he can select from. He told us to come back in good shape on January 3 and that we would be hitting the ground running this year. And fellas did. We all came back in relatively good shape and we’re getting going from the get-go.”