Tomas O'Se has committed to another year with the Kerry senior footballers.
The vastly experienced Ghaeltacht defender already has 14 inter-county seasons behind him, but he will form part of Jack O’Connor’s core panel as the Kingdom look to regain Sam Maguire after seeing Cork and then Dublin win football’s biggest prize in the past two years.
O’Se has already lined out on 77 occasions for Kerry and seven more this summer – if Kerry play that many games – would see him overtake his brother Darragh’s Kingdom appearance record.
The five-time All-Ireland winner, whose future involvement with the county was doubted by some, played for Kerry in a challenge match against Dr Crokes last weekend.
Meanwhile, O’Connor has been boosted by the news that Colm Cooper’s ankle injury has cleared up.
The knock had quite a negative impact on the ‘Gooch’ last season, but he is raring to go again and has his sights firmly set on helping Crokes win their All-Ireland club semi-final against Crossmaglen Rangers in February.
"The ankle is fine. I've had a month to six weeks now without any problems with it," Cooper is quoted as saying in the Examiner.
"The medical teams have been taking a look at it regularly enough and saw it again last week. They're quite pleased with it. I don't think there's going to be any need to get an operation to sort it out which is very good as we've a lot of games coming up. I just had problems with the ankle in the middle of last summer when I picked up a knock on it.
"But it started to settle down then for me during the Munster club championship and I was able to get through those games okay. Since we beat UCC in the final in December, it's felt very good."
Kerry’s David Moran, meanwhile, also played in the challenge game with Crokes after a long-term injury of his own.