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Gooch warns against writing off Kingdom

Colm Cooper insists Kerry aren’t as far off the pace for All-Ireland honours as some of their critics think.

Despite losing to Cork in last month’s Munster semi-final, spirits are high in the camp ahead of their second round qualifier against Westmeath in Mullingar on Sunday.

Cooper said: “We missed three or four goal chances against Cork. If one or two of them went in things might have been a little different or closer.

“With 10 minutes to go, we were only down two points and made a few unforced errors.

“I still don’t think we’re that far away. We definitely needed to change aspects of our game but I don’t think we’re that far away. The reaction was that Kerry are miles off the pace and Cork with Dublin are setting the benchmark. That might be the case but we feel that we have certainly improved.

“It was only June and if you could just get by and get your form together it’s not a bad position to be in.”

Cooper also sees positives in the timing of the defeat to Conor Counihan’s men.

“We left Páirc Uí Chaoimh knowing we had a lot of work to do in terms of fine-tuning our game and bringing it to another level. If we kept going with that, we mightn’t have seen Croke Park for a quarter-final stage. We’ve made a few slight changes and hopefully we’ll able to show that starting this weekend.”
With U21 boss Eamonn Fitzmaurice back in as part of Jack O’Connor’s management team, there’s been a freshness to sessions in recent weeks.

“Training has been fine,” said the Dr Crokes man. “Obviously there was disappointment after the Cork game.

“We went back to the clubs then after but since we’ve come back in things have gone very well.

” We know it’s last chance saloon so we’ve increased the intensity in training.”

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