This final won’t be put on shop window any time soon

Mirror, mirror on the wall — who’s the fairest of them all? Neither of yesterday’s finalists. And they will tell you that themselves.

The expected game of chess revealed itself and as well as might it be a fine game to play, watching it isn’t advised. We remember some years back when Channel 4 tried their might at selling us the English challenger Nigel Short against the Russian world champion Gary Kasparov. It didn’t work then and the GAA won’t be putting yesterday’s final in the shop window any time soon. This game on occasions was played at snail’s pace, each side conscientious to the point of conservative not to lose the ball. The basketball style tempo so impressively deployed by Donegal against Dublin was right up Kerry’s street when you consider so many of them have graced a court.

Did Kerry imitate? Hardly. When Donegal were beaten by Monaghan in last year’s Ulster final, it spawned the crude verb out Donegal, a variance of out Tyrone used in the Noughties. To apply it to this game is lazy analysis. Sure enough, no Kerry team has ever won an All-Ireland putting so many behind the ball but then they simply had to. It wasn’t as if this had come as any shock either. Go back to the Munster final and look at how vigorously Kerry had protected their ‘D’ with Declan O’Sullivan moving back. The lessons of Brian Hurley’s walk in Austin Stack Park three months earlier had taught them that harsh but valuable lesson.