Kerry win because their managers are humble enough to learn

They’re not just cute. As Paul Curran of Dublin fame put it so well in conversation after this year’s Munster football final, "They’re annoyingly cute."

Kerry, you’ll remember, entered that game in Páirc Uí Chaoimh as underdogs and emerged from it having outplayed, outfought and especially out-thought Cork to the point of destroying them in the most lopsided Old Firm championship game in the province in nearly quarter of a century — yet tellingly, possibly not even the most lopsided game between the counties in 2014.

After their latest All-Ireland triumph on Sunday, Eamonn Fitzmaurice referenced their heavy defeat to Cork in Tralee in their last game of the league. That day they’d conceded 2-18, 0-8 alone to Brian Hurley, all but one of his points coming from play. The previous summer they’d given up 3-18 to Dublin. Instead of looking at those games as outliers, Fitzmaurice spotted an alarming trend. Against the better teams “we were too open, simple as.”