Kingdom ‘may have to adapt to new system’

LEARN, change, adapt. That was the theme in a solemn Kerry dressing-room. Narrow defeats leave teams distressed, heavy defeats leave humiliation, but beaten fair and square by a better side, well, there is nothing much you can say. And the Ulster champions were the better side, that was not being contested.

“It was very fast, very intense, we seemed to get caught in possession a lot, and we couldn’t seem to move it fast enough,” reckoned wing-back Tomás Ó Sé. “They contested everything, got under the breaks and were hungry for everything. When they lost the ball everybody got behind it and we found it very hard to score as a result, but when they moved it forward they punished us, and that was a big factor.” The reason for that of course was that when Kerry broke forward they were met not by a wall but by a forest of defenders, with oceans of space then left to be exploited at the other end.

“Yes, but that’s the logic of that system, if they get everyone behind the ball and then win it back, when they look up there’s only going to be one or two left above, so it’s easy enough to pick them out with good ball,” he adds. Result? A Kerry defence that was stretched beyond its limits time and again by an attack that had open prairie while the Kerry forwards were operating in a dense jungle.