O’Connor finds fault with ref McQuillan

KERRY boss Jack O’Connor has questioned the performance of referee Joe McQuillan in Sunday’s All-Ireland decider, claiming it was more difficult for his players to win frees than it was for their opponents Dublin.

O’Connor insisted that he was not attributing their narrow loss to the decisions made by the Cavan whistler but he was adamant key decisions had gone against his team, most notably the free that Bernard Brogan pointed in the 53rd minute after a perceived ball-handling offence near the Kerry goalmouth.

“I’m caught between a rock and a hard place when talking about the referee. If you say anything about referees, you’re portrayed as a whinger. But I’ll make a general comment that it appeared to us on the line that it was much harder for our fellas to get frees than it was the other way around. The likes of Declan [O’Sullivan] and Darran [O’Sullivan] at times got a lot of abuse going through when attacking. They found it hard to get frees. There was a couple that went against us, the most obvious being for handling the ball on the ground. That was a mistake as the replay told.”

O’Connor, who was speaking yesterday morning on Radio Kerry, also admitted that he may have to plan without some of Kerry’s stalwarts for the 2012 campaign.

In the wake of the loss to Dublin, O’Connor expects the long-serving members of his squad to consider retiring from senior inter-county football and revealed that it was a desire to bow out on a winning note which fuelled the desire in the Kerry set up this year.

“There’s no question that some players will probably consider their futures. There’s a lot of mileage on the clocks and the bar is constantly being raised in terms of the physical preparation, as you saw this year with Dublin. You have to leave emotion out of it. Lives have to go on and there are other things out there than football. The effort that has been put in by the players and everyone involved in the backroom team this year was huge because we wanted one last hurrah for this group of fellas. They’ve been great ambassadors. We’ll thaw out for a couple of weeks and see then.”

In the build-up to the game, Paul Galvin’s selection on the Kerry bench had been a source of huge debate and there was some surprise when it was Kieran O’Leary who was withdrawn midway through the first half to facilitate the introduction of the Finuge star. O’Connor explained the rationale behind the decision.

“We just thought the way the game was panning out that it didn’t suit Kieran O’Leary. It was a tough game, very physical and on a greasy surface. It wasn’t his type of game.”

O’Connor paid tribute to his players for matching a Dublin team he regards as one of the fittest in the history of the GAA and refused to apportion blame to any individual for Dublin’s late rally.

“I won’t point fingers at any individual. You can’t legislate for simple errors. The lads were tired and when you’re tired, you make errors. If we were a cynical team, someone would have pulled your man down on the way through for the goal but that’s not in our DNA. They got the break and we didn’t have the defensive cover. It’s well known that this Dublin team are the best conditioned in the country and probably in the history of the GAA.

“I thought at the very least a draw was what we deserved but deserve has nothing to do with it. You don’t get what you deserve in life.”