No 37 for Kerry: The one no-one saw coming

By the time he got back to the dressing room, it was more vacant than victorious.

He walked amid the empty milk cartons and scattered towels for a moment. Then Eamonn Fitzmaurice allowed instinctive emotion grab hold of him for the first time this summer. No cartwheels. Nothing loud, because that’s not his style. Nothing more than a pair of clenched fists embedded in his chest as the magnitude of what he and the group has achieved began to take hold.

Kerry have won 37 All-Irelands now. They tend to arrive home in September with the cup every third or fourth year. But 2014 wasn’t like any other year, certainly nothing in the past 40.