Dublin’s finest get final reward

Dublin 0-12 Kerry 0-9: Back in February, Paul Flynn made a daring comment about last season. Despite finishing a distant second to runners-up Donegal in an All-Ireland semi-final, he was adamant about who he felt were the finest outfit in 2014. And he wasn’t talking about Kerry.

“If you look back on the year,” he started, “if you look back on the whole season of last year, we were the best team. We played the best football but we just didn’t win the championship.”

Dublin didn’t play their best football yesterday but they played better than Kerry. That would have been enough to win them an All-Ireland last year and was more than enough to annex it on this occasion. After taking their learnings from Donegal last year, they managed to add more defensive awareness to their game at the same time playing the most aesthetically-pleasing football.