Oisín McConville: Kerry would be comfortable in Ulster

Kerry won’t take this as any sort of a compliment but they looked like a team that would be very comfortable in the Ulster championship, writes Oisín McConville.

“Don’t let winning make you soft.” That Larry Bird quote was in my head going to Croke Park yesterday. He said it around the time of his Boston Celtics’ 18-game winning streak in the early 1980s. I was wondering if this almost invincible run of Dublin’s would make them soft. On the evidence of this final, it has. Dublin hadn’t been playing great this year. Okay, they finished the league in strong fashion but I sensed, particularly in the second half, that winning was having a negative effect on them.

Bird also said, “Don’t let losing make you quit”. And Kerry are certainly no quitters. I was expecting them to pull out all the stops to end their own recent record of woe against Dublin. To try to beat a team like Dublin, you pull the weed at the root and work your way up. And that’s what they did, nullifying Brian Fenton. Jack Barry almost took him completely out of the game. It was the first time I’ve seen Fenton so much on the backfoot. Every time he moved, he was stopped in some shape or form.