Kerry skipper Paddy Lane takes aim at critics, hails Tomás Ó Sé's 'heads-up football'

The Kingdom startlet said the team had been written off back home

Kerry's Paddy Lane lifts the U20 trophy at Croke Park. Pic: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan

All-Ireland U20 winning captain Paddy Lane says the team and manager Tomás Ó Sé emphatically answered their critics with Saturday’s final win over Tyrone.

Lane hit back at their detractors in a season where they lost to Cork in the Munster phase game before defeating them in the provincial final.

The Austin Stacks starlet believes Ó Sé will manage more Kerry teams in the future. “Tomás is just pure Kerry football,” he gushed. “The Ó Sé family in general are just Kerry football. Darragh was involved with us, but Tomás just epitomises Kerry football. He just loves football. He loves going fast and just playing heads-up football.

“It was a dream to play under him the last two years. I'm sure he will go on and coach other Kerry teams in the future. But in fairness, we went down to Cork earlier on in the year and there were questions thrown at us, and there were questions thrown at Tomás from our own people. We answered them now today, so thanks to the fellas that were writing us off down in our own county.” 

Lane accepted there was an onus on Kerry to deliver after coming up short in recent years. “We were totting it up to nearly seven between All-Ireland finals and semi-finals in four or five years. Seven big games lost. That's a lot for young players like us.

“We could have come up here and went into our shell like we did in them games, but in fairness, we just grinded it out there in the last bit of the first half and then pushed it on into the second half.” 

Lane, who suffered a knee injury attempting to score a goal in the second half and had to be replaced, spoke of how much it meant to those who had been on the wrong side of the two previous results against Tyrone.

“It just shows if you stick at it and just keep going, keep showing up, because there were times that it was tough, when we lost last year and the year before, that you think, ‘Will we ever win?’ But to be honest, once Tyrone was the draw and we found out Tyrone beat Kildare, we were gunning for it.”

Tyrone U20 manager Paul Devlin was philosophical after his side’s loss. "The energy just sapped out of us at the wrong time,” he rued. “The lads couldn't bounce back when they needed to.

"Our lads, I couldn't have asked any more from them all year. It just didn't work out as well as I expected today but it's a learning curve for them.

"We'll go back to the thing again. We like to take titles along the way surely but the big goal here is developing boys into senior footballers.

“At the end of the day, if we're not getting them through to the next level, what does it count for? We'll just ourselves down and Tyrone will go again."