By Cian O'Connell

“It was a tough one to take, we threw everything at it and just came up short” was Eamonn Fitzmaurice’s assessment minutes after the final whistle.

Kerry had seriously tested Dublin, but Fitzmaurice praised the manner in which the All Ireland champions responded during a thrilling second half.

“It was a thing we knew they are brilliant at using half-time to right the ship and we had them on the ropes at half-time,” Fitzmaurice admitted.

“As they’ve done so many times under Jim Gavin’s reign, they righted the ship again in the second half. We won the throw-in, looked to me like David (Moran) was fouled, he didn’t get a free. They went down, got a point straight away, and gave them belief straight away in the first 15 or 20 seconds of the second half.

“As I’ve said before, you have to give them massive credit. We did have them on the ropes, but they really showed the stuff of champions in the second half.”

Before the break Kerry had stunned Dublin reeling off 2-4 without reply to lead by five at the break.

 “We had rehearsed some of the kick-out scenarios alright and it came off for us and gave the lads bit of life and a bit of belief which we needed at the time because we’d started quite poorly,” Fitzmaurice commented. “Our work-rate was excellent early on, but just our skill-set was off, we were taking the wrong options, our decision-making wasn’t right but to be fair to the lads, there was no panic, there was no-one getting too worried and they kept at it. When they got the goal then, it gave us great life and we drove on from there.”

Fitzmaurice was ‘proud’ of Kerry’s gutsy display. “We thought out things, in a game like that, when it’s so frantic, you’re not going to get to bring everything to the table,” Fitzmaurice remarked. “Our subs did impact, maybe we could have got a bit more out of them.

“It was a frantic game and as I said to the lads inside, I couldn’t be prouder of them in there, they’re an incredible bunch. They’re so honest, we’re very proud of our football in Kerry, very proud of our jersey and those fellas really filled it with pride. I was very pleased with them from that point of view.”