THE MIDDLE THIRD:AROUND FOUR o'clock on Monday afternoon, I was looking out the window of my office on Denny Street in Tralee. It was grey and wet and windy and there were people out on the street setting up a stage for the Kerry team's homecoming.

It was a sad scene and I couldn’t help thinking of the lads themselves who at that moment were on a train headed for home. They would have known that Kerry people would come out that night to welcome them home, but they wouldn’t have wanted a bit of it.

This defeat just hurt too badly.

First things first, I have to say hats off to Dublin. Much as it kills me to

say it, they won the final in the best possible way. To get the winning score right at the end when your opposition have no time to claw it back is perfect, just perfect. But, in all honesty, Kerry threw that game away. They had every chance to win it by five or six points and they let it slip.

And the odd thing is that for all that Kerry had more experience, it was a couple of their senior players who made the mistakes that led to Dublin’s crucial scores.

Kevin McManamon’s goal and Kevin Nolan’s point came from errors by Declan and Tom O’Sullivan. Of all the disappointing things about the final, that might be the worst. Kerry have nobody to blame but themselves.

This one hurts across the board.

I met Mikey Sheehy the other morning and he said it was nearly worse than ’82. Kerry made so many mistakes to lose the game and I don’t just mean giving the ball away with stray handpasses.

I mean simple mistakes when it comes to the way you close out a game.

This is hard for me to write because I’m talking about friends of mine here. Friends, former team-mates, brothers even who’ve given everything to Kerry over their careers and who owe us nothing at this stage. But I couldn’t believe that nobody on the Kerry team did anything to slow down the game once McManamon’s goal went in.

Go down with an injury, start a row, go in and have an argument with the umpire – anything to stop the momentum of the game.

Instead, Brendan Kealy ran to get the ball and get it kicked out.

I wouldn’t hold him responsible because this was his first final and he had a great game otherwise. But there were fellas playing just in front of him who had far more experience than him and who should have been telling him to slow it down, take his time, bend down to tie a lace or something.

That moment called for a bit of calm and a bit of savvy, but, instead, Dublin were level within a minute.

It’s the fact that the defeat was so avoidable that has made it all the harder for Kerry people to take.

It has to be said too that the sideline didn’t cover themselves in glory either. In all honesty, I think Jack O’Connor had a poor day at the office. He forced the issue with Paul Galvin, leaving him on the sideline from the start and then bringing him in when he wasn’t needed.

He had him stripped and ready to come in after 20 minutes, even though Kieran O’Leary was doing okay and Kieran Donaghy was doing even better. I thought he should have either started him or left it until the second half to bring him on. As it was, Paul was forcing himself into the game too much and got caught for a few frees that were down to over-enthusiasm more than anything else.

But the other consequence of bringing Galvin on was it moved Donaghy away from the area where

he was doing damage.

This was easily Donaghy’s best

game of the year and, after Darran O’Sullivan, he was the second best player on the Kerry team. In those first 20 minutes, he was dominating possession from both kick-outs.

He was drifting over and back across the pitch, leading by example, horsing into fellas and tearing into the Dubs.

He was playing like all the Kerry players should have been. Because, overall, I thought Kerry were a bit too nice on Sunday. Dublin out-Kerryed Kerry by playing smarter and using the referee and causing the day to go by at their own tempo. But to my mind, the Dubs were there to be bullied a bit more. Donaghy recognised that, but a lot of his team-mates didn’t.

It doesn’t get any easier sitting in the stand watching. You have to remind yourself of your boundaries. I nearly pulled out my phone at half-time to ring somebody I know inside the Kerry camp to try to get them to move Donaghy back out to midfield.

I thought it glaringly obvious that he had been doing huge damage out there and that keeping Declan O’Sullivan in close to goal would get results. And also, because Donaghy is such a good user of the ball, he was bringing Darran O’Sullivan into the game as well. That was the key to winning as far as I could see. But I remembered my boundaries and kept my phone in my pocket.

I was sitting near Mick O’Dwyer and Mick Galwey; Jason Sherlock was right beside me. All of us were jumping and leaping and roaring and shouting all the way through. People were asking me all weekend what it was like not to be involved.

I had two answers for them.

One, it’s an expensive weekend. And two, you’d need a second liver after it.

It’s a far healthier weekend being a player. I got to Dublin on Friday and was lucky enough to meet Paddy Cullen at a function for Cuala GAA club. The singer Paddy Reilly bought me a pint, which I’m very proud of.

The whole weekend revolved around the game and it was all people wanted to talk about, which is great. Why would you go if you didn’t want to talk football?

I was playing in the Kilmacud Sevens on Saturday. Going in, I was worried about my own physical condition, but once I saw a few of the Dubs I felt better about myself. Mentioning no names, of course (Ciarán Whelan).

In fairness, the Kilmacud club were very understanding and considerate as they had Double XL jerseys available.

After the match on Sunday I headed back down home. It was a long old road but it would have felt longer for the players. I was thinking of Colm Cooper especially. Being captain on a day like that is very tough. I was captain when we lost to Armagh in 2002 and it’s just a devastating blow to have to deal with.

It’s not that the defeat hurts any more for you than for the rest of the players, just that you’ve probably put even more into your preparation than you usually would. I didn’t have a speech written and I’d say Colm didn’t either. But what he will have been doing all year is working so hard at his game that nobody will be able to say the captaincy has had an effect on his form.

That becomes very important to you because the last thing you want people to be thinking is that you’re coasting because you’re the captain.

You spend the whole year knuckling down and trying to lead the squad. For it to end the way it did, after all that effort, is heart-breaking.

But in the end, this will make Kerry better. As people, these players will be better for this experience. There will be a lot of soul-searching over the next couple of days and at the end of it, they will know that they have to come back and put this right.

It’s a sickener now and they’ll be crestfallen, but they just have to sit down and work out where they go next.

Kerry will probably lose a few players over the winter. Personally, I hope the likes of Eoin Brosnan and Aidan O’Mahony stay on. People were on these fellas’ backs the whole of the summer, but they both came through for Kerry when it mattered.

Brosnan especially had to listen to people before every game saying he wasn’t a centre back and that he couldn’t cut it there. And this was after he answered the call and came back for Kerry when they asked him.

But the truth of it is that when he went off on Sunday, things started going wrong for Kerry. Press pause just as Alan Brogan takes possession in the lead up to the Dublin goal. Where is everybody? Who’s marking who? Dublin had three players loose running right down the middle of the pitch.

That wasn’t happening when Brosnan was there.

These players don’t owe Kerry a thing, but they still have plenty to offer if they’re up for giving it another year. Tom O’Sullivan had another great All-Ireland final, that one handpass aside. Marc Ó Sé bossed Bernard Brogan and never gave him an inch.

Tomás Ó Sé had a fine game too. These players have to be left now to make their own decision. They’ve been through the mill for long enough without people telling them their business.

Kerry will regroup and come back from this. It hurts at the minute, but, when the dust settles, they’ll see it as a challenge and they’ll go about rising to it. For now, the Dubs are top dogs and deservedly so.

Pat Gilroy put together a very good team who work hard for each other and who do the right things and take the right options.

And they surely had the right man to take the free to win the game in the end.

They are worthy All-Ireland champions and good luck to them.