Emotional Lyons hints at departure

Glassy-eyed and emotional Tommy Lyons perched on a table inside one of the medical rooms at Croke Park on Saturday evening. Surrounded by microphones and tape recorders he quietly thumbed through the A-Z of another Dublin defeat.

It took a little over two minutes but the question that had been delicately skirted around was finally thrust into the huddle. "Three years in charge Tommy, what's the story, are you staying or going?"

Lyons knew it was coming; the vultures had been hovering since Dublin's surprise defeat in the Leinster Championship to Westmeath. The carcass was presented to them on Saturday.

Lyons sighed: "I am delighted and honoured to have served three years. We have had a very good management team and we have had a lot of people coming in and giving us hands; we have had a great medical back-up. I'm not going talking about the future tonight after a defeat. I am very proud having spent three years managing these lads."

There was a hint of steel in his voice but, bookended by an inadvertent clue provided in answer to a later question and by the tears that had preceded the interview, it was a thin enough veneer of commitment.

When discussing the suffocating pressures Dublin teams face in terms of expectation and the way they are dissected in the media, Lyons mused: "We tried lots of things this year; some of you weren't particularly happy with them. Whoever is manager in the future there'll be lots of other ways of doing it. We unashamedly used the media in 2002, got on a roll and got the lads energised."

Not quite an admission but a suggestion that a new hand will rock the cradle when the National League kicks in. Lyons expressed a loyalty to his players some might not have deserved, obviously learning his lessons from the past. He praised their attitude and work-rate, bemoaned the vagaries of fate and woodwork and accentuated the positive.

"We created some unbelievable chances and just today they weren't going to go in no matter what we did. You can only be proud of the way the lads worked and battled and I thought we had Kerry in real trouble. We had some big, big performances out there and it's just disappointing to have the game turn on such a simple moment.

"Darren Homan, we felt, got foot-blocked, ball went down the field, hit the post, came back to a Kerry player and ended up in the net. It was a very simple goal. At this level, if the chances don't go in, then that's it; some days they do, some they don't.

"I thought we created a few more good chances after that (Dara Ó Cinnéide's goal) one, in particular when Alan Brogan rolled it just wide. We were still battling very well. Kerry gained in confidence. The goal brought them on and changed the momentum of the match. It can be very cruel when you work as hard as those lads work and come off not getting the deserts they deserved."

Jack O'Connor was sympathetic toward Lyons.

"Dublin must have felt very unlucky at half time, being level, because it seemed like they had three or four good goal chances. Whelan nearly broke the crossbar with a piledriver.

"We weathered that storm. We have traditionally come very strong in the third quarter and it was the same today. We got stuck into them in the second half and won a lot of breaks down the middle of the field and the Ó Cinnéide goal obviously put us on the way.

"In fairness, we conceded a few goal chances that on another day could've gone in, so in fairness we still have a bit of homework to do. We'll look at the video - first enjoy tonight - but certainly there are a few problems to look at."

Kerry advance, Dublin's focus once again turn inwards. Lyons alone can not alone be held accountable for Saturday's defeat, nor should he be. There are plenty of blue-clad players who might struggle to look in the mirror this morning.