Sometimes, you just have to stand back and let the hurt burn you. Donegal were outplayed, outfought and outworked by Kerry and there wasn’t a whole lot they could do about it. Afterwards, Jim McGuinness said he didn’t feel any flatness in his players, as had been the case before the 2014 final. They came to win the All-Ireland. Kerry just came better.
“We felt good going into the game. We were relaxed all weekend. We didn’t see it in the dressingroom either. Just Kerry came hard, they came hard early. They set the terms of the game. Then you’re trying to manage that and you’re trying to claw your way back in.
“We tried to respond to that but at the end of the day, they were still keeping the scoreboard ticking over. Very quickly, you’re in a fight. Whereas we wanted to be in a position where we were going to control the game, then they were going to control the game. We were going to pick them off, they were going to pick us off.
“We knew that was going to be the case anyway with the inside forwards that they have on the pitch. Very quickly, they set the terms of the game. We were pushing a boulder up a hill at certain points for large parts of it.”
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McGuinness was keen to point to Kerry’s class on the day. His team made mistakes and weren’t able to live with the relentlessness that Kerry brought.
“We have to reflect today. We’ve got to take it on the chin. We’ve also got to tip our hat to Kerry. Kerry were brilliant today. They played really, really well for long periods of that game. Even though we did get into situations where we felt we might have got a bit of traction, that never really materialised.
“Very, very disappointed for the people of Donegal that it didn’t work out. They were here in their droves today and didn’t get the performance either, which is disappointing. But as I said earlier, we have to take that on the chin.
“I said to the players in the dressingroom, it’s not a game you should think about for a long time. We didn’t deserve to win the game. That’s the reality of it. We didn’t do enough to win the game. You have to let it slide. Sometimes you just have to let performances slide. And this is one of them.”
Donegal’s great strength all year had been their variety, their running from deep, the fact that they didn’t rely on one player to do all the scoring. But Kerry kept them penned in and closed off all the usual lines of running. Donegal ran out of ideas pretty quickly.
“Was it six or seven scorers we had? I think we’ve had 12 in the last two games, so definitely, yes. There’s things on that. Why did we not get the same traction in terms of threats all over the pitch and different people popping up at different times? That’s all things that probably come into the mix.”
