O'Connor can still see the rust

ALL-IRELAND SFC QUARTER-FINAL:GIVEN THE perilous weekend of football it turned out to be, perhaps Jack O'Connor is a lucky man. His only fear after beating Limerick by 13 points is that Kerry "looked a bit rusty".

“We played well enough in spurts,” said the manager, “but I thought we over-elaborated at time, and that tends to happen when you try to embellish a performance. There were times when we looked a bit rusty too, and that was always going to be a worry. Thankfully we finished the game strong enough.

“But we are long enough in the game to know that the bar will be raised in three weeks, and that is what we have to get our heads around now.”

O’Connor has become a sort of unofficial spokesman for the idiosyncrasies of championship scheduling, and was repeating himself here: “We were worried, that not having played a game in a month, we would be a bit off it. It is just the scheduling and structure that drives managers mad. You know, you want to be playing games every two weeks. It is very hard for the lads mentally to be watching other teams playing games.

“I certainly haven’t got the solution, but certainly four- and five-week gaps is not good at all. In 2009, our best performance came after we played five weekends in a row, up here in the quarter-final against Dublin, so there is no such thing as burn-out. Training burns you out, not matches. That’s my rant for the day.”

O’Connor is hopeful the hamstring injury of Darran O’Sullivan is nothing more than a “tweak”, and when pressed on his overall impression of the Kerry attitude, admitted there is room for improvement: “Maybe we weren’t as sharp as we could have been.

“Despite what people might think, that it might have been one-sided, I thought the game was played at a decent enough pace at times. There was a lot of hitting and tackling in it, so maybe our fellas were a small bit off it. ”

There wasn’t a whole lot Maurice Horan could say except pay tribute to Kerry, and praise the Limerick effort – which he reckoned at least brought them closer than the Munster semi-final.

“There was definitely a difference in class there. Kerry are not just very skilful and athletic, they are also very clever playing. They are always talking to each other and you can hear the communication that is going on on the field.

“Their forwards defend so strongly they could nearly be intercounty defenders.

“The positives for us are that the three championship performances in the qualifiers for Limerick have been outstanding, and nothing short of it. It didn’t go our way today.

“But you can’t take away from what the fellas have done.

“They are distraught there today. They felt the gap should have been closer.

“Overall we have to be very proud. They could have lied down after the Munster championship but they jumped back into action and had one of the best seasons Limerick football has ever had.”