EVER SEEN a startled earwig? You know when you lift a rock and that little brown insect runs around aimlessly in every direction, not sure where he’s going, but just knowing he’s probably a goner. That’s how manager Pat Gilroy described Dublin’s performance in Croke Park yesterday. In the end they didn’t just get a fright, but something that could haunt them for the rest of the lives.

Form, we know, is temporary. Dublin we know are better than this. Everything we know is wrong.

“I think the big factor was that we seemed to be like startled earwigs in the first 15 minutes, all over the pitch,” said Gilroy, sitting in the Croke Park press room, one hand over his face, and the other possibly trying to pinch himself just to prove all this wasn’t actually happening.

“I think nerves got to us. In a lot of positions. We were behind for everything, everywhere. There were so many changes we could have made, because we were just getting killed everywhere. It was showing most at full back, because they were just flooding through on us.”

Gilroy is clearly not about to make any excuses so we suggest some for him. The lay-off since the Leinster final; perhaps that helps explain it? “I don’t think the lay-off had anything to do with it. From the off, we weren’t our usual self, off our game. We didn’t look lively at any stage in the first half. We were behind on men, and a lot of it looked like fellas were just nervous.”

Any warning signs at all; red lights flashing in his head before the game?

“No, we were very happy with the build-up. These things happen in sport. We’re only human beings, after all. That sometimes happens with guys. And it just happened to too many today.”

Maybe Dublin simply underestimated Kerry; believed in the de-hyping of the Kingdom?

“No, because we expected Kerry to be brilliant today. We expected them to be back to themselves. We expected them to come at us, as they did, but the kind of pressure game we were hoping to put on around the middle of the field just never happened. We just never got on them, at all. Nowhere were we on top.

“Guys who were really quick looked slow. So the only thing I can put it down to is nerves in the first half. We’d 13 or 14 balls into our full-forward line, and got something off three. That’s not good enough at this level.”

Paul Griffin is never one for excuses and the Dublin captain admitted the main reason Kerry played so well is that they were allowed to. “Well they played superbly, exceptionally well. But at the same time I think we made life easy for them. Especially in the first half. We didn’t contest for enough ball. Particularly around the middle of the park. We let them move the ball quite a lot, and didn’t put enough pressure on them. I think that isolated our full-back line and defence a little bit, and that caused a lot of problems.

“Kerry are the kind of team when they do get on a run they punish you, get scores. They’ve excellent forwards. That’s what happened, and took the game away from us quite quickly. We dug during the second half, but chasing a lead like that, they were still quite comfortable playing us on the break.

There was no complacency, said Griffin, because with Kerry there is never any complacency: “We knew that was the Kerry that was going to show up. I think the team that went through the qualifiers were training for this as opposed to worrying about those games. I don’t think we’ve ever played a Kerry team that haven’t been fully prepared. They’re a class outfit. The quality of the players they have shows, I suppose, that form is temporary. They were peaking for these games, and the next two ahead.

“Their record in quarter-finals has been exceptional these past couple of years, and they’re very good at preparing for this kind of stage. And today, the came out and blew us out of the water, for most of the game.”

The question of where Dublin go from here will be mulled over throughout the winter – and for Griffin and the rest of the Dublin players that promises to be a particularly long, dark winter.

“That’s the unfortunate thing about championship football. It takes so long to get back to this stage again, so much work to get back there. It’s one of those things that has happened a few too many times for our liking, but that’s sport. It doesn’t mean you give up. It just means you try to come back stronger the next year.”