By Paul Keane

It was a fifth TG4 All-Ireland ladies football title success as Dublin manager for Mick Bohan but, truly, this was the one that caught him by surprise.

A rip-roaring first-half performance, inspired by Hannah Tyrrell, set Dublin on the road to victory at Croke Park and capped a memorable All-Ireland series when they went from strength to strength.

If they were great against both Donegal and Cork in the quarter and semi-finals then they were outstanding this time, in the first-half at least as they thundered into a 0-11 to 0-4 lead.

Yet for Bohan, if you'd predicted all of this just last autumn, he'd have laughed at you. He didn't see it coming.

"The work this group has done, look, we had no choice," he explained. "We were on our knees in October, November time. I know when you win something you can kind of dismiss that a little bit but if you knew where we were, we were really trying to maximise everything we had.

"Genuinely, and the group will tell you, we were just trying to make this thing competitive. We didn't foresee this."

So what was so different about what was happening last October and November?

"The quality was poor," responded Bohan. "The bottom line is there was so much to learn. I look at Niamh Donlon who played her first competitive game for us only five weeks ago in a challenge game against Mayo. Five weeks ago and she's after playing in an All-Ireland final and from what I could see she gave a fairly decent account of herself.

"Niamh Crowley, her first season out of minor, you'd put her in your pocket, she's five foot three inches. But she has a heart of a lion and that's the point. The experienced players took them under their wing. I haven't seen this before in a team. They were like big sisters to them and they taught them so much in that amount of time. This is genuinely a really good story in sport.

"We were not in this arena, we were nowhere close to it, and I have been there, I can tell you. This one is sweet."

For Dublin defender Martha Byrne, it was a slow burning season that took its time to catch fire.

"We're always here to win an All-Ireland, not just to make up the numbers in terms of the competition but the last few weeks we just saw the performances really coming together," said Byrne. "Even some of the middle players, not just the younger or the elder girls, coming to the fore. The likes of Caoimhe O'Connor, Kate Sullivan, they have become absolute leaders on this team so every week it's been building and building again."

Byrne reckoned Dublin were perceived as underdogs throughout the year as Bohan presided over a team in transition, which suited her fine.

"We had that underdog tag the whole way through the competition and we weren't the favourites so this was just hugely sweet," she said.

Joint Kerry manager Declan Quill spoke of a group of players and management that put their 'heart and soul' into it but came up short again. Last year, they put 1-2 on the board before Meath had gotten going but still lost that game. This time around, they suffered the slow start before coming roaring back late on against a Dublin side that had given themselves enough of a cushion to hold on.

"I think we were a bit passive in the first-half," said Quill. "We addressed it at half-time. We were standing off them. I don't know, it's very hard to put your finger on it. Like, the group were so calm, they were so ready. The difference between this year and last year...like, I thought they were ready to explode into the game and to go on and win it for the first time in 30 years. But it doesn't happen every day of course and today wasn't going to be our day. Well done to the Dubs, they're a fantastic bunch of girls. I was on an All-Star trip there a few months ago with a few of them and they're absolutely lovely girls and I wish them the best."