Kerry football manager, Peter Keane.
By John Harrington
Kerry manager Peter Keane says he’s ‘relatively happy’ with his team’s season to date despite Sunday’s defeat to Mayo in the Allianz Football League Division 1 Final.
Having led by four points at half-time they were comprehensively outplayed by Mayo in the second-half.
Keane was naturally disappointed with the result, but insisted that Kerry’s League campaign as whole should be looked on in a positive light.
"You might think I’m mad here after losing a League final - of course I’m disappointed to have lost a League final - but I’m going down the road relatively happy," said Keane after the match.
"We’ve played eight games and a lot of things went our way. What did we lose? We lost one game in Tralee by two points, we lost a game here today by two scores, a game we could have stolen in the end.
"You know what, I can’t say I’m disappointed. Don’t pick that up wrong, we came here to win a game but you look at it say, ‘We’ve had a good league’.”
Despite playing second-best to Mayo for large tracts of the match Kerry could still have won it had Rob Hennelly not pulled off a wonder-save from a palmed David Clifford effort in injury-time.
Mayo goalkeeper Robbie Hennelly pictured making a vital injury-time safe from Kerry's David Clifford.
In the final reckoning, Keane felt the difference between winning and losing was that Kerry simply didn’t take enough of the scoring chances that came their way.
“I think in the first half in particular, we had lots of chances and we just didn’t put them away,” said the Kerry manager.
“We had lots of opportunities that we just didn’t take so I would say in the first half in particular.
“We were still tipping away in that second half and then goals just came at critical times. Even at the death, we were unlucky ourselves that we didn’t poke a goal.”
The worrying thing from a Kerry point of view should be the fact that Mayo scored three goals and created many more genuine goal-scoring opportunities.
Kerry had been very defensively sound during the League until Sunday’s Final, but the manner in which they were cut open by Mayo’s hard-running, short-passing game will give Keane food for thought ahead of the Championship.
“You don’t like conceding three goals but I thought the goalie did excellent,” he said.
“In some respects, we defended very well. There was a lot of running going on.
“But to go back to the specific three goals that’s something we will look at over the next week or two and see where they came from.
“We’ll be sitting down probably next week and tidying up our panel and putting a Championship panel together.
“I would have to say I’m happy with where we are after the League. I’d be happier if we had won today.
“Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t come up here thinking, ‘Ah, we’re going to lose this and it’ll be lovely for us’ but I’m relatively happy.”
