​By Paul Keane

Tomás Ó Sé did something a little different with his Kerry players ahead of the Dalata Hotel Group All-Ireland U-20 football final. He flew them up to Dublin instead of taking the bus or the train.

And for the first 20 minutes or so at Croke Park, he wondered if breaking the habit of a lifetime might just have cost his team.

He felt Kerry were ‘flat’ and ‘leggy’ at that stage, and seemingly powerless to prevent holders Tyrone from running up an eight-point lead. With 26 minutes on the clock, Tyrone were still comfortably clear, 1-8 to 0-4.

If somebody had told you at that stage that Kerry would suddenly assume complete control, hold Tyrone scoreless for the next 23 minutes and outscore the Ulster champions by 0-17 to 0-2 for the remainder of the game, you’d have sent them packing.

But that’s how the remainder of the game unfolded as Kerry swept to their 11th title at the grade, their first since 2008. Afterwards, manager Ó Sé was apologetic when he arrived in for the post-match press conference long after Tyrone manager Paul Devlin had been and gone.

“I wasn’t going to miss any of the craic that we had inside in the dressing-room,” he explained with a grin.

“It isn’t as if you have a right to be winning these things but it was nice to come out on top. Half way through the first half, it wasn’t looking too great. But a few of them kept us in it.

“Evan Boyle had a Trojan first half and kept us in it. That last 12 minutes of the first half, I think we outscored them seven points to one, which was massive. It gave us a platform for the second half and we wanted to focus on moving the ball quickly because it hurt them.

“We hadn’t been doing that in the first half. We turned over a pile of ball. I think we turned it over, lost it, 10 times and they scored seven from that.

“I didn’t foresee how dominant we would be in the second half. They kept the ball away from Evan, and for our lads to win the breaking ball as much as they did and to score after it, it was brilliant.

“It was great to see and it was as good a performance as I’ve seen out of any U-20s team that I’ve been involved with in the last four years.”

Kerry captain Paddy Lane mentioned how energised the players were by being paired off with Tyrone again. Kerry lost the 2024 final to Tyrone, as well as a 2025 semi-final.

But it took them a while to get going all the same.