By Cian O’Connell<\/p>\n
Kerry manager Jack O’Connor praised Mayo’s energetic approach in the All-Ireland SFC Final at Croke Park.<\/p>\n
Mayo triumphed on this stage for the first time since 1951 and O’Connor acknowledged Mayo’s drive and dynamism following the game. “Obviously, it wasn’t the ending we envisaged after a tough enough year, but you have to take your hat off to Mayo – I thought they had more energy than us, more legs, more hunger,” O’Connor remarked.<\/p>\n
“Even though we fought to the end and could have snatched a draw and taken it to extra time, one or two passes went astray there in the end. I just thought on balance, Mayo were better than us on the day.”<\/p>\n
Kerry were forced to start without Diarmuid O’Connor, who was sorely missed according to the Kerry boss. “Diarmuid was a big part of our game plan on kick-outs and stuff like that with his size, his size out on the 12 pocket, but that’s why we have a panel,” the Kerry boss reflected.<\/p>\n
“We had to deal with it and it upset us a bit, but [I’m] not making excuses.<\/p>\n
“I felt we started well, went up seven and I just thought we took a few bad shot selections. I think we had four attacks where we didn’t register a score and that was significant, just kept Mayo within touching distance.”<\/p>\n
Jack Carney and Ryan O’Donoghue landed critical scores from distance for Mayo in the opening period. “They kicked a couple of two-pointers then from out on the right-hand side towards the Hill, which was the sweet spot and that just got them back in the game,” O’Connor added.<\/p>\n
“We responded well just before half-time to get that score and go in a point up. It just gave Mayo the belief that they were within touching distance and that was enough.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Cian O’Connell Kerry manager Jack O’Connor praised Mayo’s energetic approach in the All-Ireland SFC Final at Croke…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-569973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}