There's a smile coming back to the face of Páidí Ó Sé. After a couple of hard weeks on and away from the football field this was the sort of afternoon that will always help turn things around. No more looking back then, only forward.

"My first reaction to that is that we're still in the championship," said Ó Sé. "That was the most important thing for us coming up here. I suppose in all fairness we did break down Wicklow quite well and I would have to be happy with that as well.

"So this has lifted the cloud of the last nine or 10 days. We can look forward to the next round now and we'll take it from there. But I was very impressed by the honesty of all the players out there. We spoke about that during the week and I think we did get that back.

"But we'll have to improve as well. That was more like Wicklow on a bad day, and we'll still have to get down to work before the next round."

From most people's point of view the game was over at half time, and Ó Sé was limiting the extent of this lesson ahead of the next round: "Sure, there wasn't really much you can take. But it was a great team effort, and when you get every player pulling his weight, it lessens the burden on any one player and that was important for us.

"And it's been a 30-man effort all this week. We were determined to put everything behind us, and we can start looking forward again now."

A clearly down-hearted John O'Leary could have no excuses then. "There was just too much of a gulf in class out there," said the Wicklow manager. "That was the bottom line. There were just so much bigger and stronger than us, and by far the better footballers. But we did let them get an early goal that you don't want to do against Kerry. We were always going to be climbing a mountain but it got much stepper after that.

"It's clear though that we do need to find some more footballers in Wicklow.

"We weren't able to match the physical size of that Kerry team, but we have to train to match them and maybe learn to play like them too."