There have been sweeter All-Irelands for Kerry but not that many. And none that took as much winning. Just six weeks ago, they were down and destitute against Meath, well-beaten on the pitch and running a field hospital off it. Now they’re All-Ireland champions again and everyone else is drowning in that familiar mix of envy and bafflement at the speed with which they can regenerate.
They sail off into the distance as champions, relaxed and content, everything in its right place. Donegal were dealt with as readily and summarily as Tyrone and Armagh before them. Throw the yawn against Cavan into the mix and it’s the most comfortable Ulster Championship ever won.
The final score was 1-26 to 0-19, making it the first 10-point win in an All-Ireland final since 2007. There have been six double-digits victories in the past 50 years of deciders – five of them have been Kerry’s. Somewhere in their race memory is the number one rule of finals – when you have the other crowd where you want them, bury them.
Donegal will spend the winter disgusted at the ease with which Kerry were able to do just that. They couldn’t contain Paudie Clifford or Gavin White as they came scheming and steaming through the Donegal defence. They were penned in on their own kickout and allowed Shane Ryan to get his away too handily. And despite Brendan McCole’s best efforts, David Clifford was unplayable.
RM Block
“We didn’t perform, Kerry did perform, that’s the bottom line,” said Jim McGuinness afterwards. “They started very early in the game and they got a foothold in the game. I thought we responded quite well in the first half on our attack. We were good, we were clinical but I think they might have scored in their first six attacks, so we were struggling to deal with them in that period.
“From our own point of view, we made too many mistakes. We did things that we don’t normally do. We made decisions that we don’t normally do and we had just too many turnovers. We had too many turnovers and some of them were kind of clutch enough moments.”
The reason for those turnovers and mistakes though was obvious to anyone watching. Donegal didn’t bring anything like enough ferocity to the game, they so clearly didn’t meet the moment the way the winners did.
Kerry attacked this All-Ireland final like generations of Kerry teams before them. Faster to the ball, snappier to the breaks, more alive to the terms and conditions. Maybe in all the build-up we should have taken more account of the fact that only two of the Donegal panel had ever played in an All-Ireland final before whereas 11 of Kerry’s line-up were here just two years ago.
Whatever explains it, Kerry were seven points up here at the break and helpfully had a very recent example of what can go wrong from there. “Our mantra at half-time was we weren’t going to collapse like you saw probably with the Cork hurlers last week,” said Jack O’Connor afterwards.
For O’Connor, this was a glorious way to sign off. He has always said this is his final year and he more or less confirmed as much in the aftermath. This is his fifth title, 21 years after his first. From his pulpit on the Hogan Stand, GAA president Jarlath Burns suggested that maybe now O’Connor should take his place alongside Mick O’Dwyer in the ranks of the Kerry immortals.
Now, you can make up your own mind on the framing there – O’Connor might just be entitled to think four in 20 years was enough on their own – and obviously these things are pointless and subjective.
But this much is undeniable – when June was getting hot and clammy and Kerry were in crisis, they were blessed to have someone carrying two decades in his knapsack standing out front. O’Connor has been around long enough to know the currency of being able to keep putting one foot in front of the other. In Kerry, the tide doesn’t stay out for long.
“They’re all hard-earned but this one, I suppose, in particular, was hard-earned because we had a world of setbacks all year, starting with the league. An awful lot of injuries, lost a lot of good men.
“It’s a massive panel effort and a backroom team effort. Delighted for the people that were with me as much as myself. Obviously, delighted for myself because it was a tough old year. I found this a tough year.
“I was inside here a month ago and there was a lot of steam coming out of my ears. It wasn’t faked or it wasn’t put on. It was authentic because I felt that we were getting a lot of unfair stick and we were trying our butts off and have been from the start of the year. So, for us to finally get the reward is great.
“We were very determined leaving the hotel this morning. I had a few words with them just before we got on the bus that we were going to take the game to Donegal. We weren’t going to sit back and just see what they had to offer. We were really going after them. We were going after Patton’s kickouts. We were going to drive on.”
They did and it was enough to blow Donegal to pieces. Both Cliffords were immense, Joe O’Connor guaranteed himself second place in the Footballer of the Year stakes and Gavin White put in one of the great captain’s displays in any All-Ireland final.
And so the 2025 championship ends Kerry on top. The year that football was reborn, the season the old game came back to its people, it all finishes with Sam Maguire back in the Kingdom and everybody else playing catch-up. Again. Yet bleedin’ again.
Jim? Jim Gavin? What the hell have you done?
