Brian Barry
GAA Editor @BrianGBarry
Kerry manager Peter Keane takes positives from league final defeat
"You might think I'm mad after losing a league final, but I'm going down the road relatively happy."
Last Updated: 01/04/19 3:22pm
Peter Keane says Kerry have much to be proud of following their Allianz Football League campaign which culminated in a four-point final defeat to Mayo.
The Kingdom let a four-point half-time lead slip at Croke Park on Sunday, but overall the new manager feels the Munster side are moving in the right direction after his maiden league campaign.
"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," he commented after the defeat.
"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.
"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'."
In many ways, it's difficult to disagree with him. Kerry managed to experiment with personnel, while also blazing a trail at the top of Division 1 for the springtime campaign. Seán O'Shea thrived with the added responsibility in the forwards, Dara Moynihan nailed down a starting berth in his debut season, while Shane Ryan impressed in goals.
"There has been a big turnover and it was a league in which we had a lot of injuries," Keane continued.
"You take Paul Geaney, he only an operation three weeks ago and we got him in there (against Mayo). He was probably lacking a bit of match practice but there's lot of different positives.
"Now, the negative is we're not playing for another nine weeks when you were going pretty much game after game [every week]. But if you're asking me the question would I have been overly disappointed if we lost to Tyrone? No. Was I jumping out of my skin because we had beaten them? No. It was game by game and let's see where every game takes us."
Out of Kerry's eight games in 2019 to date, they have won six. Their two losses came against Mayo, and their inability to overcome the Connacht side in two attempts is a worry for the Munster outfit.
"I would have to say yes, I am disappointed," sighed Keane. "If you were sitting down at the start of the year, where were Kerry in the rankings? They were probably, six, seven or eight in terms of their position, from the Super 8s [last year]. So we had beaten all the teams above us at that point with the exception of Mayo.
"We would like to have beaten them but we didn't and we had two shots at it. If you look at the game in Tralee where you would not put a dog out on the night and it was 1-10 to 0-11, it was 11 scores each. There was not much in it and in [Sunday's] game there was not much in it either."
