Dublin boss Dessie Farrell expressed satisfaction at how competitive his side were after earning a draw against Kerry.
Farrell explained how he had only overseen three full training sessions with the first choice squad ahead of the Allianz League opener at Croke Park, with the team having only returned from holiday in Bali a fortnight ago.
Dublin looked to be flagging in the second half and trailed by three points with five minutes of normal time remaining but rallied to go in front before a David Clifford free deep into injury time ensured the sides finished level on 1-19 apiece.
Farrell said: “I’m very happy, to be honest. It was a really competitive game, the intensity for this time of year was significant, given it is the opener, the first League game and everything else. So yeah, I was very happy with how we competed for as long as we did.
“Obviously you want to try get out of the blocks fairly lively and it was also a question of the players that were available to us as well. But we were happy to try some new players tonight, some fellas who may not have seen much game-time over the last couple of years and then one or two newbies as well.
“So it was a mixture of experience and youth and I think it served us well at the end.”
Reflecting on how his side fought back late on, Farrell continued: “It looked at that stage that the game was kind of sliding away from us a little bit.
“There was sort of not much energy coming from our lads at that particular point in time but somehow they summoned the energy from somewhere and showed great character going down the back straight to get their noses in front at the death.”
The game, and particularly the second half, was a narky affair with 14 cards shown by referee Sean Hurson, including a red for each side with Eric Lowndes (Dublin) and Sean O’Shea (Kerry) getting their marching orders.
“I’m not sure about the cards but on face value from the sideline I think we conceded a lot of scoreable frees to them, I don’t know what the number was, maybe five or six, which cost us so that’s something we’ll definitely be looking at,” said Farrell.
Having snatched an equaliser in the 10th minute of injury time, it was put to Kerry manager Peter Keane that it was point gained for his side.
“I suppose we could look at it that way,” he answered. “Dublin could look at it that way, but look, it's a point and we'll take it.
“I suppose neither of us have a whole pile done with the All-Ireland being late, your county championships running late, as you'd well know.
“On the 15th of December, was it 14 fellas we had still playing in district championship football so look, our ability to get back was very limited. Then you had the team holiday.
“We're reasonably happy with what we got out of it for the amount of work we've done. It's a starting point and we'll build on it, we hope.”
The newly introduced advanced mark rule didn’t have a significant impact on the game, albeit three points were scored from marks on the evening, and there were also three black cards shown, which now amounts to a sin-binning.
Keane added: “Sure I suppose look, it's going to take a bit of getting used to for everyone, and for referees as well.
“I didn't realise there were 14 cards, it certainly didn't seem like a dirty game to me anyway.”
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