Prior to last year’s All-Ireland final, Peter Keane had yet to lose a Championship game while in charge of a Kerry team at any level.
Now, he’s lost two in succession, albeit 14 months apart. He still looked shell-shocked when his time came to pore over yesterday’s defeat to Cork.
“Huge lesson,” he acknowledged. “I said last year after we lost the All-Ireland you are starting at the bottom of a greasy pole again and we are stuck at the bottom of that greasy pole now again.
“It would have been lovely to have pushed on and progressed, but we didn't, so we just got to go away and re-look at it.”
His side’s wastefulness will be something he’ll rue long into the winter and beyond.
"Early on the first quarter we opened them up in the first quarter but we didn't take them. Maybe sometimes you get stuck in a hole instead of kicking on.
“We just weren't pushing on. There were scoring opportunities. Thirteen from 30, that speaks for itself.”
The black cards for Ronan Buckley and David Moran were costly too, with Keane feeling Moran’s was harsh.
“There was a bit of a physicality going on. I thought he had been put out of the game just before that. It happens, you just got to get on with it.”
Keane defended the decision to start Brian O Beaglaoich at wing-forward despite him being best known as a defender.
“He had done very well in the previous two games, he deserved a shot,” he said, before it was put to him that their only clear goal opportunity fell to the An Gaeltacht man.
“He did, if he didn't have a second opportunity going through. He was cutting them open.
“We were creating chances, we just weren't taking them.”
