WINNING the inaugural Michéal Ó Mhuircheartaigh Cup pleased Jack O’Connor – but the Kerry boss refused to jump for joy.
The Kingdom trudged past Mayo in a Division 1 final to forget at Croke Park as Paul Geaney capitalised on a poor kick-out to hit the net in the first half.
Paudie and David Clifford led the line with 0-12 between them to seal their 24th league crown – but their boss was left with more questions than answers before the championship.
The Kingdom can afford to fly out on a training camp in Portugal on Wednesday ahead of their Munster semi-final against Cork or Limerick on April 19.
And O’Connor says they have serious work to do in the sun despite yesterday’s win.
He said: “Any day you come up here and get silverware, it’s good. It’s nice that it’s the Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh trophy as well.
“We didn’t do a lot of talking about it but looking at it now, it’s nice that we won the inaugural one.
“Now, I wouldn’t be giving us too much kudos. I thought we were average at times but we managed to raise our game then when we needed to. But for today it was good enough.
“It’s easy when you’re sitting on the fence out here, lads. Mayo, to be fair to them, put pressure on our kickers.
“I say we’d a good share of wides. We wouldn’t be shouting off from the rooftops but it was good enough for today.”
On the other hand, Mayo start their Connacht SFC campaign against Sligo this Sunday in Castlebar.
Boss Kevin McStay admits their sloppiness on the ball cost them the game, as they never got going at Croke Park.
And he admits having less than a week to get things right again for the championship is far from ideal.
He said: “I don’t want to not do a national final justice. Hassle wouldn’t be the word I’d use, we were mad to win it, but the schedule just hurt us a little bit. We’re, as you can imagine, very keen on having a go at the Connacht Championship.
“Sligo is the first fence and we have to keep them in mind. That’s in the background all the time.
“We came to win it, don’t think otherwise. I just thought we were a little bit leggy maybe, or just didn’t get to the pitch of the game, never asked a big question at all.
“That’s the disappointing part in terms of we didn’t mind the ball properly at this level of the game – didn’t mind it at all actually.
“Didn’t get the scores that we had, we had plenty of opportunities. The disappointing bit is we didn’t get to the pitch of the game.
“We’ll have to have a good look now at that during the week and see why.
“Because the turnaround is fairly fast and we can’t be disappointed and thinking back to what’s happened in the last few hours. We just have to move it on now.”
