THE GAME IN 60 SECONDS

MAIN MAN

You can’t really look past Westmeath’s Allan Devine. He bagged himself a signifcant haul of points and apart from a few wides in the second half was pretty much unerring from the placed ball. For Kerry Seán Weir was arguably the top performer, amongst the others to impress were Tomás O’Connor and Pádraig Boyle who maybe should have been positioned closer to goal for more of the match.

TALKING POINT The better team won and, while Kerry could have stolen it, maybe it’s no harm that they’re spending another year in Division 2A. KEY MOMENT

It’s either Jack Goulding’s dismissal or Allan Devine’s goal. It’s tempting to view the sending off as the seminal moment and it certainly put Kerry on the backfoot when they were trying to stage a recovery, but Devine’s goal was the all important moment.

REF WATCH

After the game Fintan O’Connor wasn’t happy with a couple of the decisions, but overall we didn’t feel the Kilkenny many did too badly. Maybe he was compensating for sending off Goulding, but Kerry got a lot of frees in the fifteen minutes after his dismissal.