Four things we learned...

No deficit in hunger

If there was one big question mark over Dr Crokes going into last weekend’s county final it was whether or not they’d have the hunger to match Dingle’s ferocious desire for a first title in seventy years.

On one level you’d have to think that after six titles in eight years Crokes’ desire ought to have been sated to some cer tain degree... right? Wrong. When they had to Pat O’Shea’s men dug deep, just as they had in the semi-final against Kerins O’Rahillys.

In both the semi-final and the final there were times when it looked like their opponents might have been getting on top of them by winning more than their fair share of the fifty fifty stuff, but come the end of the game Crokes were the ones left standing having put their backs into it when the game was in the melting pot.

Flaherty is Kerry’s best option at sweeper

Kerry have had their struggles with the role of sweeper since Aidan O’Mahony hung up his boots after the 2016 campaign. In two high-profile games in Croke Park Kerry suffered something of a systems failure when trying to implement a sweeper system.

Neither Tom O’Sullivan (against Mayo in 2017) or Peter Crowley (against Galway this year) got to grips with the role, but new Kerry boss Peter Keane would seem to have a ready-made solution should he, on occasion, want to deploy a sweeper in Matthew Flaher ty.

The 2014 All Ireland minor winner has been something of a revelation during this year’s championship. Okay it’s not like we didn’t know he was a quality player, but to see him do well as a sweeper cer tainly made us sit up and take notice. He’s got the positioning, the intelligence and the football to make a success of it at inter-county level.

Dingle don’t have the depth... yet

We said before the match that Dingle would need everything to go their way if they were to triumph on Sunday. Their path to victory was a narrow one and the reason why was simply that they didn’t have enough options or enough depth. That was par ticularly evident in their attacking play at times. Too much went through Paul Geaney or rather Dingle felt compelled to play too much through Paul Geaney. What he needed was a foil. As it was Crokes could set up to stifle him and in that regard they did a stellar job.

It made for a frustrating afternoon for Dingle and for their talisman. The good news is that this shouldn’t be as much of an issue in the future if Conor Geaney continues his progression and recovery from injury. Injuries did hurt Dingle, they were only able to bring on three subs while Crokes used their full complement. That was huge issue for them and put them at a serious disadvantage.

There’s life after Gooch

Look obviously he’s not gone yet – and he did provide a calming influence when he came on for Gavin O’Shea in the second half – but it’s clear that Colm Cooper is at the winding up phase of his Dr Crokes career, which is not to say that he’s going to be retiring any time soon necessarily, merely to state that he’s no longer their key player. He didn’t star t and we wouldn’t expect him to start too many games as the Crokes bid for Munster and All Ireland glory and, yet, Crokes are still moving along serenely. That says something about their development and the plans put in place for Pat O’Shea etal.

For most clubs to lose a player of Gooch’s calibre as a star ter – through age or injury or whatever – would be a hammer blow, but not Crokes. For their long suffering rivals that’s kind of scary. The idea that Crokes would be vulnerable in the post-Gooch world seems fanciful now.