KERRY WILL HAVE to wait until they discover their All-Ireland semi-final opponents, as Mayo and Roscommon return to Croke Park on 7 August to battle it out for a place in the last four.
Until then, the Kingdom have plenty to work on.
It was by no means a vintage display by Eamonn Fitzmaurice’s men, who left plenty of scoring opportunities behind them. When they were good, they were very good.
The winners enjoyed their best form in a scintillating opening 13 minutes where they powered into a five-point lead after Kieran Donaghy’s goal. From that point they mixed the good with the bad, as Fitzmaurice acknowledged afterwards.
“There were aspects of our performance, patches where we didn’t play well and periods as well when we were very sloppy,” he said.
“Overall, look, it’s job done. If you had asked me this morning would I have taken an eight-point win, I’d have said absolutely. It’s a case of onwards and upwards now and we’ll look to improve over the next three weeks.
“I think we were a bit lethargic today. We weren’t as sharp as we have been in other games this year. We were sloppy at times. We gave up a good few goal opportunities.”
Was it a mental or physical affliction of lethargism that affected his Kerry players?
“I think probably both,” he replied. “We looked a bit off the pace initially and definitely our decision-making wasn’t good at times. But you can’t beat championship games and everything that goes with them.
“The emotional build-up as well as everything else, coming back up to Dublin, getting that routine again coming into Croke Park. There’s plenty for us to take from today.”
There had been talk emanating from the Kingdom of an injury star forward James O’Donoghue carried into the game. This was his quietest championship game of the year and the 2014 Footballer of the Year was called ashore 12 minutes into the second-half.
“He was okay. He had a knock a week ago but he was fine to play here. You have to give credit to the Galway rearguard, they were tight and tigerish and they were well structured and they made it hard for us there at times.
“Our decision-making was off a bit as well and James will benefit from that 40-45 minutes of football. He’ll come bouncing back again next week.”
Fitzmaurice reserved high praise for Johnny Buckley, who impressed in his role as a deep-lying centre-forward.
“Thought he was outstanding today. He led from the front in everything he did. There were periods of the game when we were a bit off it and he led with his work-rate and his tackling and obviously then with his football, he was excellent.
“He was a massive option on kick-outs. So I couldn’t praise him enough. He led from the front.”
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