Jack O’Connor was not surprised by Kerry’s trouncing of Dublin in Monday's All-Ireland quarter-final as he always felt there was a big performance in his side.
The Dromod native revealed that Kerry's intention was to stop Dublin from getting off to a good start, upset their defensive marking system and counteract their short kick-out strategy.
'We tried to upset Dublin's marking a bit. We started Tommy Walsh on the 40, and we Declan (O'Sullivan) inside. We thought starting Declan inside would upset their marking arrangements.
'Because Croke Park is a big pitch, you don't actually need a big man in there. If you have lively, small fellas it's often just as effective. Then we put Tommy back in and after a while we brought Tadhg (Kennelly) on and he us great legs.
'We had worked very, very hard on nullifying (Stephen) Cluxton, because Cluxton's a fair operator. He'd put it into the eye of a needle, but we felt that was a huge part of their game. But the thing we were adamant about was we were going to set the tempo.
'We thought it was crucial we take that away from them. The warm-up inside in the dressing room was geared towards that, to be primed to get a fast start and then keep the heat on. We felt somewhere along the line that Dublin would lose heart because of that."
He added: 'We hit them hard and early. We had 1-2 up after five minutes, and Croke Park is a bad place to be trying to clear your head after that kind of a start. Then at the start of the second half our motto was not to lie back, not to sit back, keep at it, and that was very pleasing, the way we kept the pressure on.'
