A relieved Jack O'Connor described Seanie O'Shea's last-gasp free as one of the "best pressure kicks" he'd seen after his Kerry side edged past Dublin in Sunday's high-octane All-Ireland semi-final at Croke Park.
O'Connor, back as Kerry manager for a third stint, admitted that the "old ticker was going fairly fast" in the closing stages but his team squeezed home and he will now guide the Kingdom into a sixth All-Ireland final as manager.
When O'Shea stood up to the free, with the clock gone past 75 minutes, O'Connor admitted, from his vantage point on the line, that he didn't think it was a scorable free at that point in the contest.
"Personally, from the line, I didn't think it was kickable to be honest with you, straight up," O'Connor told RTÉ Sport after the game.
"I didn't think a man could get the distance because Seanie Shea had emptied the tank.
"That was the 76th minute. He had given a ferocious performance up to then. To have the resilience and the strength and more importantly the technique to kick that with the in step and just glide it in from the right hand post, into the breeze and into the hill.
"So that has to be one of the best pressure kicks we've seen here, and we've seen a lot of kicks, that I've seen here in Croke Park in a long, long time."
Centre-forward O'Shea was a central figure throughout, coolly slipping home Kerry's early goal and slotting 1-04 in total, 1-02 from play. On the minus side, he struck a slack penalty late in the first half, missing the chance to build up a substantial lead before the break.
"I don't think the penalty affected him because he was playing very, very well," stresses O'Connor.
"He had a great start in that game. He had kicked 1-2 before he missed the penalty. Seanie is a resilient character, that was never going to affect him.
"But like, that last kick there's very few players in the country...you go back to the Maurice Fitzs and the Bryan Sheehan's of this world to kick like that, but particularly the last kick and the amount that he had given in the game."
Sean O'Shea steps up with the final kick of the game to win the match for Kerry and break Dublin hearts.
— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) July 10, 2022
They reach the All-Ireland final to play Galway.
Highlights on #sundaygame from 10.10pm pic.twitter.com/WRq72iNlAz
O'Connor had, by that stage, already turned his attention to extra-time and his fatiguing players.
"We were mentally preparing for extra-time with two or three minutes to go because you know, we were even discussing on the line who we'd put back in because there were lads who were out on their feet, the likes of Jack Barry.
"Jack has missed a good bit of training, he was absolutely out on his feet but what a performance by him to match up against Bryan Fenton and to last the 75 minutes so hats off to all those lads."
In the aftermath, O'Connor was quick to trumpet the quality of the game and reserved particular praise for goalkeeper Shane Ryan for hitting his mark with the kickouts late on, when Dublin were pushing hard to disrupt.
"It felt on the line that it was a fantastic game, a great battle. Dublin threw everything at us like the great team they are and their big players came to the fore in the last 15 minutes.
"Just delighted with our fellas, with the resilience they showed. That game was going against us, that was a fairly significant wind there. We had thrown everything at it up to then and I think the absolute key to it was in the last 10 minutes, when Dublin were pressing our kick-outs Shane Ryan got off all our kick-outs. I think that was hugely significant.
"If they turn over one of those kick-outs I thought we were done. Fellas like Brian O Beaglaoích must have shown short for four or five of those kick-outs and more importantly broke out and broke the line and got us moving again. We were still creating a bit down the other end, even though we were a bit wasteful.
"But what a battle, Dublin are a great team. Probably the greatest team of all time so you can imagine how much it took for us to finally get over the line."
The result marks Kerry's first championship win over Dublin since the famous 'startled earwigs' game of 2009, when O'Connor presided over a 17-point humiliation of the Dubs in an All-Ireland quarter-final. Since then, they've lost five from five, often in agonising circumstances.
O'Connor noted the psychological importance of getting over the line but stressed that their job wasn't done.
"Sure of course it's significant psychologically but I was saying to the television media out there, Mayo were in this exact same position last year and I had the feeling that Mayo had made a huge breakthrough but they didn’t get over the line in the final.
"You have to go the distance. Getting there isn’t enough. That’ll be a big, big incentive for us over the next two weeks to finish the job now. At Christmas this game will be forgotten about if we don’t get over the line in the final."
