After guiding Kerry to the fourth All-Ireland title of his now storied management career, Jack O'Connor described their hard-fought final victory over Galway as the best kind of win and expressed the hope it would be "the start of something good".
Kerry had overcome a stuttering first half display to surge past the Connacht champions in the closing stages, getting home by four points in the finish.
Reflecting on the first half showing, O'Connor suggested that the burden of favouritism had possibly weighed on his players but the manager relished the manner of their victory in the end and the character shown.
"They're the best ones of all," O'Connor said, when asked whether they'd 'dug it out'.
"This was never going to be an easy game. I’m not sure what the odds were because I’m not a betting man. But we never took Galway lightly. I thought Galway played very very well.
"Maybe the tag of favouritism rested heavily on our fellas’ shoulders, particularly in the first half I thought we were very jiggy and not composed on the ball.
"I think we had seven wides kicked before Galway registered a wide. So they looked like they were nailing everything down into the Hill 16 end, and we were very wasteful up the other end.
"In general play I thought we were doing OK. We were turning Galway over. And we were doing very well on the Galway kick-out. I just thought we were lacking composure and just needed to be more clinical. And that was the message at half-time."
O'Connor indicated that Kerry had been given "a bit of a jolt" in the half-time team-talk.
"I was quite animated myself at half-time. I felt that we weren’t playing to our potential out there. There were players who had more to give.
"We’ve always been pretty composed in the dressing room at half-time.
"But I think today was one where we needed a bit of a jolt. And we left a couple of yahoos alright, did we Gavin (White, sitting to his left)? One or two yahoos, yeah.
"They kicked the first point of the second half and you know their game plan was working for them but I think our fellows just showed a lot of metal in the second half and we had the experience of the Dublin game to fall back on.
"Dublin came back within two points of us with 25 minutes with the wind behind them and all the momentum. So, I think that probably stood to us in the last 15 to 20 minutes that we had that to fall back on."
While David Clifford will naturally grab most of the headlines, corner back Graham O'Sullivan, a clubman of O'Connor's in Dromid Pearses, emerged as one of the pivotal performers in the second half.
"I just had a quiet word outside in the field there. I had a couple of meetings with him earlier on this year. At the start we wasn’t making the team. I just spoke about what he needed to do to progress and he is some transformed player, very athletic.
"At the start of the year he wasn’t kicking the ball for love or money. Now he is one of our best foot passers, right and left, kicked a great score, made two or three other scores, absolute revelation. I am very proud of the way a fellow Dromid man has developed this year"
O'Connor, after departing the senior job for a second time at the end of the 2012 championship, had returned to take the Kerry minors in the middle of the last decade, presiding over the first two installments of the five in a row at the grade in 2014 and 2015.
The Kerry manager viewed today's victory as the culmination of years of work at underage level.
"It isn’t about myself. It’s about that group of lads. We’ve been trying to put them together since 2014. I finished up with the seniors in 2012, because we knew that a new group needed to come.
"The great team from 04-09 had come to an end here 11 years ago, I suppose Stephen Cluxton put an end to them. We knew that a new group had to be developed and whatever. That began in 2014.
"We didn’t think today would take eight years to go the distance, but with that group, I know we won one in ’14 but this is the five in a row minors really coming through today. We’re just hoping it is the start of something good."
