Former Kerry player and manager Éamonn Fitzmaurice feels the Kingdom's leading players are in better form than 12 months ago.
On Sunday, the league champions rustled up four first-half goals to wrap up their latest Munster title quickly, easing off the throttle in the second half to win by 11 points.
It was a fifth provincial title on the spin and an 86th overall - though most Kerry supporters stopped keeping count of Munster SFC victories a long time ago - and confirms their presence in Group 2 of the All-Ireland series, alongside Cork, Roscommon and the Leinster final runners-up, a relatively untaxing group when set alongside Groups 1 and 4.
Jack O'Connor's side have now scored 24 goals across 10 games in league and championship, with David Clifford - subdued for much of the 2024 season - notching 2-05 against Clare, while Seanie O'Shea, returning after a period on the sidelines, landed 0-08.
Paudie Clifford, suspended yesterday, will be available again for the group stage, after his stellar series of performance late in the league.
After another routine Munster final success to go with earlier winning the Division 1 title, @efitz6 feels @Kerry_Official are a much improved collective from last year #rtegaa #rtegaapodcast pic.twitter.com/4gX6r9GpTE
— RTÉ GAA (@RTEgaa) May 5, 2025
"The key difference between Kerry this year and this time last year is that an awful lot of the lads are playing well," Fitzmaurice said on the RTÉ GAA podcast.
"They're playing seven, eight, nine out of 10. Whereas, at this stage last year, a lot of them were five or six out of 10.
"They were just looking for a bit of form. They weren't quite playing with the confidence or the fluency they can play with.
"They just look good at the moment. That's a positive for Kerry. For the next couple of weeks, they just have to try and beat whatever is in front of them.
"There will be battles. Obviously, Roscommon in the first game up is all they're going to be focusing on. But that game above in Páirc Uí Chaoimh will have a real edge to it.
"Cork will be coming, believing they should have won the first day out. Kerry will be forewarned of the qualities of Cork.
"Hopefully, it will lead to the kind of battles that used to be there, 10 or so years ago and over the previous 10 years, where those games were really 50:50 and there was a real physical edge to them."
O'Connor observed afterwards that he would be "hard taskmaster" to "quibble too much" with Kerry's display, though Fitzmaurice says there's always issues and imperfections to address.
As in the 2023 Munster final, Clare finished in the odd situation of having registering more points than Kerry, while losing by a double-digit margin (it was 5-14 to 0-15 on that occasion). However, much of Clare's tally came late on, when the result was already long settled.
"Clare won the second half. It had almost become a challenge match at that stage," Fitzmaurice said.
"What'll be most happy with is Kerry would have been focused on getting a good start, coming out of the traps and making sure they weren't giving Clare belief and giving them the chance to get a foothold in the game.
"They did that from the off. They won the throw-in, Seanie O'Shea kicked a two-pointer within 30 seconds and they went from there. Once the goals started going in, that was that.
"When they're being fussy, and they're really starting to critique their own performance, they'll look at the 21 points (conceded). They were sloppy up front at times which seems very harsh considering they scored 4-20.
"But some of the final passes, they were forcing them a bit. And they were turned over and against a better team that could have countered quicker it could have been costly."
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