Jim McGuinness admitted he had no complaints in the wake of his Donegal side's All-Ireland SFC final defeat to Kerry.
The Ulster men fell short by a 1-26 to 0-19 margin at Croke Park as the Kingdom ran out relatively comfortable winners and denied Donegal the chance to get their hands on Sam Maguire for just the third time in their history.
Speaking to RTÉ Sport, McGuinness who was player and manager respectively for Donegal's two previous All-Ireland triumphs, admitted that Kerry were the better team on the day.
"Hard one to take. Felt very good going into the game and it didn't turn out that way. Hats off to Kerry, very good performance," he said.
"We struggled with wee bits and pieces in the game and paid heavy prices. I suppose, a bigger analysis will probably be first half, I thought both teams were tracking scores well in the first half but Kerry seemed to go after the twos and kicked a lot of them.
"David Clifford, I suppose some of them were absolutely exceptional so we have no qualms. We've no qualms at all.
"Disappointed for the boys, disappointed for our supporters. They were there with us. They were waiting for things to happen and it didn't happen. Listen, some days, you just have to take it on the chin.
"It's just the bottom line. You have to take your medicine and that's what we're going to have to do today."
'No qualms' - Donegal boss Jim McGuinness admits Kerry were rightful winners of today's All-Ireland Football Championship final as his team came up short. #sundaygame pic.twitter.com/335UgAOJsw
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Donegal did manage to get back to within four points of Kerry in the second half but ultimately that was as close as the gap would get between then and the hooter.
"One of the times we got it back to four, we had three wides in a row at that stage," McGuinness said.
"So even one point there might have made the difference in terms of momentum shift and would have kept you in the game, particularly with the new rules.
"There's always that opportunity then. But once them things are sort of drifting on the wrong side of it, then Kerry are always going to respond anyway at certain times.
"And then it got away again at the end. As I said earlier, hats off to Kerry. They've come in, they've done the business and we'll have to go home and think about it."
