Colm Cooper admits that football fans in Kerry would 'hate' to see Dublin completing an All-Ireland five in a row against the Kingdom on Sunday.
The Dubs are one step away from making history and the only team standing in their way are the Green and Gold. Five Sam Maguire wins back-to-back has never been done before and the team that came closest before was Kerry in 1982 when they famously lost out to Offaly and Séamus Darby’s late goal.
"I think the five in-a-row piece is a huge for people in Kerry, the fact that we’re so proud, the fact that we were going for it and it was taken away in the last minutes," said Cooper, speaking on the latest episode of the RTÉ GAA Podcast.
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"They would hate to see the Dubs doing it, let’s be honest about it."
Cooper says that he can’t see Kerry winning this weekend’s big game, though he says that the people of the Kingdom will accept nothing less than pushing Dublin all the way.
"People feel that Kerry are on the cusp of something very, very strong again and because this young team has come along people feel that they're very close to challenging Dublin," said the Gooch.
"Everybody is really behind the team, there has been a huge response from supporters and people are excited to get behind them. But nobody knows until they play Dublin because they are the real acid test to show where you are at.
"I think the next team to beat Dublin will be Kerry because they have more fire-power up front than anyone else.
"I make this point very strongly - Kerry going up and getting hammered by Dublin won’t be accepted by the Kerry public.
"People are expecting Kerry to be very competitive and there are people in Kerry who feel that they can surprise Dublin on Sunday. They’re not going up just with hope, there’s inner-confidence.
"It’s a very difficult game to see Kerry winning and the best chance of them winning is to get three goals, in my opinion, and while I think they can put up a big score my fear on the other side is can they keep the Dubs out.
"I’m going up to see a very positive performance from Kerry, but the most likely result is Dublin coming out on top."
This will be the fifth meeting between the Dubs and the Kingdom this decade, and the Boys in Blue have won them all so far – two semi-finals, 2016 and ’13, and two finals, ’15 and ’11.
