Ciarán Whelan: Kerry's greater 'need' could prove crucial against Mayo

The RTÉ cameras head to Tralee this weekend for the clash of Kerry and Mayo on Saturday night and Ciarán Whelan believes the home side can edge the Allianz Division 1 encounter despite suffering defeats in their last two matches against Kevin McStay's side.

Mayo inflicted a 2-14 to 1-10 defeat on the Kingdom in Castlebar 12 months ago, wrapping up the victory by half-time.

They followed up that victory with a 1-19 to 0-17 win in Killarney in an All-Ireland SFC round-robin tie in May, ending Kerry's 39-match unbeaten home run in the Championship in the process.

Reflecting on those performances and looking ahead to what lies in store this time around, Whelan said on the RTÉ GAA Podcast: "You look back to last year and Kerry went up as All-Ireland champions, back off a holiday, and landed into Castlebar and they got their wings clipped fairly aggressively. Mayo absolutely destroyed them.

"I was down in Kerry for the group game and Mayo did a job on Kerry.

"Mayo seem to like playing Kerry under Kevin McStay. I don't know whether it's the way Kerry set up that suits Mayo's game plan.

"I'd say Mayo coming away the last night against Dublin were really happy to get out with two points after playing at 50-60%, compared to the first half the previous week against Galway where I thought they were excellent and looked really sharp.

"I thought they were really poor against Dublin at times, particularly in the first quarter and the third quarter.

"They got out with the win and you can't beat that in league football, to come away with plenty to work on, picking up the two points that are so valuable in the league.

"It puts them in a really nice position going down to Kerry and it's a free shot to a certain degree.

"They'll probably learn from