Impressive Kerry crush Tyrone at Croke Park

Kerry's Sam Maguire challenge exploded into life with a double-scores rout of 2021 winners Tyrone at Croke Park.

That they laid waste to their old rivals' championship's hopes, gaining a little bit of revenge for the 2021 semi-final defeat in the process, will have pleased the Kingdom faithful no end.

Truth be told, this wasn't even Kerry at their very best, yet they still tore an out-of-sorts Tyrone asunder, with goals from Diarmuid O'Connor and Sean O'Shea.

The Munster champions were terrific in the second half, outscoring Tyrone by 2-09 to 0-06, and while Paudie Clifford was sent off for two bookings in stoppage time, along with his marker Conor Meyler, it was a minor blip.

O'Shea finished with 1-05 for Kerry while O'Connor registered 1-02 from midfield with David Clifford, despite hitting 0-05 overall, surprisingly wasting seven good scoring opportunities over the 70 minutes.

Kerry approached the quarter-finals as the highest scoring team in the round-robin stage from the eight teams left in the championship, averaging 24.3 points per match.

Tyrone fired just 16.25 points per game in their group and the quarter-final encounter followed that pattern, with Kerry hitting the interval three clear, 0-09 to 0-06.

All week, the talk in both counties was of the potential match-ups and it turned out to be as follows; Jason Foley on Darren McCurry and Tom O'Sullivan on Darragh Canavan.

Mattie Donnelly wore number 14 and was picked up by Graham O'Sullivan but that individual battle played out mainly around the middle third.

Kerry half-back Paul Murphy did his best to keep tabs on Ruairi Canavan.

Tyrone dropped Meyler, wearing number 10, back into their defence to pick up Paudie Clifford and they operated with Michael O'Neill as an extra