Kerry display the thin line between belief and hubris after loss to Mayo

Whatever it is about the world at the minute one thing is for certain, we are desperately excitable - needing to jump to conclusions or establish a narrative. Hero to zero, cancel culture, whatever it is, it must be black or white.

And so goes our reactions to results as they come in on a weekly basis. The commentary around any given team can flip dramatically around one performance. This makes little sense when we consider the widely accepted view of the multi-year development projects which county teams are.

Last weekend Mayo blew Kerry away in a fashion I certainly didn't see coming. Not with Kerry’s goat up following their heavy league defeat in Castlebar. Yet Mayo were on a different level.

Cheap turnovers and being caught off guard by quick frees is not how Kerry won the All-Ireland. Arguably there were hints of over confidence about their performance.

They likely had the Castlebar defeat cordoned off in their mind as a one-off disastrous night that can happen teams. Intent on playing more at their level, avoiding the cheap goals that cost them in the league and playing in Killarney with its remarkable championship record, they would have had full belief of getting the result and, in doing so, re-establish the natural pecking order.

But the line between belief and hubris is razor thin at times. For me Kerry ended up showing the latter in not appearing to set up to slow Mayo’s attacking play (and if this was part of the game plan then the lack of necessary effort to achieve it makes the same point) nor giving up the Mayo short kick-out when it was clear the significantly greater scoreboard damage that was coming off Colm Reape’s longer restarts.

Leaky Kerry

The margins though, when you have a team and management of