Kerry edge past Armagh in hard-fought Tralee battle

Kerry rebounded from last weekend's trimming by Mayo in the best possible fashion to beat Armagh by one point in Tralee, 0-12 to 0-11, on Saturday evening and secure the defending champions’ second win of the campaign.

Trailing by two points well beyond the signalled five minutes of additional time, Armagh manufactured a late free with nothing less than a goal needed, but Rian O’Neill saw his 20-metre free rise over the crossbar to half the deficit, much to Kerry’s relief.

It was a resurgent Kerry team that took to the field, bringing all the energy and intensity that they were missing against Mayo the previous Saturday, but they met an Armagh team that matched those qualities every bit and took the home side to the wire in front of a 11,603 crowd.

The teams were deadlocked at 0-06 apiece at the end of a cagey first half, with the visitors surely the happier side having sat back for much of the opening period, content to invite Kerry to try and picked their way through a massed defence.

That Kerry managed just four points from play, two more free close-range frees, and just one wide, said as much about Armagh's disciplined and structured defending as it did about Kerry’s cutting edge in attack, though a partisan home crowd were enraged with some of the refereeing decisions that went against them in the first half.

Those two Kerry frees were converted by David Clifford and Sean O’Shea, though it was some source of frustration that neither man – both making their first start of the season – could raise a flag from play, though Clifford still finished Kerry’s top scorer with four pointed frees on a night Kerry had nine scorers, including two late points from substitutes Tony Brosnan and Donal O’Sullivan that secured the win.

Kerr