Padraic Joyce: We're going to regret it for a long time

"We're going to regret it for a long time," was the blunt verdict of Padraic Joyce after his side's gut-wrenching missed opportunity in Sunday's All-Ireland final.

The Galway manager understandably wasn't in the mood to stick about for a lengthy, navel-gazing post-mortem, and the GAA press officer told the assembled media to get their questions done sharpish.

After the 2022 All-Ireland final loss, Joyce came into the press conference spitting poison about the late free call against John Daly which swung the momentum back towards Kerry with four minutes left in the game.

This time around, the blame lay closer to home.

"We're absolutely devastated. The dressing room is in an awful state. Firstly, congratulations to Armagh and congratulations to Kieran McGeeney on the job he's done with them.

"You can't take that away from them. They won the game.

"We have to be realistic here. We didn't play anywhere near to our potential in the second half. We probably made more mistakes in the second half than we've made in all the games all year.

"Look, it's going to be hard to take. We had 25 shots on goal and we scored 13.

"I'm not going to sit here and criticise players because they're great lads in Galway. The effort that they've put in for me all year, and the last five years, has been fantastic.

"It's just hard to put your finger on how we didn't perform the way we should have performed."

For Galway, who entered the game as marginal favourites and with a chance of becoming only the third county to enter double digits in the football roll of honour, it was a second All-Ireland final defeat in three years.

In 2022, it was new enough terrain for them, with most of the accumulated pressure heaped on Kerry beforehand. In that context, Galway were