THERE’S NO DOUBT the championship came alive this weekend and, to be honest, football probably needed two games like that.

We’re always being compared to how great hurling is, edge of your seat and all that but Saturday and Sunday had plenty of drama and people soon forgot all the talk of venue choice and disrespect to the players.

For me, there’s no doubt we saw the four best teams in the country and I know there’ll be one or two who’d like to say they’ll be able to compete but they are the top four and the manner in which they went about their business was incredible, they all deserve huge credit.

It was so great to see as a football fan, the fact they went for it in the manner they did, body on the line, win at all costs. You see the lads like Aidan O’Shea going off and saying ‘stitch me up and get me back on’, you have to admire that.

The one disappointment for Mayo is they fell into the same trap as they did in the first game, getting into a lead and not kicking on. In fairness to them, they hadn’t tended to do it in semi-finals before but I don’t know why it does seem to happen to them at times.

Is it just a lack of killer instinct? It’s very hard to put your finger on it. One thing’s for sure, nobody will have examined what it is that’s lacking more than the players and James Horan but that’s the nature of sport, hard luck stories and what you’ve done for the last five years, doesn’t mean you’re entitled to win the next one.

Part of me thinks that James leaving might be the best move for both parties. He’s an awfully tough act to follow but sometimes a manager can come in and reap the reward of what James has done because there’s no doubt they’re at a different level now to when he took over.

It all depends on the calibre of manager you get in though.  The players will demand someone who is organisationally excellent and who prepares everything at the highest level possible. One thing’s for sure though, the players will know if any new person is bluffing.

For the selection committee, there’s going to be an awful lot of things to tick off to ensure they get the right guy so it will be an interesting to watch over the autumn.

Star celebrates on the final whistle. Cathal Noonan / INPHO Cathal Noonan / INPHO / INPHO

From a Kerry point of view it’s been amazing to watch Kieran Donaghy’s return to form. There was no talk of Star at any stage in the championship until the first game with Mayo and you just assumed he was injured or out of form and perhaps he wasn’t the player we once knew.

That happens to lots of players, lots of very good players, so it wouldn’t be any slight on Kieran if the same thing had happend him given his injury record.

But, in the form he was in on Saturday evening, he’s virtually unplayable. Every single ball that came his way, he made something happen. It’s a great credit to Kieran and the Kerry management team for getting him back to this level.

Of course, I can’t talk about the replay without mentioning the performance of referee Cormac Reilly. In fairness to Cormac he’s probably got a fair bit of criticism over the last few days and I don’t want to dwell on it too much.

That said, the one thing that drove me mad as a player was inconsistency from referees. If you knew you had to work hard and take a battering to win a free, you didn’t like it but you did it. Likewise, if you knew a referee was giving soft frees, you made sure he knew when you’d been fouled.

But when you can’t tell what a referee is going to do, it drives you mad and I think Kerry benefited from a couple of frees that Mayo didn’t get, especially later on.

That doesn’t matter if a team wins by five or six points but in a tight game like Saturday’s it has a big impact.

That said, if you go back over a game and analyse every free kick, mistakes and incorrect decisions normally balance out and in defence of Cormac he has a tough job and doesn’t have the benefit of replays that you or I would have.

I do think refereeing has to be looked at but the one thing about GAA, something we pride ourselves on, is that if you bring in a rule at senior inter-county level to benefit the game, it should also have a positive impact at U10 club level. Is two referees, as has been suggested in some quarters, really feasible in that regard? I’m not so sure.

The bookies don’t normally get it that wrong

I’ll hold my hands up and say I didn’t think Donegal would beat Dublin and I don’t know anybody who said Donegal would win. Even the Donegal people I spoke to in the build up to the game said they didn’t see that result happening.

The bookies don’t normally get it as wrong as they did on Sunday.

I did think they could ask questions of the defending champions because they’re physical and Jim McGuinness is known for his tactics and game-plans but a plan is only as good as the result it produces. If it works you’re a genius, if not, you’re a fool.

Bringing on Christy Toye is one plan that worked for Donegal. He has that bit of experience, got himself onto a lot of ball and made sure he won a lot of ball. He has such a wise old head though and when he had possession he didn’t take it into tackles and instead shipped it to someone who was free.

And there were a lot of free players after he came on. Once Donegal got going they were like an unstoppable juggernaut; they were like men possessed.

They really beat Dublin at their own game to be honest. A lot of counties, when they get four or five points up, they try to protect that lead. Dublin don’t, they try beat you by 20. That’s what Donegal were like yesterday.

At one stage I remember Bernard Brogan got a ball in the corner and four Donegal lads were around him but then Christy Toye came across to hunt him down as well just so he he didn’t have a sniff of reducing their lead.

And, do you know what, it takes every single player on the panel to buy into that kind of game-plan and it’s a huge credit to Jim that he has built up this inner belief in the Donegal players. It’s so easy to talk about being part of a team but it’s so much harder to get the players who aren’t being handed a jersey every week to actually believe that.

Ryan McHugh announced himself on the national stage yesterday. Donall Farmer / INPHO Donall Farmer / INPHO / INPHO

Yesterday we also got a huge performance from Ryan McHugh. There wasn’t too much about him coming into the game so I guess it’s a bit like Shane O’Donnell last year for Clare. Ryan really used yesterday as a platform to announce himself on the national stage.

And that also comes down to Jim McGuinness because he knows you need huge leaders all over the field to set examples for the younger lads like McHugh and allow them to express themselves.

As for Dublin, it would annoy you talking to people and they’d be complaining about Jim Gavin’s men being over-hyped and looking at winning All-Ireland’s five years from now. That’s a load of rubbish. As a player you don’t look beyond the next game and Dublin are the same.

The only worry you would have would be the younger players maybe would start to believe some of their positive press but look, at the end of the day, the Dublin lads are made out of the same stuff as everyone else and 15 lads can only take the field at the time and you’ve no God given right to win anything. They know that now.

That’s the great thing about sport though, anything can happen. If there were any guarantees I wouldn’t be writing this article!

There’s a fair chance Dublin will be back, they are a brilliant team but they were beaten by a better team on the day. It’s still up to everyone else to come up to that level, as Donegal proved you can do yesterday.

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‘I couldn’t question their commitment, their determination or their resolve’ – Gavin