James O'Donoghue says Kerry don't mind going in to Sunday's All-Ireland semi-final against Mayo as underdogs.

The Connacht champions are bidding to reach a third consecutive All-Ireland final, but O'Donoghue is quietly confident that the Kingdom can deny them:

"I suppose we're kind of used to being the underdogs now," the Legion clubman says in The Irish Independent. "Sometimes you look forward to it because if you're hyped up or built up, it's so easy to just be swiped. If you're the underdogs, nobody is expecting anything of you, nobody's bigging you up or anything.

"We'll come in quietly confident. I don't think there's going to be much between the teams either way. I couldn't say for definite who is going to win the game. It'll be very close. But if we bring our A game, we've a great chance."

O'Donoghue is fully focussed on trying to win his first All-Ireland medal: "It's the only prize," he adds. "It's not like soccer, you have the Premiership, the Champions League, whatever. It's just the All-Ireland for Kerry, basically.

"I haven't won an All-Ireland. I'd love to say I had an All-Ireland when I was 22 or 23 and use that confidence to go on and win more, but when you're fighting for one you don't know when it's going to come and you're kind of rushing to get your hands on Sam Maguire. There's very much that desire to just win one at the moment.

"I don't really think about anything else. The rest of my life takes a complete back seat when it comes to football, which is probably a bad thing but I'm just completely focused on winning my first All-Ireland title." Tweet

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