Eamonn Fitzmaurice paid tribute to James O'Donoghue's powers of recovery after his virtuoso display against Cork.

The All Star forward put his recent injury problems behind him to hit 0-10 (0-8 from play) in one of the great Munster final performances.

"He played 35 minutes last Saturday in our internal match, he was sharp again Tuesday night, sharper Thursday night, sharp in Fota last night and very sharp today," the Kerry manager revealed.

"He's probably a bit of a freak of nature, in that there are not too many fellas can be out for a couple of weeks with an injury and come in as sharp as he does. But we knew he had form like that from last year.

"He had a hamstring injury the time of the Cavan game but was jumping out of his skin for the Dublin game so we knew there was no fear of him."

Fitzmaurice felt things couldn't have gone much better for his team who can now look forward to the All-Ireland quarter-finals with a degree of confidence.

"There was no one that was in trouble at any stage in the game, and our six subs came on and impacted as well," he continued.

"There were five fellas that didn't even come on today, and there were seven fellas below in Kerry that didn't even make the squad, so there is a real squad ethic there.

"I'm just delighted for the lads because they have worked ferociously hard all year and at times we didn't have a level of consistency in our performance. It was nice to put it together today and it was nice to win the game and Munster cup." Tweet

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