James O'Donoghue was already looking to 2015 and the prospect of Kerry retaining the Sam Maguire after yesterday's triumph.

The livewire forward, who surprisingly failed to score against Donegal after being deployed in a withdrawn role, expects the Kingdom to come back even stronger next year with Colm Cooper set to return from injury and Tommy Walsh expected to return after five years in Aussie Rules.

"This sounds ridiculous now but we are not going for one in-a-row, we are going for next year. We are going to have a couple of players back and we are going to be hard to beat next year," he said.

An All-Ireland title must have seemed a million miles away for Kerry supporters when their team struggled in the Allianz League, but the Legion clubman feels people were reading too much into their early-season problems.

"People say crisis very easily, we must have tried 60 players throughout the league and a lot of them contributed hugely throughout the year. We knew the league wasn't going to make our year, it was all about the championship. If I never won a National League medal would I cry - absolutely not."

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