"I'm delighted to welcome Maurice into the Kerry senior football set-up. His football knowledge, work ethic and personality will be a huge asset to us."

Kerry legend Maurice Fitzgerald will join Eamonn Fitzmaurice on the sideline in 2017.

"It was pressure, no doubt about it. The camogs won theirs and the hurlers had theirs in the bank and we still had three football games to go. Everywhere you went all you heard was people talking about the treble and saying 'these footballers are under some pressure now'. Fair play to us, we took it game by game to cap off a magnificent 2016 for our club."

The weight of expectation didn't faze dual star Karl McKaigue and his Slaughtneil clubmates.

"The game was lost in that spell before half -time. Kilcoo was unreal in the second half, but we coughed up too many frees and missed a few chances. This club will be back, no doubt about it. They deserve their Ulster club. It may not be this year or next year but Kilcoo will be top of the pile at some stage."

Kilcoo will be back, insisted Paul McIver.

"We are on to another level now and that performance probably wouldn't be good enough in a semi-final. I am very fortunate with the group I have: they are all pushing to make the first 15 and I don't think anyone will rest on their laurels. But it is important to take time out and enjoy this, particularly for the younger players, it is their first Connacht title."

Despite their 14 point winning margin, Corofin's Kevin O'Brien will seek further improvement from his players ahead of the All-Ireland series.

"We were well and truly beaten out the gate, it was probably over at half-time."

St Brigid's manager Frankie Dolan had no excuses.

"I hope that we look back on the various bits and pieces from each campaign, pick out the good, the bad and the ugly out of each one and try and come up with the right way of approaching this."

Dr Crokes selector Harry O'Neill looked ahead to their All-Ireland Club SFC semi-final date with Corofin.

"They opened the gate in the first ten minutes and there was no closing it after that. There wasn't anything you could do. We were scratching our heads on the sideline, what do you do when a team does that to you? We were playing for pride in the second half and they kept working till the end, that's heartening to see."

The Nire's Benji Whelan took a small bit of satisfaction from his players' refusal to raise the white flag in the second-half.

"We're going to have to improve to live with Rhode. We're going to have to tighten up on certain as aspects of our play because it just won't be good enough the next day."

Tommy Conroy and St Vincent's didn't have it all their own way in Glennon Bros Pearse Park.

"It just showed you on any given day you can be competitive for so long. But the bigger teams will always come good in the end because they have the resources and they have the bench to empty, and if we had those sort of players to come on it would be a different story."

Mullinalaghta's Mickey Graham couldn't fault his players for effort.

"We played in the Leinster final in '14 and we didn't win our own final last year, so people probably wrote us off. We are back in another final and we have to get the heads down. We take it one game at a time and it's going to be very difficult."

Can Paschal Kellaghan and Rhode deliver a provincial title at the fifth attempt?

"We were happy with the way we played, but I suppose the difference was that we didn't take our chances today in the way that we've taken them in past. But in saying that, the better team won on the day. No complaints about that."

Sean O'Mahonys manager Alan Craven took his hat off to the men from the Faithful County.

Tweet

Most Read Stories