Jim McGuinness says Eamonn Fitzmaurice's brave decision to replace captain Kieran Donaghy with Paul Geaney turned the tide in Kerry's favour on Sunday.

Fitzmaurice made the change during half time in the All-Ireland semi-final win over Tyrone and McGuinness points out how the introduction of Geaney short-circuited the Red Hands' gameplan:

"The decision to substitute Donaghy for Paul Geaney swung the game in Kerry's favour. Kerry have a fantastic squad of players that gives them flexibility but Eamonn Fitzmaurice still has to make these decisions. Kieran Donaghy is the captain and had just kicked a point and the manager took him off," the former Donegal boss writes in The Irish Times.

"It was a brave decision. That is when the thing became very fluid and in-the-moment in terms of the coaching. Up to that point, Tyrone absolutely had their homework done on Kerry. But when Geaney came on, it was a different dynamic which filtered through the Kerry attack and it created a situation where all the hours Tyrone had spent studying and practicing for the Donaghy factor no longer applied.

"They had to play it as they saw it and that suits Kerry because of their surfeit of intelligent, instinctive forwards. And as new players were introduced, the less relevant Tyrone's original game plan became. It was now a matter of trying to manage a way through the remainder of the match."

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