Connor McAliskey was confident that Tyrone would upset Kerry in Sunday's All-Ireland SFC semi-final.

The Red Hands came close to upsetting the holders in an exciting clash at Croke Park and their corner forward says they went into the game full of confidence:

"I never thought we weren't as good as Kerry. I always believed that we were at the same level. Maybe people thought Kerry were going to just walk all over us but we never believed that. Inside, we really did believe we'd win.

"I think the game showed that we're up along with Kerry and among the top teams," the Clonoe O'Rahilly's clubman notes in The Irish News. "Maybe we didn't get recognition for it this year but next year we'll be there again.

"And we might get a bit of credit for our good football. People were criticising us for playing blanket defence but you can see how quickly the transition is between defence and attack.

"How many times did we have so many men up the field? It's not all-out defence, it's hard yards to get there but we've put in serious work to get to the scoring end of the field. Unfortunately, we couldn't take our chances against Kerry.

"We opened up gaps. We let them have the kick-out and then we turned them over in the middle of the field and we went forward in droves and created the space. It's not the result we wanted but we'll be back again."

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