It was entertaining fare at Tralee as Kerry maintained their 100% record in Division One with a 0-13 to 0-11 win over Mayo. Both sides served up some decent football but it was Jack O'Connor's men who called the shots and led all the way, though Mayo refused to roll over. The game started briskly but there were no scores inside the opening eight minutes, despite the commendable efforts of both sets of players. Alan Dillon had the best chance for the visitors during that opening period but his goal effort missed the target. The Kingdom got the first three points to lead comfortably at the end of the first quarter. Kieran Donaghy opened the scoring and The Mighty Gooch Cooper than had scores from a free and from open play to make it 0-3 to 0-0. Midfielder Ronan McGarrity and Conor Mortimer got Mayo back into contention but Cooper registered twice more for the Munster county. Diarmuid Murphy denied Austin O'Malley a Mayo goal and the inspirational Cooper brought his tally to six points for the first half to make it double scores, 0-8 to 0-4, in Kerry's favour at the interval. Michael Quirke also found the range for the winners near the end of the first half. Mayo had the breeze behind them from the resumption and they started with a run of three points through Alan Dillon (free), Austin O'Malley and Andy Moran to narrow the gap to just one. Cooper was on target at the end of Kerry's first attack of the half in the 45th minute and Darren O'Sullivan added another Kerry point before O'Malley and Cooper (his eighth of the match) swapped scores. Captain O'Sullivan boomed over his second point from play but Andy Moran replied for Mayo, who trailed by just two points, 0-12 to 0-10. Kerry suffered a setback when Marc O Se had to go off with an injury in the 62nd minute. Mortimer was in with a goal chance as the match built to a climax but the ball was deflected out for a 45, which substitute Aidan Kilcoyne clipped to the right of the posts and wide on 32 minutes. The teams managed one more point each and it was the home team that just about shaded the result for their fourth win from four. Tweet

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