All eyes on Croke Park as Mayo bows to Kingdom

The triumphant Kerry team will travel home by train today, arriving in Tralee at 6 p.m

The triumphant Kerry team will travel home by train today, arriving in Tralee at 6 p.m. for the beginning of massive celebrations throughout the county.

There will be a parade through Tralee to a platform in Ashe Street where the players are due at 7 p.m.

From there the team will travel to Killarney where they are expected on stage in the Glebe car park at 9.30 p.m..

With tickets for the All-Ireland final as scarce as always, large crowds watched the match in pubs throughout the county.

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In Molly Darcy's bar in Muckross, alongside the Killarney National Park, the sound on three giant screens was switched off for 25 minutes spanning half time to allow for a marriage blessing in the atrium next door.

Patience finally running out, the switching back on coincided with the Kerry roar to welcome substitute Séamus Moynihan on to the pitch.

And with Kerry well ahead, they could fully savour the final stages of the game.

With little of the extravagance of recent All-Irelands, the Kingdom supporters stole quietly, and purposefully, before dawn broke from the foothills of Mangerton and MacGillycuddy's Reeks, the tip of the Dingle peninsula, the plains of Finuge and the hilltop village of Knocknagoshel, to catch early morning trains and buses for the long trek to the capital.

With what seemed like the whole of the rest of the country rooting for a Mayo victory, there could be no shouting early on.

Even the former Kerry manager, Páidí Ó Sé, said on RTÉ Radio One just hours before the game began that he expected Mayo to win.

Only the bookmakers gave the Kingdom a chance, offering odds of 13 to 8.

Not until the "Gooch goal" from Killarney's Dr Crokes player Colm Cooper did Kerry supporters open their mouths and the rafters begin to strum alongside the magic of 'Super Cooper'.

Outside Lenihan's bar in Killarney, supporters smoked in quiet satisfaction under a clear September sky.

The jaunting cars trotted down, their green and gold horse blankets out for an airing and their straight-backed jarveys suddenly in Kerry jerseys.

But no honking, no horns, just a deep sigh of pleasure and a purposeful stride as young people in droves took to the streets.

"This is like the 1970s, the great years. No one man won this," a veteran Kerry watcher exclaimed.

There was a solemnity about the game yesterday. Tourists learned that football is a serious business in the Kingdom, as momentous the 33rd time Kerry won the title as the first.

Mr Russ Jacobson from Maryland, Baltimore, sported a Kerry jersey. He had become "a convert" to the game in Dingle, his wife, Ms Laura Jacobson, explained. "We were watching on TV and I said, 'Look at this game'." Now the Jacobsons are thinking of having a satellite link installed back home just to watch fast-moving gaelic football games.

There was some criticism of team captain Dara Ó Cinnéide's all-Irish victory speech in English-speaking Killarney.

"It's very bad form of him to speak only in Irish. He should acknowledge most of us speak English," said Mr John McCarthy, who watched the game with his wife Margaret at Molly Darcy's bar.