Gracious Kernan has no excuses

After all the silvery evenings and reminiscing, all the handshakes and backslaps, this is where Joe Kernan ends up. Standing in an empty shower room on a damp May day facing an uncharted future with Monaghan.

We got used to seeing the big man on the string of happy days he wound around us all last year. Gracious and noble and decent. Now that it has come to a stop, nothing has changed.

"Can ye stop me for a minute? Listen lads, I'm stopped all day. Ah, anything we tried to do just didn't work out.

"We could have excuses with injuries and all that, but if we were good enough, we should have been able to win. But we weren't.

"And it's all right putting on the likes of Ronan and Oisin, but Monaghan had their tails up, and I'm not saying they over-ran us but anything that was going, in the end, they got to it. And it is their day out. No ill-feeling, no nothing It is their day."

And it is. All around the big man reverberate the chants of Monaghan as loudly as they did for the team in orange over the past few years. Each summer brings its new heroes. At 6.0 yesterday evening, Paul Finlay was walking on air. He is asked to relive his second-last free, a gigantic kick that was as true as it was long.

"Look it, all I could think was to relax and strike the ball. I knew it was outside the 45 but there was a slight wind behind me so I just said I would strike it and see what happened, and thankfully it sailed over."

Finlay intended rewarding himself with a night of revision for exams that he is scheduled to sit this morning.

"No celebrating, no thinking of Down, no nothing," he vowed.

"Look it, this is not our season finished anyhow. This is just one game, it's the first round of the championship and we have got to get to get back to the drawing board and make sure we don't slip up."

And this is not heady talk. It is simply the way Monaghan now think.

"Well, Colm Coyle has instilled us with that sense of belief that showed through today. It's great to have a man with his experience involved with us and he has shown us what its about.

"We just kept fighting and working for each other out there. This is perfect, you know. It's what every Gaelic footballer dreams about."