THE REFEREE:JACK O'CONNOR has said the Kerry camp was unhappy about several decisions that were not made by referee Joe McQuillan during Sunday's All-Ireland final rather than some of those that were. The Kerry manager said: "It appeared to us on the line that it was much harder for our fellas to get frees than the other way around. I thought the likes of Declan [O'Sullivan] and Darran [O'Sullivan] got a lot of abuse going through. They found it hard to get frees."

But he added: “I’m caught between a rock and a hard place when talking about the referee because if you say anything about referees you are portrayed as being a whinger so I won’t go down that road.”

O’Connor hinted a number of Kerry players are likely to retire from intercounty football. Outlining the devastation felt by players and management, he said it would be hard to blame some of them for walking away as they have given so much time and effort to the Kerry football cause.

“Lives have to go on. There are other things outside of football and possibly a few players will reconsider,” admitted O’Connor. “They have a lot of mileage on the clock and the bar is constantly being raised from the point of view of physical preparation. There is no question some players will reconsider their futures now.”

But the Kerry manager insisted the day after an All-Ireland final defeat is not the proper time to contemplate that decision.

“We hadn’t a pile of sleep last night. We’ll thaw out for a couple of weeks and see how we go. You have to leave emotion out of these things,” O’Connor said.

But suggesting the break-up of a great Kerry team is almost inevitable, he remarked: “We gave it everything this year because we wanted one big last hurrah for this group. Some of those fellas have given 10 or 11 years of their lives to Kerry football so I think the Kerry public should be very grateful to them for what they’ve done,” he said on local radio.

He believes his team had done enough to win the game when they recovered from being three points down to go four up with seven minutes remaining. “We looked to be in control. It looked like we had it. A couple of individual errors brought Dublin into it and the goal was the big one. It got the Hill alive and it gave Dublin the energy to go and finish the game. Maybe if we were a cynical team somebody would have pulled your man down but I suppose that is not in our DNA,” he said. “The lads were probably a bit tired and when you’re tired you make errors. It is well known this Dublin side is the best conditioned team in the country and probably in the history of the GAA.”