Five years ago, the prospect of David Moran having to shield Kerry from suggestions that Dublin are their 'bogey' team would have seemed, frankly, ludicrous.

The Kerry players that prepared for the 2011 All-Ireland final had never experienced a championship defeat to Dublin and most were still warmed by the glow of their 17-point torching of Dublin in 2009.

Yesterday, however, midfielder Moran sat amongst reporters and did his best to put a positive spin on their Championship record against Dublin since that 2011 final, which reads; played three times, lost three times – including two All-Ireland finals.

Current players

In fact, the situation now is that many of Kerry’s current players have never experienced a championship win over Dublin.

A little over four months on from Kerry's latest defeat to Dublin, September's All-Ireland final, the sides return to Croke Park on Saturday week to get the Allianz Football League underway.

Moran kicked the ‘bogey’ question to touch and insisted the real reason that he and injury-hit Kerry will chase victory is to avoid another poor start to the season. It’s 2012 since they last won their opening league game, beating, ironically, Dublin at Croke Park.

“It hasn’t been intentional,” said Moran of Kerry’s league form. “Every year it’s been, ‘we’re going to try to win the league this year’ and then we’re ending up looking at relegation and it’s ‘not again’. It’s something we’re very aware of, it’s something that going out against Dublin we really feel we want to get off to a good start.

“We’ve two games in eight days and we’re trying to collect the four points from those, definitely.

“Last year was a bit different in fairness because we drew with Tyrone in the final round. Now if we’d lost we would have been relegated but if we won we would have been in the semi-finals. So a lot of teams were in the same boat last year.

Fighting relegation

“But the year before and the year before that again, it was a case of fighting relegation and you don’t want to go down that route if you can.”

As for the suggestion that Dublin have emerged as their bogey team, the former All Star shook his head.

“You can’t hide the fact that we’ve lost three times in a row but I’m really not sure if it’s a bogey team,” said Moran.

“They’re a very good side, the same as Tyrone were in the 2000s. But a bogey team, I don’t know if they’re that. They were better than us on the day last September.

“In 2011, it was more even and in 2013 we were a point up or whatever with a minute to go. Those games can go any way.”