Eamonn Fitzmaurice was exaggerating slightly when suggesting Kerry “will not be given a snowball’s hope in hell against Dublin now” and yet no one can deny it either. This was not the sort of quarter-final performance that would breathe confidence into any team, no matter who they were playing next.

That’s not saying Fitzmaurice didn’t pull some positives from the burnt embers of their second-half performance – when they were out-played and out-smarted by a Cavan team that no one had given a snowball’s hope in hell.

“At the end of day we are into a semi-final,” said Fitzmaurice. “It’s a result business. But we’ve a lot of work to do over the next four weeks. To play that way that we did in the second half against Dublin, well, it wouldn’t be pretty.”

Fitzmaurice certainly didn't deny that Kerry are developing a very notable pattern of second half fade-outs: "Absolutely. If we had kept the scoreboard ticking over it would have been different. But even more disappointing, we went away from game plan, away from what we do every night at training, and what done the last seven or eight months. In first half we played quite well, but we still had unforced errors and played conservatively. Our workrate and attitude was excellent but wouldn't put a gloss on the second half.

'Good position'
"We were in a good position we spoke about not getting complacent to keep at it. To be fair, Cavan played better they were more attack orientated and didn't play with a sweeper, they caused us more problems, but again, we went so blatantly away from our game plan we were working on all year it was just bad."

Fitzmaurice wasn’t in Croke Park on Saturday night as Dublin took out Cork, but he saw enough on the box to know what challenge lies in wait on September 1st: “Jim Gavin is doing a great job with them, and if we play the way we played in the second half they’ll wipe the floor with us.”

For Cavan manager Terry Hyland there was a mix of positives and negatives, especially given the way they rose about their own inadequacies of the first half. “We just didn’t perform in the first half, made too many elementary mistakes, gave the ball away too often, and every time we did, we got punished,” he said.

Hyland admitted that tactically Cavan played a little overly defensive at the start, but all that gives them hope for the future: “We had a defensive mindset because we felt again, possibly, the fact that we were inexperienced and not used to playing in Croke Park, with a very young side, we had to keep it tight earlier on. We probably didn’t do the right thing. Sometimes you have to be brave and go out and push for the game.

“But we have learned that we have ability and that we can compete. We have the players and we have the ability. Not it’s up to us as management to put the two together.”