THEY SAY an All-Ireland semi-final is all about getting the right result. Performance is secondary. Do enough to get through, and don’t worry about impressing. That way your final opponents will end up with the greater expectation while you, ideally, will have saved the best until last.

Who else could have played it this way except Kerry? Particularly when old rivals Cork, who did look so impressive in their semi-final, lie in wait?

It must be all part of the knack of making the All-Ireland final for the sixth successive year – a record Kerry now share with Wexford (1913-18) and Dublin (1974-79).

“Well it didn’t look pretty from the sidelines,” said Kerry manager Jack O’Connor.

You can say that again.

By the time Cian Ward tapped in Meath’s consolation goal, reducing the deficit to a flattering four points, it’s fair to assume all Kerry minds were already on the final date with Cork.

A date with destiny, that is.

Ever since Cork took them apart in the second half of the Munster semi-final, back when we still had dreams of a good summer, the thought of a rematch seemed inevitable. Kerry will improve from this; and likewise from that day against Cork – and so we get to find out exactly how good both teams really are.

“Cork beat us by eight points,” said O’Connor when pondering the question of the rematch. “I think that’s comprehensive in anyone’s language. This old chestnut about Cork not performing at Croke Park has been put well to bed now. So it’s going to be a huge, huge battle, and we know we’re going to be put to the pin of our collar, to keep on Cork’s coat tails, because they’re by far the most impressive team in the championship.

“That’s not me trying to build them up. That’s a fact. They’ll be favourites going into the final, and rightly so.”

Kerry were favourites against Meath, and couldn’t be otherwise after their deconstruction of Dublin in the quarter-final. Even if the score-line here never took shape the way most people felt it would, nor indeed the level of excitement, O’Connor felt he got exactly what he expected. “There are always different types of games,” he declared. “We played a league final back here at the end of April and that was a different type of game again. There was no intensity in it. No great cut in it. And quite high scoring.

“Today’s game, though, was always hard fought. There was a lot of stuff going on out there, in the trenches, let’s say. Maybe that didn’t look very pretty, but it’s the kind of stuff that maybe will stand to you going into an All-Ireland.

“So, to be honest, I felt the game panned out the way I thought it would. I thought it was going to be a dogfight. I thought it was going to be tough. And I thought Meath were going to give a good account of themselves. Especially with the rain, there was no easy ball being won out there, the forwards in particular.

“When we saw the drop of rain falling as well today we knew it would be that bit more physical. Meath were probably praying for a drop of rain all week because maybe it does away with the form book a little more. But I suppose that is the way you’d want a semi-final to pan out. You don’t want a loose, open game where there’s no physicality, or no difficult aspects.”

So the whirlwind of a summer for Kerry and particularly O’Connor is nearing an end. A sixth successive final – and a fourth for O’Connor as manager – is impressive by any standards, even Kerry standards.

“Of course it’s significant,” he said. “Hugely significant. It’s a huge landmark for a county with the tradition Kerry has, and this team has been written off so many times. As far back as 2001. Then 2002, 2003, 2005, 2008. That’s a lot of times to be written off. But they keep coming back. There’s fierce resilience there, and we’re going into a final now against a right good Cork team. But we feel we can put it up to them.”

Truth is Kerry will need to play a lot more like they did against Dublin than they did here, and O’Connor realised that: “That Dublin game wasn’t the real world. We kept saying that to the boys all week. We hit Dublin so hard early in that game that I think they just lost heart. Meath are never like that. Meath are never beaten like that, never will be. They kept plugging away.

“So I think we do still have a lot of work to do. I don’t think the way we played today would do against Cork. So you’re glad I suppose to have a bit of work to do before the final, with three weeks to prepare for it. At the same time most of the hard work is over. We trained very hard after the Dublin game, because we felt we hadn’t the chance to train properly through the qualifiers. So we’ll take a couple of days off now, and then start getting tuned into the final, more mentally than physically, I suppose.”

No doubt the Kerry players will be tuned in, mentally and physically. They got the right result here, in more ways the one. From now on all it’s all about the performance.