THE MIDDLE THIRD:Saturday was a day that was going to come. We don't expect any sympathy, just accept it and get back there next year. It will be all the sweeter for it.

FIRST THING, hats off to Down. They played with nice swagger on Saturday and went for the game with everything they had. They were aggressive and strong and kicked some great scores and they wanted it more than Kerry. No arguments.

Saturday was my first time since 1986 to be at a championship game in Croke Park without being involved. I can’t say I like the experience too much! I drove up on Saturday morning, parked up the car and started off with the minors. I was confident leaving home but in Croke Park the first thing that struck me was the heavy rain. I began to think if we were going to hit trouble it would be on Saturday. . .

There would have been a little unavoidable complacency with the Kerry lads coming up. And if ever things are going to go wrong when you have a little complacency it is in Croke Park on a wet day, the one pitch in the country where the ball skids around like a bar of soap. Add in a few lads missing and a Down team who were full of confidence. The game changed before a ball was thrown in.

We were 1-2 to no score behind after four minutes of play. I didn’t think we were in too much trouble till I saw Declan O’Sullivan get injured. He continued on and he probably shouldn’t have. He is such a crucial player to Kerry.

I said to Mikey Sheehy who was sitting near me, “If Declan is gone here we are goosed.”

He was gone. From then on Kerry struggled. If I say that to my mind this isn’t a great Down team yet it’s meant as a reflection of where Kerry are really at. If we had got over Saturday I think we would have come unstuck somewhere else pretty soon.

Heading for a seventh All-Ireland final in a row, winning 10 quarter-finals on the trot? On Saturday when the hill had to be climbed we saw a decade take its toll. It happens to all great teams.

We have such expectations in Kerry. I have a good friend from Kerry who lives in London. He flew to Dublin for the weekend. He had flights booked already for the semi-final and the final with the option of flying back from Kerry the Wednesday after the final.

That’s how we are in Kerry. We expect. When we lose it’s a bad year. We forget how lucky we have been for the last 10 years.

For that reason there isn’t a whole pile of sympathy for Kerry out there. Nobody is shedding tears about us. And rightly so. When you have 15 players and a maximum of four of them play well in a quarter-final you can’t account for that in the normal ways.

And you can’t expect sympathy. Saturday was a day that was going to come. It was all going to catch up on us.

We have to be manly, dust ourselves down, stand up and accept it. And get back in there next year. Those All-Irelands are the sweetest. When you come back from a low point the year before. That’s something to aim for.

Just look at the Dubs and the place they are coming back from after two terrible years.

This week we have been cribbing and giving out about players missing games but on the field you have what you have. There are merits in the arguments over selective TV justice but now isn’t the time.

The end result on Saturday was that out of the 15 who started on Saturday only three or four could put their hands up and say they played well. That’s the end of the story.

For Down, almost everyone except the poor sap who was marking the Gooch (what am I saying? Bar the two or three poor saps who were marking the Gooch), all played well. Their game plan worked, they rotated their forwards around a bit, hit Kerry where they were vulnerable.

Kerry looked weary and the old stomach for the battle was gone quick enough. The future, though, is far from the doom or gloom we are getting around the county this week.

Just take the negatives first: we lost the game by five or six points; we were missing a couple of our best players. Some of the lads, Tom Sullivan, Tomás (Ó Sé), Mike McCarthy, Tommy Griffin, to name four, are comfortably on the wrong side of 30. They owe Kerry football nothing and it is up to them to make decisions.

Beyond that I think there are enough players and enough things to be positive about. Kerry still have the best footballer in the country in the Gooch. Kieran Donaghy underperformed this summer but he hasn’t become a bad footballer overnight. Declan O’Sullivan is a young player with his prime years still in him.

Should Jack (O’Connor) stay? Only he knows how his appetite is. If he decides to stay, though, he has the right to the job. It should be his to keep doing. Saturday wasn’t the end of the world. If he has the hunger there’s a job to be done. It’s not a decision to be rushed. Even as a former player watching, I know there is a huge disappointment clouding things. Jack should take his time.

Instead of management being talked about, I am more worried about players taking stock of themselves. There is only so much any manager can do. Players accept responsibility beyond that. You cross the white line and it comes down to the players themselves. We hadn’t enough of the right stuff left in us on Saturday.

If Jack is staying on, the focus I think will have to be on the middle third of the field. We were very exposed on Saturday without Paul Galvin and Tomás. We have to look at what we have from numbers five to 12. It didn’t happen for us the last day. That happens but on Saturday we had no real back-ups.

Paul has been missing for two summers out of three now. His greatest asset is his aggression and his attitude, put that on top of the fact he is a really fine footballer, one of the best in the country and you see his importance.

He is one of a handful of players who can turn a game around on his own.

When the dust settles and he looks at himself, I know Paul he will be more disappointed than anybody.

As a friend what would I say to him? Nothing. He knows already. Tomás is equally in the same place I was in 2008 having been sent off against Cork. It’s a helpless feeling. You have made a mistake. It is costing others. I got a second chance in ’08 when we got a draw but I know the feeling.

I know the lads will be gutted they cost Kerry the last day with their absence. We can blame the trials by TV but we have to look after ourselves. It happened. They will be looking to come back and put things right.

In Kerry the glass is always half-full. There are plenty of young fellas who are capable. The onus is on these players to pick it up now. It’s time to knuckle down, time for everyone to have a look at themselves. Older players need to decide have they enough or do they want to win some more. Younger players need to make their minds up about what they want to give.

People will say in hindsight there should have been more young fellas on this summer. Listen, to be fair to the management, they do give chances. Some players take them. More don’t.

If you are part of the panel you have to decide if you are going to have that cold-blooded will to force yourself into the team or if you are happy to plod along with a high number on your back. If you don’t have that will you won’t make it in a Kerry jersey come the summer.

That’s what management base their decisions on, not on some idea that it’s time to throw a few new fellas in. If that bite is there, that hunger is there, if you show that intensity there is nothing to stop you breaking through.

Nothing.

That’s the challenge. Not to find these fellas but for them to show that they want it enough. You can’t name names when it comes to the future. That’s unfair. The obvious place to start looking for the new wave of players is the All-Ireland winning under-21s from 2008. You look back to 1999 and the last All-Ireland final we reached in the grade. That team gave up Tadhg and Noel Kennelly, Seán Bán O’Sullivan, Tom O’Sullivan, Tommy Griffin, Paul Galvin and Tomás. A crop half that size would serve Kerry well now.

I would forgive Jack his comments after the game. At that stage it is all done and gone but I know the disappointment and how it would have gripped him (He was right especially about the handpass rule. What bright spark came up with that? Even the wise men of the The Sunday Gamecouldn't work it out).

Jack getting upset about suspensions before the game surprised me though, and I didn’t think it was the time to be doing it. What could it achieve? What had been done had been done. Again the point Jack made was a good one. There are inconsistencies but it wasn’t the time. There was no benefit to be discussing such things at that point.

Kerry are gone. Nobody is mourning. The championship is alive again. Best game of the weekend was Dublin and Tyrone. I am really enjoying this Dublin team and its honesty.

Best performance of the weekend was by Kildare. They were superb, especially after losing Dermot Earley. It’s a wide open championship now. Anybody’s.