GAELIC GAMES/National League final: National League finals have their own lukewarm rhythms. From the downbeat build-up to the formulaic expressions of satisfaction at having won the thing, it all happens under the shadow of Championship Mountain.

And yet and yet and yet . . . Kerry won their 17th league bauble in Croke Park yesterday, and even though they knew it was nothing they'd be remembered for it marked a turning in the road for Kerry fortunes.

It's been seven years since the county were in a league final, and in the interim there have been good days in Croke Park. But the memory of them was receding fast.

"We're all aware that national leagues are all a good bit below the championship," said the iconic Séamus Moynihan afterwards. "We're delighted to win it. We haven't won a national title up here in four years. We wanted to get that monkey off our back.

"You wouldn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the last few years haven't been great ones for Kerry teams coming up here."

Having lost a succession of big games in the cathedral by the canal, Kerry played yesterday like a team reacquainted with their birthright. There was swagger and confidence and some cutting-edge forward play. True, Galway almost caught them in a finale that had 28,072 people on their feet, but, exciting though it would have been, a Galway win would have been slightly larcenous.

From the sixth minute, when Johnny Crowley announced his return to the grand stage with a lovely goal imagineered (as they say at Disney) by Declan O'Sullivan and Colm Cooper, Kerry were flying.

The presence of just one Gaeltacht player on the field didn't seem to inhibit Kerry at all, and tactically manager Jack O'Connor got things right, allowing Séamus Moynihan to pick up Tommy Joyce when the Galwayman, as expected, moved out from the corner-forward position to forage around midfield.

Moynihan, especially in the second half, when he concentrated less on the defensive side of his task, was a colossus driving Kerry onwards.

Kerry opted for the early ball played into the full-forward line and it worked sweetly.

When John O'Mahony commented afterwards that Galway had learned a lot about themselves in this league campaign, he might have been ruefully reflecting that his side have scored 14 goals this spring but conceded 17.

The second goal of the afternoon in Croke Park was perhaps the key to the match and provided a fine illustration of what separated the teams.

In the 55th minute, Kerry were a point ahead when Declan O'Sullivan canted a beautifully judged ball into the Kerry full-forward line. Although Cooper was jumping behind his marker the trajectory of the ball was just perfect and it dropped into his fingers, where it scarcely had time to nestle before being transferred to Crowley, who gleefully took his second.

That score was an alarming one to concede, but the sirens had been sounding all through the second half.

We were denied an earlier leader in the goal-of-the-season stakes at the start of the period when Cooper took another pass and lobbed it over the defence in one swift move to Mike Frank Russell, who from 20 yards out declined to look up or take aim but just swivelled and crashed a howitzer against the woodwork.

Minutes later Cooper bounded in behind the full-back line again and popped an equally good chance wide.

Galway, though, are no lightweights. If they experience difficulty in one sector, they apply pain through another outlet.

Yesterday Michael Donnellan looked hungrier for success than he has in some time, and although it would be a libel on his marker, Eamon Fitzmaurice, to say he had a bad game, Donnellan almost wrestled Kerry back singlehandedly. He scored 1-3 in the second half and was in the middle of everything Galway did.

Kerry's third goal was a sublimely converted Russell penalty on 63 minutes, which left eight points between the sides.

Seconds later Donnellan drove the ball to the Galway net. That sparked a revival of sorts, and Galway scored the next three points before Donnellan landed a prodigious free on the cusp of injury time.

"We thought we were coasting with 10 minutes to go," said O'Connor, afterwards, "but fair play to Galway, the class team that they are they are never done. Another two or three minutes who knows what way it would have finished?

"But we would have taken a one-point win beforehand, no doubt about it."

For a man leading his county into Croke Park for the first time, the calm understatement was a tribute to native values and Kerry's style on the day.