It was a raucous old afternoon in Dublin. Kerry took the first game 315 to 1-13 after a jailbreak of a performance, one in which all the penances of the past four years found their voice. It was a win for every word of winter talk, for each and every time they were told that their ways and means were relics of the past. Nobody can speak of soft All Irelands in their presence now.

The Kieran Donaghy experiment continues. For the first half yesterday, Kerry were like a gardener who, for want of a hoe one day, found that using a big old hefty spade did the required job. What they forget, or chose to ignore, though, was that the hoe still takes better care of the finer detail if used expertly. They appeared altogether too in thrall to Donaghy's aerial prowess, using him almost exclusively as Colm Cooper's runs and darts went constantly ignored.

And when the ball coming in wasn't just so, Kieran McGeeney was there to mop up the breaks.

The difference in the second half was the warming to his task of Darragh O Se. So often did the Gaeltacht midfielder take clean possession of the ball that to fail to hit Donaghy properly with it then would have been a bigger waste than a bunch of burning tenners.

And they used Gooch a lot more as well, feeding him in the channels and letting him process ball from there.

"I thought Kieran had a great game inside, " O Se said afterwards.

"You know he's only a young fella but he's a great attitude. Himself and Francie [Bellew] had a right tussle. I'm sure they were exchanging numbers there but they got on with it and he came out with a fantastic goal."

The game rocked and rolled on four minutes of action approaching the halfway point of the second half. Kerry had come out playing as if they'd overheard the Armagh team talk and had turned a 1-5 to 17 deficit into a 2-7 to 1-8 lead, Donaghy slamming in the goal O Se spoke of after fetching a wayward Sean O'Sullivan shot from the sky.

When an Oisin McConville free kept Armagh in touch, we were into potential classic territory.

And then brothers went and worked it out. Philip Loughran had been sent on to try and curb Darragh's influence on proceedings, but his first act was to watch the Kerry number eight fasten onto a loose ball and send Marc away for a point. From Paul Hearty's kickout, Darragh lept again, this time drawing a foul. He clipped the free down into Cooper's corner, from where the Kerry captain was clever enough to work it all the way back onto the 40. The onrushing Tomas sent over his first and only point of the day. And in the very next attack, Tomas turned provider for Marc who obliged again. For those four minutes, it was Teach O Se 0-3, Ard Mhaca 0-0. Ar fheabhas.

It would have sucked the life out of another team. Armagh aren't another team. They chipped away and chipped away, Steven McDonnell and Ronan Clarke fashioning excellent points to reduce the deficit from five to three.

Five minutes left and a goal was called for. It came, but not at the end Armagh wanted it to, Darren O'Sullivan intercepting an Enda McNulty clearance and zipping through to settle matters.

They spoke afterwards of hoping the Kerry public wouldn't be getting carried away with it all. It's fair to say that ship might just have sailed.

The second game started off as an afterthought in the emptying stadium, but gradually and successfully fought for attention. In the final reckoning, there was only an injury-time Ger Spillane point between them, Cork winning 1-11 to 1-10.

Donegal kept rolling along, never quite convincing that they're the classiest side around, but never letting you believe there's a doughtier one in the land. Sometimes you come across a side who are the flesh and blood embodiment of their manager's character and Donegal are one such. From Leon Thompson through Ciaran Bonner, they show for everything and won't find a challenge they don't like the look of. They were unlucky to have to endure four minutes of injury-time yesterday, unluckier still to lose because of it.

Cork didn't turn up at all in the first half yesterday, and but for a couple of handy late points, would have gone in at the break with only a John Hayes penalty to show for it all. As it was, they were lucky to only be 1-5 to 1-3 down.

The purpose they showed in the second half just about made up for it, though. The not-always-notables stood up, Spillane and Pearse O'Neill popping up to take responsibility and sending over points.

When Nicholas Murphy caught a late, long high ball at full-forward, it was appropriate that Spillane was the one on hand to launch the winner from the edge of the exclusion zone.