No sooner had Dr Crokes disposed of The Nire to claim their fourth Munster club SFC title in six years than thoughts began to turn to how they would end their All-Ireland semi-final hoodoo in the New Year.

The Killarney club's previous three provincial wins in 2011, '12 and '13 were followed by defeats at the penultimate stage. Needless to say, selector Harry O'Neill is eager to avoid that fate again.

"We haven't looked at the semi-final (against Corofin), but I hope that what we will do is look back on the various bits and pieces from each campaign, pick out the good, the bad and the ugly from each one and try and come up with the right way of approaching this," he said.

"It is a long gap. We have Rathmore next week in the East Kerry championship final. We'll take a break then. Pat (O'Shea), the rest of the management and I will sit down and we'll plan our strategy. I know the lads are hungry to go at it and go training through Christmas. I think that is the way it has to be done. We'll see what comes afterwards.

"We have to try and plan it better this time and see can we come up with the goods in an All-Ireland semi-final."

 

Crokes blitzed their Waterford opponents early on in Mallow to run out easier-than-expected winners.

"The Nire just didn't seem to get up and running early on," O'Neill noted.

"We had the chances, we took them. they had the chances to settle their nerves, they didn't take them. Three goals in the first half really killed them off.

"The movement from our forwards today, that was the one thing we were looking for. 

"The half forward line of Daithí (Casey), Johnny (Buckley) and Brian Looney were excellent. The movement then inside from Colm Cooper; I think he might have touched the ball twice in the first 12 minutes but two goals came off him. When we move well, and we did move well today, scores come. We're very, very happy with it."

 

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