Kildare learned valuable lessons in today's Leinster SFC final that manager Cian O'Neill hopes will stand to them in the long term.

The ruthless manner in which Dublin capitalised on Lilywhite mistakes was highlighted by O'Neill in his post-match interview with gaa.ie.

"The plan was to come here and to try to play the type of football we've been playing all year in terms of getting that balance between a strong defence and a strong counter-attacking game.

"For periods of the game we did both, but unfortunately in the periods where we didn't we really got punished. In terms of the source of that, we'd be very disappointed with the amount of turnovers we had. There's no better team in the country that Dublin to really punish you with a counter-attack.

"We knew that coming in, that turnovers are their oxygen where they can really hurt us.

"Unfortunately I think they scored 1-5 directly off turnovers today. That's just not something on a scoreboard, it's a psychological hit there as well because you had the ball, you were controlling the game.

"I think that was probably the biggest thing. Their execution was just ruthless. It was the high standard you would expect of champions. Ours was well below par."

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