GAA Football All-Ireland Championship 2014 Final: Kerry vs Donegal Score, Report

Kerry beat Donegal 2-9 to 0-12 at Croke Park on Sunday to take home the 2014 GAA Football All-Ireland Championship, their record 37th All-Ireland Senior Football Championship title.

BBC Sport shared the final score:

Sunday's final was one for fans of old-school defensive struggles, a far cry of some of the spectacular fixtures we saw during the semi-finals. Kerry decided to copy the Ulster champions' system and found a goal in the very first minute. Paul Geaney took a long pass, turned and simply slotted home for a cool finish.

Geaney found Kieran Donaghy minutes later, and the latter added a point to give Kerry an early lead. Donegal soon established a rhythm, finding three points through Michael Murphy and one via Colm McFadden.

Darach O'Connor nearly scored a goal for Donegal, but his effort was stopped by Brian Kelly. Geaney made it 1-3 to 0-4 just minutes later, but Karl Lacey and Odhran Mac Niallais knotted things up before the half.

Donegal appeared to have the upper hand in the first half and struck first through Murphy after half-time, but Paul Murphy buried a sensational long-distance kick to make the score 1-4 to 0-7.

Donaghy then took advantage of a poor kick-out from Paul Durcan, scoring Kerry's second goal of the match. RTERadio 1 shared this image of the deciding moment in the match:

Donegal tried to make a comeback, kicking several points, but Kerry were able to answer every step of the way. Down three in injury time, McFadden came close to an equaliser, but he palmed his effort off the post, per The Sunday Game:

Manager Eamonn Fitzmaurice said Sunday's win felt almost as good as winning the title as a player to him, per the official GAA website:

"

I won them as a player and in 2009 as a selector with Jack (O’Connor) and I said nothing compares to winning them as a player. But today does. Very favourably. I felt like a player this summer. I became so obsessed and was very excited going into training…It’s as special as any of the medals I won as a player.

"

He also heaped praise on Donaghy, and not just for his goal:

"

Kieran was very important. He got the goal obviously, but other than that for the first goal he was a decoy and we had discussed that so he had a massive contribution of course and he had a renaissance in the second half of the seasons which was always going to happen because he was working very hard, it was just getting game time into him was key and getting him up to that pitch. He has come a long way since the Clare game.

"

The GAA shared this video, highlighting some of the best moments of Kerry's season:

The Kingdom of Kerry took the double on the day, as the minors also took home the trophy.

Kilkenny and Tipperary will finish the 2014 hurling season with their final replay next week, and if both clubs can put up an equally good show to determine the All-Ireland Hurling champions as we saw on Sunday, it will conclude another phenomenal season of Gaelic sports.

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