All-Ireland SFC Final/Analysis: Once again we find an All-Ireland victory based upon the search for redemption. Certainly Kerry's victory goes some way towards wiping out the defeats to Tyrone, Armagh and Meath over the past three seasons, and that quest for deliverance obviously influenced their approach to the game.

Clearly one of the key factors in the game was the way Kerry dominated the middle third of the field. It meant all the supply of ball was going into the Kerry full-forward line, with Colm Cooper, Dara Ó Cinnéide and Johnny Crowley all happy to make hay.

People can criticise the Mayo defence for not dealing with that, and the full-back line in particular. But the best full-back line that ever played couldn't cope with the ball being supplied from the Kerry midfield. And not just William Kirby and Eoin Brosnan, but every Kerry player in that area, from Declan O'Sullivan to Eamon Fitzmaurice and Tomás Ó Sé, played a role. The dominance they had was just incredible.

What went wrong for Mayo then is hard to explain. Ronan McGarrity had been their find of the season but he just couldn't get his hands on the ball. That was a huge thing. Fergal Kelly didn't fare much better and when David Brady was called in he was already facing an impossible task.

One way to explain it, though, is the way Kerry played. They were like a team possessed. Possessed with the desire not just to to win, but to win well and to wipe out recent memories. For that all the Kerry players and management deserve great credit.

You could see it in the Kerry work-rate. Every player delivered, so in a way Mayo were a little unfortunate to have met them in this kind of a mood.

We've heard about the damage the hurricanes have done down in the Caribbean in the last few weeks, and Mayo met a hurricane as bad as any of those.

No one could have thought Conor Mortimer would be taken off, or that Trevor Mortimer would hardly touch the ball. But do you blame them, or the fact that they got nothing inside? I honestly feel there was nothing Mayo could have done on the sideline to counteract Kerry's ferocity. I've been in those situations and when it starts going against you like that it's very hard to turn the tide.

Even at half-time when they were eight points down you might normally have given them a chance, but with the recent history Kerry have endured you just knew there was no way they'd back down. Especially after losing that lead to Armagh in 2002.

Strictly speaking you could be critical of Mayo's midfield, who both tactically and technically failed to deliver. But so many players, like David Heaney, were just dazed by what Kerry were doing, and it was like no player could cope with Kerry. So in a way Mayo were steamrollered from number one to 15.

You have to remember as well that at the start of the year Mayo would have been well satisfied to make the All-Ireland final. It's just the manner of this defeat that creates difficulties. I felt they might have learnt from their mistakes of 1996 and 1997, but in recent days a few things about their preparations started to worry me. The fact they were met by supporters before flying up to Dublin and had already announced a homecoming. No one should have known that, because you can't do anything that might affect your chances on the field. And you have to wonder if it did.

But I still think that John Maughan could have done very little to right the wrongs that were happening on the field. There were so many problems, and it was like if he tried to prevent one leak, another five or six appeared.

One of the ironies of this game was there was almost more pressure on the managers than the players. This is still a very young Mayo team, and I've no doubt they've a bright future. Of course when they wake up on the morning after losing an All-Ireland everything looks very far away, but I honestly feel they'll be back.

And even the fact that Kerry won this so convincingly doesn't mean they're going to dominate again for the next two or three years. The championship doesn't work like that anymore. You just can't write anything about next year's championship based on what we saw here.

While it mightn't have been a classic final there was some great scoring. Mayo's first goal, by Alan Dillon, was very well taken even if that proved to be a false dawn. But he ended up with 1-2, whereas other players expected to deliver just didn't.

From the very start, though, you could sense Kerry were about to dominate. They were so dominant under the high ball, holding onto possession that normally might be breaking. You can't say that Ciarán McDonald had a particularly bad game, and he was as inspirational as he could be early on, but so many things were going wrong elsewhere he was never able to get any sort of step up on Eamon Fitzmaurice.

Even when you try to think about a man of the match you realise how good Kerry were. They have so many candidates that it probably was the ultimate team performance. Ó Cinnéide, Crowley and Cooper are all obvious challengers, but others like Tomás Ó Sé lifted their game so much when they needed to. I would just put five or six Kerry players into the hat and pick the man of the match from that.

People should still hold judgment on Mayo, because they start out on their own search for redemption now.