Event | 2014 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship | ||||||
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Date | 21 September 2014 | ||||||
Venue | Croke Park, Dublin | ||||||
Man of the Match | Paul Murphy[1] | ||||||
Referee | Eddie Kinsella (Laois)[2][3][4] | ||||||
Weather | Partly cloudy 17 °C (63 °F) [5] | ||||||
The 2014 All-Ireland Football Championship final, the culmination of the 2014 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, was played at Croke Park in Dublin on 21 September 2014. Ulster champions Donegal, last champions in 2012 took on Munster champions Kerry, last champions in 2009.
Both sides defeated the previous year's finalists Dublin and Mayo in their semi-finals to set up this match between "the two great football outposts of the west-coast extremities".[6][7][8] This was their first encounter on All-Ireland final day, and only the second in 127 years of Championship history, Donegal having defeated Kerry in their previous encounter at the 2012 quarter-final stage.[9] Kerry narrowly won a close game which ended with a scoreline of 2-9 to 0-12.[10][11]
The game was televised nationally on RTÉ2 as part of The Sunday Game live programme, presented by Michael Lyster from Croke Park, with studio analysis from Joe Brolly, Ciarán Whelan and Colm O'Rourke — the last time until 2019 that the Brolly-O'Rourke-Pat Spillane axis was broken up for live coverage of an All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final.[12]
All that remained were the increasingly frantic efforts by Dublin to score something but so wild was the finishing that wides outnumbered scores – a sobering end to what had been expected to be the county's first back-to-back season in 37 years. Instead the two great football outposts of the west-coast extremities will meet for the first time in an All-Ireland final.
Last Sunday week [1 September 2019] was the first time since 2014 that the long-standing triumvirate of Brolly, O'Rourke, and Pat Spillane was broken up. For the Kerry-Donegal decider five years ago, Whelan took the place of Spillane on the live panel alongside Brolly and O'Rourke.