COMMENT: Éamonn Fitzmaurice is still playing four men he used to play with – it’s time for Kerry to move on

Time and tide wait for no man.

The humbling loss to Dublin could be put down to a day when the Kerry management wrote the cheque, but the bodies on the field didn't have the energy to cash them. Instead, Dublin were flash and brash, and had plenty in the tank to spare as they romped to an 11-point win. Kerry knew what they had to do to, but just couldn't realise it. They understand how this Dublin side works, but still could do nothing to prevent it from beating them up. It was like a man seeing a hole in the bottom of his boat, and only having a spoon to bail out the water with. You can work up a sweat about it, but ultimately it isn't going to do much good as the blue tide washes over you. The best of your ability isn't good enough against the fittest, and fastest, GAA team in the country. It isn't enough against a team where the full-back line and half-forward lines both had an average age of 25 on Sunday. This Kerry team still has football ability, but unfortunately, that ability is now locked in their heads, rather than their legs. Kerry started Sunday's league final with four players, in key positions, who started the 2006 All-Ireland final. Marc O Sé and Aidan O'Mahony were then 26; Colm Cooper and Kieran Donaghy were both 23. However, ominously, that game also marked the last day for 29-year-old Eamonn Fitzmaurice in a Kerry jersey as he was introduced as a second-half substitute. He would retire in early 2007, while his former colleagues would go on to win two more titles without him and be still part of a panel, and key men in that panel, when he took over as manager in 2013. Ten years on and Kerry are still relying heavily on those players to be a key influence on their games. How could you jettison a Gooch or a Donaghy or a consummate footballer like O Sé to a role as an impact substitute? Perhaps a sentimentalist wouldn't be able to, but a ruthless manager like a Jim Gavin, or his idol Brian Cody, would. Look how Tommy Walsh was reduced to a mere spectator by Cody in 2014, or Alan Brogan deemed only good enough to be a sub in 2015. Players over thirty are becoming rarer than bald men winning All-Irelands. Contrast the Kerry team of 2006 to that of Mayo, who have a few survivors, but just one current starter from that September heartbreak Alan Dillon, 23, David Clarke, 23, and Keith Higgins, 20, all began the final. Barry Moran, now 30, was introduced as the substitute; Andy Moran, then 23, was also used as a replacement. Indeed, Dublin's 2006 side that lost the epic semi-final has only one player still togging out now in the shape of 34-year-old Stephen Cluxton. On Sunday, Kerry's half-forward line of Bryan Sheehan, Donnchadh Walsh and Paul Murphy had an average age of 28, with the full-forward line of Darran O'Sullivan, Kieran Donaghy and Colm Cooper racking up an average age of 31. That would not be such an issue, if most of those players had not gone all the way to August or September year after year. As Ferris Bueller found out, if the miles are there, it's hard to get them back. Kerry do not have the legs, or more crucially, the athletes, to compete with a team like Dublin at present. Hardly any team does, perhaps apart from a Mayo, or an emerging Tyrone side. Both have been conscious to introduce youth in key areas, with older players beyond 30 seeing less and less game time. Kerry, however, has persevered with O Sé and O'Mahony as anchors for the defence, while Gooch is asked to track back, and Donaghy pop up in his own full-back line more often than the opposition parallelogram. Men in their 30s are now doing more running than they did in their primes at 23 and 26. The reason they are still there, and still starters, is simply because Kerry will always value football ability over athletes. Putting the ball over the bar is more important than a player who can run 100 metres in 12 seconds or cover 10km in 70 minutes. Skills pay the bills in Kerry. Pace wins All-Irelands in Dublin Football has moved on since 2006, but Kerry is still stuck in the past. It is that old school thinking that leads to an 11-point national league loss, and five successive Croke Park defeats to the Dubs; three in the championship. Dublin have the perfect combination of speed and skill, but it is no accident. It is years of minor and under-21 success coming to fruition, as Kerry look at twenty barren years between 1994-2014 at minor grade and now see the results. It's not the senior players' fault, but there will need to be hard calls made in the coming weeks if the Kingdom are to bridge the gap between what the mind wants,  and what the body will allow. Eamonn Fitzmaurice may have his tactics right, but it is his players, through simple mileage, that cannot fulfil the plan. Perhaps the plan needs to change, or else the personnel. Age is not just a number anymore.