Tyrone manager Mickey Harte says that Kerry's goal killed the All-Ireland semi-final from their point of view.

Kerry emerged victorious after a 1-18 to 0-18 win over Harte's men, and Harte was in equivocal mood after the disappointment of not being able to return to a successive All-Ireland final.

"The game went down to the wire. I suppose we were in quite good control of the game in the first half, so it is very disappointing as we should probably have been further ahead by half-time.

"I think we caught Kerry by surprise in the first half, but I don't think we had enough on the scoreboard to justify the superiority we had in the first half, as Kerry were going to come back at us - that is what good teams do.

"It became a point-for-point game [...] when they broke and got the goal, that put paid to our chances because all they had to do was cover our scores from there to the end, which is exactly what they did."

Harte also believes that with another view, some of the decisions that went against Tyrone may not have been given.

"It is small margins at this level. I cannot fault our players for their effort - they tried their hearts out. I would need an objective viewer to see whether the decisions went against us. At this point in time, I feel that was the case."

Harte added that the situation may have ended differently had there been more added time at the end of the contest with Kerry.

"When you study the amount of interruptions there were after [the 6 added minutes], 6 minutes was quite short to get, what with the number of stoppages and the substitutions in the game. We felt there should have been more time, but we didn't get it."

Harte was in contemplative mood over the state of Tyrone football, following a manic twelve months, including one All-Ireland final and another semi.

"We are a work in progress. You would like that work to be going in an upward curve, and I suppose it was doing that until today.

"We were hoping that it would continue on an upward curve and get back to the final, but it is on a bit of a plateau as we stand here. We have to go back and see whether we can be better than that.

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