For those counties fortunate to reach finals on a regular basis, they get to taste the very highs and lows of crucial matches.
The low is what Kerry is experiencing at present, having ceded their All-Ireland to the Dubs yesterday and Radio Kerry's Weeshie Fogarty did not hide the feeling in the county when he spoke to Oisin Langan on the Rewind today.
"Well, I can tell you that there is an air of doom and gloom over the county at the moment, and generally Kerry supporters who are very knowledgeable spend more time dissecting defeats and talking about defeats than they do about victories. Would you believe that?" he said.
"So it's going to be a long winter of post-mortems. There's going to be lots of talk and a lot of debate and that's the way it is with Kerry because they always learn more from a defeat than they do for a victory. They've lost 21 finals and they've won 37 but they learn from those defeats and bounce back."
Weeshie added that yesterday's performance was one of the worst Kerry showings he has seen in recent times, but feels that there should not be any calls for manager Eamon Fitzmaurice to resign.
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