After making life uncomfortable for Kerry in the Munster final and getting a strong support from their supporters at Cusack Park, Clare head into the All-Ireland series looking to cause an upset or two.

The Banner men fell to a seven-point defeat in Ennis, but largely went toe-to-toe with a below-par Kerry in the opening half, and kept plugging away when Jack O'Connor’s side appearing to pull away, with wing-back Ikem Ugwueru claiming the only goal of the game late on.

The defence stuck dutifully of keeping tabs on the vaunted Kerry attack, Darragh Bohannon and Brian McNamara excelled around the middle while in attack Emmet McMahon, Ciaran Downes and in particular Dermot Coughlan, caused all kinds of bother for the provincial kingpins.

While Kerry head into the group stages as first seeds, an unconvincing performance means questions remain surrounding their longer-term ambitions.

Despite defeat, Clare arguably bounce into the last-16 with more of a pep in their step. Having narrowly missed out on promotion to Division 2 and improving on last year’s Munster final trimming, manager Mark Fitzgerald says it was a performance to be proud of.

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"There were times we played good football, but there were times when we played silly stuff, with turnovers and taking wrong options," he told RTÉ Sport.

"That comes when you are playing against a team of Kerry’s calibre.

"We wanted to get as close to them as possible coming down the stretch, and that the crowd would push you on a bit. And the crowd were fantastic."

The Banner raised the only green flag of the afternoon in the closing stages, but midfielder McNamara spurned a glorious opportunity right from the second-half throw-in to really test the Kingdom mettle.

"You just felt we needed a couple of goals," Fitzgerald added.

"We wanted to stay in the game, and we were doing that chunk by chunk. I thought we did that, but Kerry obviously were able to pull away at certain stages and they found getting scores a little bit easier than us."

Clare turn their attentions now to the All-Ireland series where they will have the Ulster winners, Tyrone and Cork for company, with the Rebels first up when they make the trip to Ennis.

With 12,059 filing through the turnstiles today and the majority offering strong support for the hosts, the Clare boss is hopeful something similar can be replicated in a couple of weeks.

"This is the level Clare want to be at. We’re delighted to be in the Sam Maguire, but we feel we have to justify ourselves at times when you read some of the stuff in the media.

"I was happy for the lads that they gave a performance, I was happy that the Clare public came out to support them, but we will need that again in two weeks’ time."

Paudie Clifford walks back to the dressing-room with the silverware

Kerry captain Paudie Clifford was happy to see his side get past the Clare challenge, while acknowledging there is plenty of scope for improvement in attack.

Once again they failed to find the back of the net and the Fossa man feels that needs to change as they move onto the next stage.

"It’s something we’re working on," he said. "And it’s something we have to do better with. Maybe we were just one pass off at times, but it’s definitely something we need to improve on."

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Kingdom manager Jack O'Connor pronounced himself "happy enough" with the win but highlighted several areas for improvement.

"We knew Clare were going to put up a big fight today in Ennis. They had a big home crowd who cheered everything.

"We'd be a bit disappointed with some of the opportunities that we missed. It would have been nice to get a goal or two and we butchered a couple.

"But last year we got five goals against Clare and it didn't do us a whole lot of good. We thought we were great men. We went down to Killarney, played Mayo in the first round of the group stages and got a lesson.

"We're hoping that this will keep our feet on the ground, the fact that we weren't outstanding today, and we'll be better prepared for Monaghan.

"We'd be disappointed that we conceded a goal and probably a couple more goal chances. That would be a bigger worry than missing goal chances ourselves.

"But we won by seven points, kicked 23, which is a good score. Plenty to work on."