Whenever I hear intercounty managers giving out about referees, I always think of The Shawshank Redemption. “Everybody’s innocent in here,” says Andy Dufresne. “Didn’t you know that?”Everybody in the GAA takes a stand for fair play when it goes against them. Ger Brennan was sore after a couple of decisions went against Dublin on Sunday – and he had every right to be. The square ball was a square ball; nobody is saying otherwise. At the same time, I wouldn’t be getting too het up about the penalty or the Ross McGarry chance being over the line. Some days you get those, some days you don’t.What I find funny in these situations is when managers start talking about things in the wider context, like bringing in video technology for the good of the game. As if they care high up or low down about the good of the game. I didn’t hear Ger calling for video technology a fortnight ago when John Maher got the head taken off him for Galway against Dublin.But that’s the nature of it. I don’t want to be picking on Ger specifically here. Every manager is the same. They want fair play when the referee gives the other crowd an easy day, but they couldn’t give less of a thought to it when the ref happens to give them a few calls. Everybody is innocent in Shawshank.There’s another aspect to it too. You can talk around these things all you want, but in reality, nobody wants to hear a Kerry manager or a Dublin manager crying about the referee. There’s no audience for that. Louth got done in a Leinster final in 2010, and the whole country had sympathy for them. If that happened to the Dubs or Kerry, the rest of the country would have fallen about the place laughing. You’ve just got to suck it up.Why? Because we know and they know that there are swings and roundabouts to these things and the bigger counties get plenty of big calls going their way every year. It’s the nature of the beast in every sport – you only need to look at the World Cup to see it. Who’ve got the luckiest calls? Argentina, France and England. The Dubs are no different. They got the calls against Galway; they didn’t against Kerry. That’s sport.Kerry's Dylan Casey and Seán O'Shea celebrate at full time after beating Dublin in the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship semi-final. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho Grumbling about it only makes you look vulnerable. Read the room and know your audience. Say all that stuff behind closed doors. Hold on to that poison and use it as fuel over the winter. Go into 2027 with a mantra – the refs are against us lads, we know that now. So we need to be four or five points better than the other teams to beat them.Also, by giving out about the refereeing, Brennan took away from the other point he wanted to make. He said in the same breath that the defeat was down to their own shooting efficiency as much as the big decisions. But because all anyone wanted to focus on was the bit about the refs, nobody heard that part of it.He was right though. Dublin had their chances but their misses killed them. Cormac Costello, Charlie McMorrow, Seán Guiden, Eoin Kennedy – they all had good chances for scores that missed by a lot. On a day when you’re the underdog and you need everything to go right, that sucks the energy out of your team.Kerry weren’t at their best. They look to be a team that is being careful about not overdoing things. Jack O’Connor has referred a few times now to the fact that some of his players haven’t played a lot of football. It seems fairly obvious that they’re minding them and deliberately slowing the game to play in a lower gear.Kerry manager Jack O'Connor. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho How many times on Sunday did you see a Kerry player head for the Dublin goal before checking back to recycle the ball and start a slow attack? There seems to a be a conscious decision to reduce the number of attacks and lower the physical load on the players. It feels like they really don’t want the Kerry players going gung-ho and throwing themselves hell-for-leather into every attack.Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, in fairness. When they lost to Donegal in Killarney, the likes of Seán O’Shea, Tom O’Sullivan, Gavin White weren’t available. Nobody could be sure if Paudie Clifford or Joe O’Connor or Briain Ó Beaglaoich had 70 minutes in them. Around half of the team that won last year’s All-Ireland have missed significant time in the past 12 months. So if the plan was to only do enough to get back to a final, you’d have to say it has worked.Is it pretty? No. But if Sam Maguire is coming back down on the train in a fortnight, nobody will remember and nobody will care. There’s more than one way to skin a cat and Kerry have done the first job. They keep taking the sting out of games and managing their way through them. Now they’re 70 minutes away from going back-to-back. Hard to argue with that.Kerry's Graham O'Sullivan and Dylan Geaney celebrate at full time after beating Dublin. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho But I would worry that it’s a dangerous game to play. Mayo are coming to Croke Park in classic Mayo fashion – nobody giving them a chance and them playing with a swagger anyway. They blew Louth away by pressing high, tackling like mad and shooting on sight. A team like that is dangerous if they get on a roll and you’re trying to game-manage them to death.By every metric, Kerry have to be heavy favourites on Sunday week. They have the more rounded squad, the more proven players and a manager who has been there a million times before. They’ve beaten Dublin, Tyrone and Armagh to get to the final, whereas Mayo’s last three wins have been against Louth, Cork and Meath. All the formlines point to a Kerry win.But if they keep playing with the handbrake on, my fear as a Kerry supporter would be that they leave Mayo in the game. Give these fellas a sniff and mad stuff could happen. Kerry have done everything they needed to get to the final, but they’re in it now.Time to let loose.