Kerry’s heartbreak rippled slowly, cruelly.First Síofra O’Shea thought this tense and skittish All-Ireland final was drawn. She shucked off a couple of tackles and tapped over a point from play, only to realise the referee had yanked play back for an earlier foul.Then she thought it was won. The initially unwanted free-kick was outside the two-point arc, and so was within range to put Kerry ahead without time for Galway to respond. Her nonchalant effort hung high in the sky and dropped in front of the crossbar, and the ball was palmed into the net by a hand among the straining, desperate profusion.And finally she learned it was lost. O’Shea swung away in celebration and was still windmilling her arms when she turned around to be confronted by the reality already met by her ashen-faced team-mates. Referee Maggie Farrelly had blown her whistle to ping a square ball. The Galway players were not on their knees in despair, but joy.O’Shea fell to the ground, and the arms first raised in celebration now swung down to furiously beat the turf. Few players have ever travelled between the twin poles of glory and defeat in such a swift, smooth arc.Kerry’s chief postgame grievance was in the disallowing of the equalising point.Kerry's Síofra O'Shea celebrates a late score which was later disallowed. Photograph: Grace Halton/Inpho O’Shea was still in the soak of bitter defeat when the hooter blared and N17 poured from the PA system. The Galway players lost themselves in reprieved joy, while the Kerry supporters found themselves afflicted by the Saw Doctors for the second straight Sunday. They trooped out of Croke Park more quickly this time, injured by the fact they had once again set the table for a famine-ending feast.[ Galway beat Kerry to All-Ireland senior title after late drama at Croke ParkOpens in new window ]This is Galway’s first title since 2004 and only second ever. It may not match the arithmetic of Mayo’s, but is sweet recompense for a trio of final defeats, most obviously the loss to Kerry two years ago.Consistent with those years, Galway spent much of this final subsisting on meagre rations, but Leanne Coen’s pair of goals was a sufficient diet to win a low-scoring final.These sides’ meeting two years ago ended Kerry’s 31-year stretch without a title, but it did not fully slake their thirst. Kerry instead took last year’s semi-final defeat to Meath less as a kind of affront, and so they took off to Portugal to ruminate together in exile. They watched the All-Ireland final to which they were not invited and vowed to bottle their pain as a fast-maturing vintage, to be uncorked at Croke Park in a year’s time.So it came to pass and so Kerry thundered into the contest. The narrative ahead of the game was that Kerry would be characterised by what Catalans would call Síofradependencia, and the story was borne out in the numbers. Of their 7-65 across the All-Ireland series, O’Shea scored 3-25. Galway brought a more diffuse threat, with Olivia Divilly, Róisín Leonard, Coen and Kate Slevin each accruing more than Kerry’s second top-scorer, Danielle O’Leary.Bronagh Quinn was assigned to O’Shea and adequately shackled her across the first three-quarters of the game, restricting her to only a couple of pointed frees.Galway's Leanne Coen scores her side's first goal. Photograph: Seb Daly/Sportsfile Galway swarmed Kerry attackers and defended with the zeal of the maniacally determined, but there was a hectic edge to their early shooting, squandering a series of attacks with rushed and panicked shooting.It took Coen to show calm midway through the first half, when she picked up the ball on the right flank and skated smoothly inside a couple of Kerry defenders. Bearing down on goal, she deftly skewed her shot off the outside of her right boot, putting just enough spin on the ball to brush off the raised hand of Mary Ellen Bolger and into the net. She said after the game she preferred her second goal, but her first wins on artistic merit.O’Shea scored a free to level the game just before the break, a moment which punctuated a sloppy, error-strewn stretch of the game. Kerry dominated the third quarter but couldn’t mint it on the scoreboard, a slice of the game across which each team managed just a single point each. Amid the general toil, Kerry manager Mark Bourke sent out the most literal SOS call in Gaelic games. O’Shea answered by dropping deeper and she suddenly became menacing, rapidly scoring her first two points from play.One was a superb right-footed shot after she had been knocked off balance, the second a fisted point after she danced through a crevice between two Galway defenders. That gave Kerry a two-point lead for the first time since the 12th minute. The screeches and cheers from the Kerry supporters added credence to the feeling that O’Shea had found momentum for the first time. If she had, it was quickly stalled. Nicola Ward surged through the pitch and found Coen, who again pushed the throttle to drop a defender and rifle the ball into the net.The sides traded points to set up O’Shea’s agonising finale. The attendance of 26,471 was the lowest since 2013, and they were given true B-movie fare: lengthy, ho-hum exposition redeemed by a show-stopping finale. In contravention to the primal laws of Hollywood, however, the headline star was thwarted, albeit by painfully memorable means.