‘It’s just like United and Liverpool!’
ÉAMONN FITZMAURICE has never lost to Cork in Championship football during his time as Kerry manager, but he insists that anything can happen in the big southern football derby and says tonight’s Munster final has the same feel as Manchester Liverpool encounters across the water. Fitzmaurice’s side have played the Rebels five times in Championship, with the record standing at four wins and one draw. They are widely expected to maintain that record in Pairc Uí Chaoimh this evening as the Kingdom are red-hot favourites to win their sixth consecutive Munster title — and 80th in all. However, Fitzmaurice is wary of a Cork side that are coming in under the radar. ‘A Kerry-Cork Munster final has a special feel about it. There always is. It is the same in other sports. Regardless of where Liverpool and Man Utd are at in a given time, when they play each other in a derby, it will always be helter-skelter and always going to be tight. ‘I am expecting the same in this match. Cork are a bit under the radar but I can definitely see signs of progress from last year. It is the first Munster final they have had down there in the new stadium against us. It is our first time going to Cork in four years.’ This will be the first Munster final played at Pairc Uí Chaoimh since 2014, when Fitzmaurice’s side coasted home by 12 points. In the five Championship matches against Cork, the average winning margin of his team has been six points but the Kerry boss reckons his players can take nothing for granted tonight. ‘If we are going to win, we have to go up and perform close to the top of our ability. If we don’t, we will be beaten. We know that ourselves and we’ve shown it plenty of times, we’ve shown it during the League that when we are on and play well, we’re capable of delivering big performances, but when we’re off, we can be poor. We need to bring it and we need to play. And if we play at the top of our game, it will take a good team to beat us. It is very black and white.’ The Kingdom’s sharpshooters seem to thrive when playing the Rebels. James O’Donoghue has never failed to score from play in his seven encounters against Cork while Paul Geaney has scored 2-10 from play in his last four Championship meeting with Kerry’s old Munster rivals. A sign of how far Cork have fallen down the pecking order is that the two rivals are not as familiar as they were in the noughties, when there were 18 Championship meetings. In this decade, there has just been nine Championship clashes while the Rebels falling to Division 2 has meant they haven’t played in the League in the last three years. Fitzmaurice admits things were more familiar when he played. ‘It brings a freshness to the challenge. When I was playing, if you threw in the McGrath Cup, you could end up playing four or five times in the one year. There was definitely the dynamic of familiarity breeding contempt. There’s a freshness about the challenge. It is in the new Páirc Uí Chaoimh so that brings a new layer of glamour to the thing for supporters, players and management. ‘It is an exciting fixture. With Cork, the kind of people they are, they’re going to throw everything at us. There is a lot of different dynamics to make it a very interesting a fixture.’ Interesting, but likely to be the same result.