YOU COWARDS!
Kerry supremo blasts ‘faceless’ hate-mail trolls
KERRY GAA chief Tim Murphy yesterday slammed the ‘faceless’ supporters who sent anonymous hate mail to former county manager Éamonn Fitzmaurice and his players this summer.
Fitzmaurice stepped down as the Kingdom’s boss last weekend after failing to oversee qualification for the All-Ireland semi-finals and revealed that he, along with some of his squad, received anonymous letters in recent weeks.
Fitzmaurice added that he believed he had become a ‘lightning rod’ for criticism that was hugely damaging to the team. Yesterday, Murphy hit out at those supporters and claimed they were not representative of the majority of Kerry fans.
‘I am awfully disappointed with how that panned out but what I would say is the vast majority of Kerry supporters are honourable and decent people,’ Murphy told Sportsmail.
‘But there is a cohort of faceless people out there
who send these letters and they are not man or woman enough to do it in a constructive way. ‘It is very disappointing and it is a trend I would hope will not continue. ‘It is a transitional period in Kerry where we are trying to blend old and young and that takes a bit of time to do. ‘I would hope the next manager will be afforded that time to build on the very solid foundations that Éamonn has put in place,’ added Murphy, who said that the selection committee will look at all options but would not be rushed into making a quick appointment. The process to replace Fitzmaurice, who stepped down with two years left to run on his current term, begins tomorrow night when the county executive meet with the selection committee and Murphy has promised that a thorough search will take place in order to make the right appointment. ‘We are not going to rush it, it will take whatever length of time it will take,’ confirmed Murphy, who added that Kerry were prepared to look outside the county. ‘That will be down to the committee. We’ll look at everything.’
DONALD TRUMP insults the intelligence of America’s premier black sports star and Éamonn Fitzmaurice quits as Kerry manager, citing a sackful of hate mail and a toxic level of criticism. Could the two be connected?
The US President is an emblem of a society where bar-stool insults have become part of public discourse. In elevating character assassination to the level of pop art — ‘little rocket man’ threatened to upgrade the North Korea nuclear threat — he has legitimised the scatter gun holing of various reputations.
Just before midnight last Friday, Trump was at it again. This time, NBA superstar LeBron James was the target of his ire after a re-broadcast of an interview with CNN anchor Don Lemon. The extensive sit-down was ostensibly to promote the player’s investment of millions of dollars into a new elementary school for at-risk youth in his native town of Akron, Ohio.
Long before he earned the moniker ‘King James’ and the hero worship of fans, he was just a ‘skinny kid from Akron who missed 83 days of school in the fourth grade’ and grew up poor with a single mother guiding the way.
He spoke movingly of sport being a unifying force, of basketball helping him to move in circles that would otherwise have been closed off to him.
And then it got political, James refused to bite his lip over what he sees as the targeting of black sporting figureheads by the President, from fellow NBA superstar Steph Curry to NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and his decision to take a knee during the national anthem to highlight the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement.
Which prompted Trump’s slur: ‘LeBron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made LeBron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.’
LESS than 24 hours after Trump had belittled James, Fitzmaurice dropped a bombshell by announcing that he was stepping down as Kerry senior football manager, two years short of the terms he had agreed with the county board last autumn.
A 3-25 to 2-16 victory over Kildare wasn’t enough to progress to the All-Ireland semi-final stage after a wipe-out against Galway at Croke Park in round one of the Super 8s and a get-out-of-jail card via a late David Clifford goal at Clones that didn’t paper over any of the cracks against Monaghan in round two.
While declaring his shoulders were broad enough to take the criticism, Fitzmaurice admitted to having a bundle of anonymous hate mail at home.
Fitzmaurice believes Kerry’s younger players would be better off developing without the distraction of the toxic fumes attached to his time in charge. In the build-up, he signposted how hard it is for younger panel members to detach themselves from the social media chatter.
When the supposed leader of the free world is insulting the intelligence of the globe’s most famous black sports star, who has demonstrated a social conscience and a genuine commitment to civil liberties, then what hope is there for the poor fullback who has been torched for 1-9 by Conor McManus? When trading insults is normalised by someone who holds such high office, the knives are sure to be out for the manager who flipped through a list of possible match-ups and decided that he had a man-marker for the job. Taking flak though comes with the territory. Fitzmaurice was on the pitch when a Kerry supporter lived up to Páidí Ó Sé’s jibe about ‘the roughest type of f***ing animals’ by clambering pitch side during the 2003 All-Ireland semifinal defeat by Tyrone at Croke Park and swinging for a man who had eight All-Ireland medals on the sideline. When Ó Sé’s famous ‘winter talk’ interview landed him in hot water, it prompted another equally famous dispatch from the team holiday in South Africa where RTÉ reporter Marty Morrissey tracked him down. The manager invoked the name of Nelson Mandela when outlining why he would ride out the storm.
During the spring of 2013, in the early months of Fitzmaurice’s tenure, the same reporter was dispatched down south to cover the ‘crisis’ in Kerry football after a team — in obvious transition — lost a few National League games. By September 2014, Fitzmaurice had masterminded an All-Ireland title against the head.
Six consecutive Munster titles, not to mention beating Dublin in a League final in 2017, might ordinarily have been enough to shield him from any serious flak. But the Super 8s showcased the identity crisis that was at the heart of Kerry’s problems.
A ‘We are Kerry’ attitude seemed to inform management’s thinking throughout a League and Munster campaign, that whatever opportunities coughed up at the back, the commitment would be to go at the opposition. Until that failure of nerve and about-turn for the Super 8s game against Galway, when the Kingdom appeared to don a set of clothes that belonged to someone else. In such ill-fitting garb, they appeared unrecognisable.
In Clones in round two, only one team had a clear sense of itself and a structured vision of how it wanted to play. What was Kerry’s kick-out strategy? What was the strategy to deal with Rory Beggan’s restarts? The Monaghan keeper delivered arguably the greatest display of place-kicking by a goalkeeper ever witnessed.
LOOK at the four teams left in this weekend’s All-Ireland semi-finals. All of them have a very clear sense of how they set up and play. Mickey Harte has refined Tyrone’s double sweeper and counterattacking running game. Malachy O’Rourke has only Jim Gavin for competition in terms of the manager of the year category in the highly orchestrated way Monaghan have clinched a first All-Ireland semi-final appearance since 1988. Dublin showed in Omagh a shapeshifting ability to produce a defensive masterclass when needed, to go with the front-foot approach when routing Roscommon at Croke Park.
As Kerry start the hunt for a new manager, the world keeps turning. When school starts back in the next month, Fitzmaurice will embrace his new position as secondary school principal of Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne in Dingle. He steps up after a wellregarded reputation as a history teacher.
Still shaping minds and attitudes, away from the limelight. There’s a sports star on the other side of the Atlantic who can vouch for the importance of doing just that.