PARTING SHOT

Perfect timing of a legend’s

THERE should have been a dark sky over Kerry last Tuesday, but there wasn’t. It was a fine day with barely a cloud to be seen. Even the weather gods had respect for Colm Cooper’s decision. As the afternoon train wound its way from Killarney to Tralee, two locals were overheard assessing Gooch’s legacy in a manner that they only could in the Kingdom. By numbers and medals.

‘His like won’t be seen again, that’s for sure.’

‘He was worth every one of his five All-Irelands.’ ‘He only won four.’ ‘No. There was five. ‘04, ‘06, ‘07, ‘09 and 2014.’

‘Yerra, he didn’t play in 2014, sure he was injured.’

‘He was on the bench for the final. He got a medal.’

For the record. Colm Cooper agrees with the sentiments of one of those individuals. He felt he didn’t deserve a medal in 2014.

‘I won’t be looking for one[a medal] anyway,’ Cooper said a few weeks after Kerry had beaten Donegal. ‘I don’t feel that I deserve one, no.’

A couple of hours after those supporters had their animated discussion on the train, Éamonn Fitzmaurice sat in Austin Stack Park and explained why Cooper was key to the Kingdom claiming their 37th All-Ireland title. He was dressed in black and that seemed apt on such a solemn day for Kerry football.

But when Fitzmaurice wanted to discuss Gooch’s legacy, he kept returning to one year, 2014, when he didn’t kick a ball in green and gold. Instead, Cooper became a part of the backroom team. ‘A quasi-selector,’ in the words of Fitzmaurice. ‘It would have been easy for him to have gone and sulked basically,’ the manager explained. ‘He was captain of the team, he had just got a serious injury and it would have been easy for him to say that he was going to take a year off and come back stronger next season. ‘He didn’t do that. He basically became a quasi-selector for us. He would sit with the other selectors at games, he would spot things and wasn’t afraid to give his opinion. And he was at training the whole time, he did his rehab work with us and made massive contributions in team meetings.’ In the team meeting the weekend before the final against Donegal, Fitzmaurice recalls Cooper’s ‘outstanding’ assistance. Cooper’s stamp of approval for Kerry’s game plan in combating their opponents’ tactics was key to the players believing in it.

If Kerry were chasing that final, Fitzmaurice revealed that the plan was to bring Cooper on. He was only seven months into his rehabilitation at that stage but he played his first training match less than two weeks before the 2014 decider – the evening when a Donegal man was discovered peering from a branch outside Fitzgerald Stadium.

‘That famous night of the man up the tree, that Tuesday night, he played centre-forward in a game and he came through it fine. He played so well that night that we knew we were able to have him in some capacity for the final. And if we needed someone to pick a hole with five or ten minutes to go, if we were down, then he was the man who was going to come in.’

Last Tuesday, as life went on as normal in the Kingdom, it was easy to recall the February evening three years earlier when confirmation of Cooper’s cruciate ligament injury became known. More than one Kerry official had said news of the injury was like ‘a death in the family’.

There was nothing so dramatic last week. Flags didn’t fly at halfmast at Austin Stack Park. Nobody reeled from the shock. Cooper’s announcement had been well signposted. Even as they streamed out of Fitzgerald Stadium last weekend, after brushing Tyrone aside, speculation centred on whether Gooch would hold off on his retirement announcement until after the League final.

This was expected. He had done all he wanted to. The club medal was the cherry on top of the cake. And for Kerry supporters, everything after that cruciate injury felt like a bonus.

And last season had been difficult for Cooper. Fitzmaurice hinted at just how hard it had been. In the end, it was the thought of another season battling his body that probably made up his mind.

‘He was in absolutely fantastic shape going into the summer last year, and he had weird things go wrong. Frustrations that he never had before. He had an infection in his foot at one stage, got a shoulder injury early in the Munster final and missed the AllIreland quarter-final out of that. It was a frustrating summer for someone who’s body was in such good shape coming into the Championship. ‘And maybe he was thinking about that coming into the Championship and felt that he couldn’t take the risk of having another frustrating summer like it.’ Fitzmaurice suggested that it was the right decision for Gooch, even if it didn’t feel right for Kerry. And yet the world kept spinning in Tralee last Tuesday evening. Beside Austin Stack Park, shoppers went about their business in the local supermarkets. Patrons acknowledged that Gooch had departed, but everyone seemed to know. As if his performance for Dr Crokes on St Patrick’s Day was his goodbye. ‘Yeah, it’s the end of an era but sure, weren’t we privileged to have watched as long as we did? That is the way I think about it,’ proclaimed the man with the keys to Austin Stack Park. On the field, the Kerry minors, including David Clifford, the latest superstar in the making, were training. The conveyor belt doesn’t stop in Kerry, not even on a day like last Tuesday. Already, they are working to replace Gooch, even if his likes will never been seen again.