Fitz hopes road trip will revive Kerry’s fortunes

THERE’S a dry humour to Eamonn Fitzmaurice.

Most of the time he straightbats whatever is throw at him in these pre-match and post-match gatherings. Every now and again, however, a little bit of the man underneath the manager’s bib emerges.

Asked if was disappointed to have lost the first two home games of the season the Finuge man dead-panned – “Believe it or not, we’re not looking for home losses.” It was a comment that drew laughter from the assembled press pack.

To be fair, the press can be an easy audience, out of obsequience as anything else we’ll laugh uproariously at any halfbaked attempt at humour from a manager or a player. On this occasion, however, the joke was genuinely funny.

It was a badly needed moment of levity on a day that rarely rose above the dismal. Kerry were poor and there was no escaping it, not that the Kerry boss tried to. He was straight up in his assessment.

“Disappointed of course,” he said.

“It would have been good to have gotten something out of the game. It looked to have been gone from us, but we fought back and it looked like we might salvage a draw out of it in the end, but we didn’t. That was disappointing of course.

“I think we weren’t accurate enough in all facets of our play, in terms of our handling, in terms of our passing, our kick-passing, our hand-passing. I think we could have went better on that which is something we pride ourselves on and it’s something we work on every night in training.

“It’s something we pride ourselves on and something we’d be disappointed with and something we can work on next week.”

A big worry for the Kerry support must be Kerry’s failure to take advantage of the strong breeze they had into the Lewis Road end in the first half. A two point lead at that juncture was never likely to be sufficient.

“There was a strong breeze there, but we train here so often and we know the place so well we figured that we’d be able to battle away against it,” Fitzmaurice noted.

“We probably didn’t score enough in the first half. We had chances and we didn’t take them. Monaghan worked very hard in the first half and they got a goal, both goals came at crucial times when we were on top and we just didn’t score enough basically.

“We had a couple of chances and we hit the post another time as well, similar to the Mayo game when you’re creating those goal chances you need to take them. Now I suppose for the big picture you’d be more worried if we weren’t creating the chances, but we just have to convert.

“In a tight game you have to take those chances and we didn’t do that today. They [Monaghan] stifled us well, we won frees alright, but their style of play we’re familiar with it and we know it and we know that it’s hard to break down and they’re a very effective counter-attacking team.

“We knew what we were coming up against, but we just weren’t good enough today.”

Kerry will need to bounce back and fast against Roscommon next weekend, otherwise a relegation battle seems more likely than a place in the league final. That said a chance to right the wrongs again so soon has to be considered a boon for the manager and his players.

“There’s advantages to the away trips we always find,” he said.

“When we’re together the night before it helps us, but absolutely we’re looking down rather than up now. Next weekend’s game is of huge importance now. Roscommon will be scrapping for points and we need to make sure we stay ahead of them.

“Having said that we got into the semi-finals last year in second place with ten points so that’s still achievable, but we’ll be taking it one game at a time and that’s next weekend. They beat us in Killarney last year and we’ll have to be ready for that.”

As for those now panicking after two defeats on-the-trot, the Kerry boss was at his stoical best, clear that neither he nor his players are going to succumb to any panic any time soon.

“We’re realistic enough within the group that if we had won the three games we weren’t going to be getting carried away with it and now that we’ve only won one out of the three we’re not going to be panicking, but the thing about winning is it’s a habit and the more games you win the better.

“We set out to win every game. I think there can be this perception at times that we don’t care about the league and we’re always looking further down the line, of course we’re looking further down the line.

“We care about the league and we care about winning every game, but unfortunately in the last two games now we just haven’t been good enough, but we won’t be panicking. We’ve to try and win now next weekend.”