Fitz: ‘Nothing surprises me any more about them’

T’S probably fair to say they were a little taken aback after that. Not so much at the fact Dublin had won the game – they knew they hadn’t as much work done as they needed to in order to win that night – rather at just at how good Dublin were in it.

Even then it wasn’t so much that Dublin were good – they knew long before then that Dublin were good – it was more a case of how good they were, how good they were and how early in the season it was.

As a matter of fact it was still the month of January. Just a couple of months before that there was but a kick of a ball between the two sides in the All Ireland final and now, early in 2016, the Kingdom were lucky to escape Croke Park with a six point defeat.

Chatting amongst themselves later on Eamonn Fitzmaurice and his key lieutenants came to the conclusion that if Dublin could keep up that sort of momentum from then until September and managed to win the All Ireland they’d be “some team”.

That it took the Sky Blues until October (after a replay) is besides the point. Dublin did just that. They passed each and every one the criteria set down by the Kerry management team and did so with flying colours. Some team.

“Nothing surprises me about them any more to be honest,” Fitzmaurice says in reflection.

For all that the admiration Fitzmaurice has for Jim Gavin’s men is genuine, it must be deeply frustrating for the Finuge man nevertheless to watch them power on seamlessly from one season to the next.

They’re the itch Kerry can’t quite scratch. Even a league win in 2015 seems less significant in context of what happened later on that summer. Dublin have lorded it over the Kingdom – and everybody else – for too long.

“They’re a serious team. Everybody knows that. We know that,” Fitzmaurice says.

“I think the consistency that they brought to it is incredible. I saw a stat a couple of weeks ago about the great Kilkenny hurling team that won the four All Irelands. The best consecutive streaks they had, league and championship, I think it was maybe thirteen or fourteen games.

“That was the best that team achieved, so I think that puts in context what Dublin are doing. It’s incredible what they’re doing. The level of consistency, their level of performance week in week out, year in year out, is incredible.

“To have gone two years unbeaten league and championship... championship is one thing, if you’ve achieved that in championship you know that’s do-able, that is doable, but when you put all the variables that come into it in the league into it that they’ve managed to do that it’s incredible, it is incredible.

“Every team is beatable, every team is beatable, whether it happens Saturday night or not I don’t know it will happen at some stage and I’d love if it was this Saturday night.”

Kerry teams and Kerry managers don’t need a specific reason to want to beat Dublin, it simply goes without saying that they do. On this occasion, however, Dublin come seeking to match a record held by the great Kerry team of the 1930s.

The Kingdom have the chance to stop Dublin’s unbeaten run dead in its tracks and preserve Kerry’s record in the process. That’s got to be huge motivation – for both teams admittedly.

“This is what makes football great and what makes sport great,” the Kerry boss says when asked about the record.

“There’s going to be everybody and anyone, particularly in the media and the locals, everybody out on the street is going to be talking about records and can Dublin be stopped and can Kerry do it or somebody else and so on and so forth and that’s what makes sport so great.

“That doesn’t impinge on us, it’s not as if I’m going to be hammering the table inside the dressing room before hand talking about records or anything. We’re going to try and win a game, we’ve set out to win every game.

“Obviously when it’s Dublin there’s added incentives there for us because of the fact they’ve had the upper hand on us for the last couple of years, so there’s huge motivation there from our point of view more so than any other team.”

Stack Park is certain to a cauldron on Saturday evening. A heaving mass of bodies, 12,000 tightly packed in, close to the pitch, passion and fury both on the pitch and off it. Kerry’s blood will be up for this game, make no mistake.

“This is the stuff that keeps them [the players] going, thinking about the best team in the country coming to your home patch on a Saturday night, you know before hand it’s sold out, it’s going to be a great atmosphere here.

“That’s the reason the lads are in it, that’s the reason the lads are involved for big nights and big games so I don’t think you’d be human if you weren’t looking forward to it.”

The bookies suggest that Dublin are favourites for this game, but only moderately so. The belief remains that Kerry on their day can triumph over this Dublin team as good and all as they are.

“We know we’re close in championship terms,” Fitzmaurice suggests.

“It’s different in the league because you don’t have the same level of preparation as you do for a championship game, you don’t have the full deck to work with, so it is slightly different for championship.

“We know we’re close and like anything if you fail you go back and go again and try to learn and try to improve and that’s what we’ve been doing at every time. We’re getting closer and closer and we’ll keep going until we get there.

“Sometimes, particular our group whatever is in it, we can be a bit relaxed against certain opposition and it can show in our performance, but against the likes of a Dublin the fact that they have won so many games and they are so consistent it’ll be a huge motivating

factor.”