Fitzmaurice aware of dangers posed by Banner in Cusack Park

WHILE it was all kicking off in the sports pages of the newspapers and on the airways about the Brendan O’Sullivan situation, Eamonn Fitzmaurice and his panel of players were getting down to business.

As is by now traditional, they were away together for five days for their pre-championship training camp. They’ve normally gone to the continent, Portugal was long a favoured haunt, but in the last two years they’ve stayed a little closer to home.

Last year they spent their time in England and this year in Johnstown House in Kildare. The camp is probably used more for setting building blocks in place ahead of the championship summer than any short term goals, such as preparing for this weekend’s clash with Clare in Cusack Park, but the two things probably do compliment each other quite nicely.

“Clare did have the game last weekend and that’s the advantage, there’s no doubt about it,” Fitzmaurice admitted.

“I suppose that period is always challenging for us, because I suppose despite all the giving out I think there was club football every single weekend between the league final and the two weeks out.

“I think there was some games on every weekend, so our preparation was quite disrupted, especially the county championship weeks where the lads are gone from us on a Tuesday and they’re not back into us until the following Tuesday.

“It is a challenging period every year there’s no doubt about it, the camp is definitely a help in that regard.”

No harm in that, as we only have to cast our mind back three years to the last time Kerry played Clare in Ennis and on that occasion the Banner gave Kerry plenty to think about, something Fitzmaurice is all too aware of.

“I was at the Clare / Limerick game last weekend or yesterday week ago and what I took from it was that it wasn’t a vintage Clare performance, but from what I took from it they’ve improved since last year,” the Kerry manager explained.

“Physically you can see that they’re a year further down the road of an S&C regime and they knew what they were about. They played very well for the first fifteen or twenty minutes, after that then I think they knew they were going to win and they kind of took their foot off the gas a small bit and there might have been a bit of concentration involved in it, but we’re not looking beyond that game, we know that’s a huge game.

“The last time we were above in Ennis in 2014 we got a fair testing above there. We were maybe level at half time or even a point down at half-time and we had to play very well in the second half to get the job done, so we know what we’re facing next weekend and we’re not looking beyond that.”

Despite the passage of two months in the meantime, Kerry will have to come into this game on something of a high following their victory over Dublin in the National League final in Croke Park.

“From the point of view it was great to win a game against Dublin,” Fitzmaurice said.

“Afterwards you just say ‘yeah it was a league final, it was great to win it, let’s look forward to championship now’. We know that with Dublin if anything that the defeat would probably help them that they would up their efforts further again.

“From our own point of view it was great, it was great to get that boost of confidence and to get the job done, albeit barely in the end, just to get the job done and get national silverware and head out to the championship in a positive mindset.”

The main thing that league final victory did was prove that the younger players – Jack Barry, Kevin McCarthy, Ronan Shanahan were all outstanding in the game – could cut it with the very best in the game.

“It was a great league from that point of view,” the Kerry boss outlined.

“We’d a good win against Dublin, we played well against Tyrone in our last game in Killarney, we’d a couple of very challenging games where we didn’t play well against Cavan above there where we dug out a draw, we didn’t play that well.

“The night in Tralee we were pretty good against Dublin, but we didn’t quite see it out there was learning in that, we’d a couple of disappointing defeats in February against Mayo and Monaghan, there was learning in that, so from a young group and for the amount of players it’s a very positive league definitely.”

One issue that prove costly to Kerry throughout the league was their discipline in the tackle – although to be fair improvements were obvious as the league progressed – and Fitzmaurice is hopeful the trend holds.

“It [discipline] cost us in a few league games,” he admitted.

“I think, in Tralee [against Mayo] our discipline, I can’t remember what Cillian O’Connor kicked that night, so it’s something we’re working on all through the year and it’s something we have to keep working

on.”