Stick or twist Fitzmaurice was in a really tough spot ahead of the replay
DAMNED if he did, damned if he didn’t, Eamonn Fitzmaurice was in a real bind last week.
He could stick with largely the same side, playing a similar type of system as he did in the drawn game, or he could rip up the script and go with something a little different. Whatever he did he was on a hiding to nothing if his team didn’t win.
If they lost with the same players and the same system then he’d be lambasted for rigidity and a lack of imagination. If, as happened, they lost trying something different he’d get it in the neck for that too. Who’d be a manager?
It’s a tough gig no doubt. It takes a certain type of character to take that upon his shoulders as the Finuge man has done over the past five seasons. He’s won more than he’s lost – this was his first championship defeat to a side other than Dublin – and gotten more than his fair share of big calls right.
It didn’t come off on Saturday – no matter what he did it’s probably the case that Mayo were always going to get the better of his side – but that’s hardly a hanging offence. Beckett put it best: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
“You always say that when you lose,” Fitzmaurice said when asked if he’d have liked to have started a different side.
“But no I stand over what we did 100%, what we were trying to do. It didn’t work today, but that’s the beauty of management we don’t have the benefit of hindsight. It’s not a worry. I think you go out on different days and you try things. We had good days this year.
“We played well in the Munster final, played well in the National League final trying other things and they came off and we won. Today we tried things and they didn’t work, but no, you go back to the drawing board, you go back training and work on new things and you try to get it right. It’s not that alarming.
It was what it was today.”
As for concerns raised before that match that too big a tactical switch would be hard to pull off with the benefit of just one training session between draw and replay to implement it, Fitzmaurice is dismissive.
“We’ve done it in the past,” he explained.
“We’ve done it in different games this season, in the league, particularly against the better Division 1 teams, so the players that were playing in the roles were comfortable in them.
“We do it in training off and on and scenario based football. So it’s not like it’s something we’ve never done and it’s a complete sea-change so I wouldn’t use that as an excuse to be honest.”
Still people will wonder about whether a sweeper system is suited to a Kerry team, especially one that can call upon the talents of guys like Paul Geaney and James O’Donoghue who was left on the bench for the first half of Saturday’s game.
“It’s a system and I think often-times a sweeper is viewed completely from the negative,” Fitzmaurice said
“But it also gives you numbers to go the other way, in terms of attacking and getting half-backs up the field and again we just didn’t have enough ball to do that. Today was primarily, especially in the first half, from a defensive point of view, but as we saw during the league, the league final in particular, we used it to great effect, but like I said you have to have the ball to do that and we didn’t have enough of the ball.”
All of that he could accept – he didn’t like it, what manager would, but he could accept it – what he found harder to swallow was a couple of the referee’s decisions, especially the one which left Darran O’Sullivan on the sidelines after he picked up a black card for a clash with Cillian O’Connor.
“I saw that incident and he shouldn’t have got a black card, it should have been the other way,” he stated.
“What it meant was that we were robbed of his impact and we were robbed of a substitution that was what it meant, but look you get these calls, you don’t get these calls, but that was definitely the wrong call anyway.”
Fitzmaurice isn’t yet committed to returning for another crack at reclaiming Cannister, but with the Kingdom back in yet another minor final in a couple of weeks time the manager recognises that this is a potentially exciting time for Kerry football even if it’s one with challenges of its own.
“There’s great talent coming through and that’s a challenge, getting that talent up to senior level and getting them ready, but there’s massive talent coming through, but that doesn’t equate to success.
“It’s hard to win All Irelands regardless of what people talk about soft All Irelands and everything else. It’s hard to win them and that’s a positive challenge getting those lads up to the level that’s required.”