No new broom for 2018 but is a clear-out still required?
With Eamonn Fitzmaurice expected to stay as Kerry manager for another year Paul Brennan asks if it is time for some hard decisions to be made regarding players’ futures
WITH an announcement due this week that Eamonn Fitzmaurice is set to remain in charge of the Kerry football team (the understanding now is that he will do one more year) the news is likely to be received with conflicting thoughts around the county by all the stakeholders. Since the All-Ireland final defeat to Mayo a month ago, Fitzmaurice has been mulling over his future as team manager, with the only public utterance on an official level being an endorsement by County Committee chairman Tim Murphy for Fitzmaurice to continue on.
It was instructive that Murphy said the management team next year would have to be given “latitude” and “afforded the time and the opportunity to bring those [emerging young] players through to fruition”. Murphy stopped short - unlike some recently retired Kerry players like Colm Cooper and Marc Ó Sé - of saying that Kerry wouldn’t or couldn’t win the All-Ireland title in 2018, but the inference was there that the management team would likely be entering a period of rebuilding, or at least reinforcing, the senior team.
Quite how the introduction of the All-Ireland quarter-finals round robin series (Super 8) will change the landscape next summer, if it does at all, is anyone’s guess, but it should be clear to all that the 2018 All-Ireland Championship will be won by Dublin, Mayo or Kerry, with only a remote chance of an interloper breaking up that triumvirate. Exactly where Kerry stand in that trinity is the big question, and there is little doubt that if Kerry are to get up to Dublin’s level - and maybe even Mayo next year - then change of some kind is necessary.
The details of Fitzmaurice’s appointment have yet to be revealed but one has to wonder if just one more year is enough for him at a time when a fairly radical revamp of the panel is required, which will take at least two years and probably three to implement. Whether Fitzmaurice has looked for a longer term or not isn’t known, but doing the job for one more year, presumably bringing through a few more young players and then leaving the position wouldn’t appear to be the best strategy unless, of course, a definitive succession plan is already in place.
Maybe Maurice Fitzgerald is prepared to do one more year as a selector before pulling on the bainisteoir bib? Maybe Peter Keane wants a year out of management before stepping back in to the hottest seat in the county? Maybe Jack O’Connor - despite his two-year appointment as U-20 manager - has positioned himself to take charge of the senior team for a third time in 2019? Or maybe Fitzmaurice has decided - following on from his meeting with the players last Sunday - that there’s enough in the current squad, with a couple of additions, to go toe to toe with Mayo and Dublin and come out on top?
There has been a lot said and written about David Clifford since the All-Ireland minor final and about his ability - and the management’s willingness - to step up to the senior squad next year. Last Saturday’s underwhelming performance by the Fossa man for East Kerry in the county championship seemed endorse the belief of those who say it would be too much too soon to parachute him into the senior set-up. What did people expect, however, from a player who has been rightly celebrating his second All-Ireland minor title win. And we’re not talking about drinking and partying hard here. I don’t know if Clifford even takes a drink, but he has been at a few celebrations with his team mates since the win over Derry, and at a very basic level would have had very little time to assimilate into the East Kerry team ahead of last weekend’s match.
Whether Clifford is brought into the seniors in the new year or not is just a small part of the big picture. Last weekend eight teams played county senior championship football; two more played an Intermediate championship semi-final. Outside of the established county men there were several notable performances from younger players.
Robert Wharton put in an excellent shift at wing back in South Kerry’s win over Rathmore. Roibeard Ó Sé and Eanna Ó Conchuir were critical to West Kerry as they overran an Austin Stacks team whose only creditable performer over the hour was Greg Horan. Micheal Burns kicked four points for Dr Crokes in their win over Kenamre, for whom Sean O’Shea was again a stand-out performer.
Brian Ó Beaglaoich and Cathal Ó Luing also caught the eye in the West Kerry team; Gavin White was assured in the Crokes defence; Matthew O’Sullivan brought something different to the South Kerry full forward line; Ross O’Callaghan handled Clifford quite well in the O’Rahillys defence.
OF course, some of these players are already in and around the Kerry set-up. Others played exceptionally well last weekend but, in truth, aren’t inter-county material. The Kerry team management, of course, know about all these players and have considered them all. They have brought some of them into the senior squad and extended development panel and, we should assume, have plans to work with more next year. In the rush for change the baby shouldn’t be thrown out with the bath water, but is it now time for the management to seriously consider a major shake-up of the squad? If Fitzmaurice and his selectors are in it for just one more year then there will be the temptation to squeeze as much as possible out of the tried and tested, rather than making sweeping changes that - in all probability - won’t deliver the All-Ireland in 2018.
Managers, even the ones with the best long-term intentions of their county at heart - as Fitzmaurice obviously has - are in it to win it. Their reputation and legacy will be judged on titles won, not on how they fostered new talent for the next manager to come in and claim the silverware. Players readily admit to being selfish, especially the ones coming to the end of their career and wanting to win as much as they can for themselves. Nothing wrong with that. Managers need to be selfish too. And ruthless. Fitzmaurice has often been labelled ruthless in terms of his willingness to drop players from game to game and make hard calls with respect to team selection. Is it time that that ruthlessness extended to the long game?
It’s not for us to say who should or shouldn’t be kept on next year or dropped off the panel or brought in new. But lest we’re accused of being vague and not naming names surely there’s no harm in wondering if Kieran Donaghy, Donnchadh Walsh, Anthony Maher, Bryan Sheehan, Darran O’Sullivan, Jonathan Lyne, Barry John Keane and Mikey Keane have much more to offer Kerry in the next 12 or 24 months?
On their day, it goes without saying, all those men are excellent, dedicated footballers - match winners, even - but no one knows better than Fitzmaurice that there’s no room for sentiment at the top level of the game.
Is it better at this stage to have Micheal Burns playing National League next spring instead of Mikey Geaney? Sean O’Shea instead of Barry John Keane? Roibeard Ó Sé at midfield rather than Maher? Gavin White in defence over Lyne? Jason Foley at full back in place of Mark Griffin?
Donaghy will play basketball until next April, whether he opts in with Kerry for the summer or not, so why not Matthew O’Sullivan or Eanna Ó Conchuir or Killian Spillane at full forward for most of the League?
We appreciate that even if a successful defence of the League title isn’t a priority, then not getting relegated with a team of cubs is, so we’re not suggesting sending out an Under-21 team every round of the League.
Incremental change is what’s required, much like how Jim Gavin has stitched a few young players into the Dublin team every year without dramatically altering the overall fabric of the side.
In Kerry’s case, however, there was a jaded feel to the team this year, but don’t take our word for it. This is what Paul Geaney said last week: “Up until the [All-Ireland] semi-final I was convinced we were going to win it this year. But looking back we seemed to have peaked at the Munster final and went downhill from there, things didn’t go our way at all.
“We were well off the pace in both the Mayo games looking back now, and even the Galway game we were poor, we were sluggish. We have to try to peak later in the year to give ourselves a better chance.”
Darran O’Sullivan, also speaking last week, affirmed his team mate’s thinking: “As individuals we didn’t play the way we can play. You can have this tactic in place, or you can reshuffle, but if fellas aren’t at the races – which we weren’t, that’s the long and short of it, we weren’t at the races – there’s not much [management] can do.”
Geaney will probably be Kerry’s only All Star this year, while O’Sullivan said he will take time over the winter to consider his Kerry future.
By January O’Sullivan might make the decision easy for his manager and walk away content, having served his county with distinction, or Fitzmaurice might have to deliver unwelcome news to the Glenbeigh man or others.
Geaney said of the gamesmanship and cynicism at the end of the All-Ireland final, “it’s kill or be killed” and the incoming management team might just have to adopt a similar policy when it comes to reshaping the team and panel for 2018.
In the absence of a new broom sweeping clean, the Dingle-based múinteoir might have to take down the duster and wipe the slate clean, or partly clean at least.
Managers, even the ones with the best long-term intentions of their county at heart - as Fitzmaurice obviously has -, are in it to win it