Seconds from disaster but

Paul Brennan

LET’S call a spade a spade: had David Clifford’s goal not rescued a draw and a Championship lifeline for Kerry last Sunday the clamour for a head on a plate this week would have been loud and uncomfortable. And it might have been difficult for Eamonn Fitzmaurice to survive the inevitable brickbats and hold on to his position as manager. It’s all academic now, of course, - for now - but it’s hard to have imagined anyone showing up in Fitzgerald Stadium next Saturday week other than those who were prepared to pay their money so as to give the manager a piece of the their mind.

We’re not saying Fitzmaurice’s head would have been officially called for - or offered - this week had Monaghan held on to dump Kerry out of the Championship, but the sense of foreboding and then relief was palpable in St Tiernach’s Park last Sunday evening. It was maybe fitting then - or perhaps at odds with it - that Fitzmaurice gave his post-match comments in a narrow corridor more in line with a subterranean escape tunnel than a GAA grounds that routinely hosts the Ulster Final. Hemmed in between a cold wall and a phalanx of Dictaphones and enquiring reporters, Fitzmaurice uttered one of the lines of the summer: “We won the draw in at the end.” A bit like realising you’re just one lucky star short in the Euromillions lottery.

“We could have stole it at the end,” he added, happy enough at that stage to push Kerry’s luck even further. “We had possession at the end and maybe the fact that the time was up the lads rushed it slightly. We could have really stole the win but, ah, with a couple of minutes to go to get a draw out of it I was delighted with that.”

Delighted, too, that some of the previous week’s wrongs were put to right, and relieved, no doubt, that there’s at least one more meaningful match left in Kerry’s summer.

“It was a tough Sunday night,