Fitz - Kerry will give Banner the respect they deserve

Damian Stack spoke with Kerry boss Eamonn Fitzmaurice ahead of this weekend’s All Ireland quarterfinal with Clare in Croke Park

IT was the obvious question to ask. “So Eamonn, did you catch one of the two qualifiers on Saturday afternoon?”

His reaction to it – a rueful, slightly bashful chuckle – told us all we needed to know. Just like twelve months ago Eamonn Fitzmaurice bet on the wrong horse.

Given the choice of two venues, featuring three potential quarter-final opponents for the Kingdom he ended up in the one place, watching the one game, that would have absolutely no bearing on his thinking for the week ahead.

Of course, the Finuge man had sound reasons for going where he went. Clare and Roscommon he knew, as well as any opposing manager knows another team, having played both teams twice over the course of the season.

Derry were potentially something new, a different team playing a different brand of football to what the Kingdom had already come across this year. It made perfect sense for him to go there and check them out.

It doesn’t in any way suggest he was taking Clare’s potential to beat Roscommon lightly... or, indeed, Tipperary’s to beat Derry. While he was in Cavan with Diarmuid Murphy, his trusted lieutenants Padraig Corcoran and Liam Hassett were in Salthill.

Still for all that you do wonder whether his choice of venue revealed a certain yearning for something a little different. A desire for his team to be tested in a different way to how they’d been already.

“Absolutely and last week that’s the way I would have felt about it,” he says.

“But having seen the games, undoubtedly of the three teams we could have played, Clare are the best, simple as that. So from our point of view they’re going to give us a strenuous test and if we can get over them they’re going to give us a tough test.

“Obviously we’re planning to beat them, but again we’re going to have to be at our best. They’ve improved since last June and they’ll have serious confidence and momentum, which are two key ingredients in sport if you’re trying to win games.

“Derry would have given us a new challenge and a different challenge, but not a better challenge, Clare are better than Derry.”

As soon as the quarter-final pairings were revealed many observers of the scene – inside Kerry and without – lamented or lambasted a championship structure that could see Kerry reach an All Ireland semi-final without playing a Division 1 side and by only playing Munster opposition.

“I think to be fair to both Clare and Tipperary, there was a huge lack of respect,” Fitzmaurice insists.

“They were being dismissed because we beat them, completely dismissed, both teams and I think it was very disrespectful to be honest and I think both teams have gone on and shown the quality that they have.

“I think it shows the work that’s going on in particular in the likes of Clare and Tipperary and the progress that they’ve made and the wins that they’ve had, even that there was a reaction to the wins at the weekend that we were playing Clare there were words like ‘farcical’ being used.

“That we were inside in an All Ireland semi-final already without having played the game at all, again I found it very disrespectful to Clare in particular in that case. That they had got to an All Ireland quarter-final on merit having won three tough games and it was being described as farcical.

“It’s good for Munster, it’s showing what we know ourselves because we come up against them and we know, as I say to ye, that we have to be at our best. They scored seventeen points against us in Killarney and created goal chances and were very good so we certainly respect them, but there is certainly a lack of respect out there for their achievements and similarly for Tipperary.”

For Fitzmaurice the biggest challenge about preparing for Sunday’s game is the very fact of the preparation for the game. Four weeks long, most of that sitting and stewing without knowing who Kerry would face. All the while Clare have been gathering momentum.

“We turned it the other way,” he says.

“We didn’t know our opposition so we focussed on ourselves, which is no bad thing. We had things to improve on from the Munster championship that we needed to get right going to Croke Park regardless of who we were going to be playing.

“Obviously this week against Clare we can zoom in on them again and their strengths and weaknesses and the areas that they troubled us in June. A week is plenty time to focus on your opposition. The training has been good the effort has been great, but obviously when you do know the opposition it sharpens the edge a bit.

“You’re going in against a team who have momentum and have been playing games week in week out. The other side of it then is will there be a bit of fatigue on their part, which shouldn’t be on our part.

“It’s a tough one. They have a level of match fitness at the moment that we probably don’t have so it’s something we’ll just have to factor in and hit the ground running if we

can.”