Fitzmaurice accentuates the positives of League overall despite final round defeat

Paul Brennan got the thoughts of Éamonn Fitzmaurice after a disappointing end to Kerry’s League title defence with a loss to Tyrone in Omagh

Aweek earlier, following the win over Kildare that all but assured Kerry’s place in Division One next year Eamonn Fitzmaurice spoke of the desire to end the League campaign on the high of a win against Tyrone. The rationale was simple: despite the long hiatus between League and Championship, the manager knows the benefits of carrying some winning momentum from the former into the preparations for the latter. Better, naturally, to end the spring with a victory and a few positives to carry into what has to be a tough period to keep minds focussed with a June 2 meeting with either Clare or Limerick, rather than coming away from the League on the back of a defeat.

Given that nothing of importance hinged on last Sunday’s game in Omagh, Kerry won’t have come away from there feeling they left a League final place behind them, but it would have been a longer and gloomier bus ride back home than had they achieved what they set out to do, which was to make it a 4-3 winning record rather than a 3-4 losing on.

Fitzmaurice was certainly philosophical in the aftermath, and while one can never be sure of his real feelings on such things, the Kerry manager was certainly trying to spin a confident air on the

League in broad terms, while acknowledging it could have been a lot better in certain facets.

On the overriding positive that he and Kerry can take from the League, he said: “Definitely the personnel and the amount of players [used]. I’m open to correction but I think 37 after today players so that’s a lot of players to have played, particularly players getting their first taste, fellas getting their first starts, so that’s been a huge positive.

“Some of our performances, in all of the games there’s been good and there’s been bad, probably just not consistent enough so that’s definitely something we have to work at. When you win three games and lose four there’s load to work on, but we’re in a positive place, we’re happy

with what we got out of the League. The primary thing was to give fellas game time and stay in Division One, we’ve done that. We’d have preferred to have won a few more games and in an ideal world you’d get to a League final that hasn’t happened this year but we’ll get on with it.

“I think in terms of personnel we did [achieve what we set out to do], but probably not in terms of where we’d like to be with how far down the road [we’d like to be]. We’d probably prefer to be a little bit further down the road in terms of our performances, but definitely in terms of the amount of personnel that saw game time, the amount of fellas that got their first taste of action, their first starts, all that stuff, it was excellent from that point of view. And to stay in Division One then as well was obviously hugely important so we’re delighted with that.”

On the performance against Sunday Fitzmaurice seemed to see it as a microcosm of the League in general: the good mixed with the bad.

“We played a lot of good football in the first twenty, twenty-five minutes, I think we were maybe four up and went in a point down then. We got the first score of the second half but then we didn’t... I don’t know, we seemed a small bit rudderless at times. I think Tyrone played very well, we were probably lucky we weren’t beaten by a bit more to be honest. Plenty there for us to be working on.

“There’s no such thing as a dead rubber game when you’ve a Kerry jersey on. I think we came up to try and win the game and to be facing into the Championship on a positive frame of mind but we didn’t bring enough in the second half to deserve it. We got game time into Johnny (Buckley), David (Moran), Tadhg Morley got a bit of football, Mark Griffin started, Mikey Geaney started. There was a share of the more experienced fellas that hadn’t a whole lot of football got a bit of game time. Then fellas like Cormac Coffey, who started against Donegal, started again today and did well, so that’s all good for the panel going forward,” he said, before looking ahead to the next month or so when the players will combine training with Kerry on Tuesdays and Thursdays and playing club championship games at the weekends.

“[The gap to the Munster Championship is long] but it’s not as big as it has been in other years, plus there is a lot of good club football coming up in Kerry. The lads are going to be playing a minimum of three and possibly up to five championship games over the next six weeks, so there’s going to be a lot of club activity over the next while, which is great again from the point of view of getting football into every one in the squad, and getting us into the position where we start to polish up for the Munster Championship,” he said.