Fitz had to go but not in this way

Paul Brennan says that while it was time for a change of manager for the Kerry footballers, Eamonn Fitzmaurice had earned the right to go out on his own terms

LIKE politicians, sports people seldom get to go out on their own terms. You put yourself up for public office and the electorate can cut the seat from under you just as quickly as they put you on it, and in many ways sport is the same. Managing the senior football team in a county like Kerry is in its own way being in public office - you’re there as a keeper of the flame for all invested and interested in the game, and the weight of public opinion can quench the light on your ambitions as quickly and as ruthlessly as any aggrieved electorate.

Last Sunday I took the family on a drive back west to Dingle and out around Slea Head - something Eamonn Fitzmaurice has been afforded plenty of free time to do likewise over the coming weeks and months. Passing by Páidí Ó Sé’s pub in Ventry we couldn’t but think - again - of that infamous quip of his that landed him in such scalding water 15 or so years ago. Fitzmaurice isn’t the sort to use the vernacular PO used back then to describe that section of the Kerry GAA support that are seldom happy with anything and never shy of letting the incumbent know. Still, a penny for Fitzmaurice’s inner-most thoughts this week when he really reflects on how a small section of the Kerry public treated him drove him from the job he absolutely loved doing.

For the record, had he not stepped down as Kerry manager last Saturday there would be a loud clamour since for him to go, and this writer would have been leaning in that direction too. It’s not that I expected Kerry to win the All-Ireland title this year, or perhaps even reach the final, but the undeniable evidence of the Super 8 results suggests that the relationship between the manager / management and the players had broken down. The details and specifics of some bizarre selections and in-match tactics and puzzling substitutions are well known, and every manager knows they live and die by those calls.

Truth is that but for a bit of luck one way or another in 2014 and Fitzmaurice might be leaving after six years with no All-Ireland won. Flip it over and had he enjoyed a little better luck in 2013 or 2015 and he might have presided over a hat trick of All-Ireland titles. Fanciful? Not really when you think about it, but it’s the last three seasons, not the first three, that have tarnished a legacy that should still stand the test of time when football people - not trolls - reflect on his time in charge.

Whatever about the merits of holding back really young players like Sean O’Shea or Gavin White from playing senior last year, Fitzmaurice probably stayed too loyal to the older cohort of

players in 2017 when they simply weren’t up to competing with the very best teams. Despite almost beating Mayo the first day out, the consensus is that Mayo were they vastly superior team over the two semi-finals, and Dublin a better team again. It seems now that 2017 was a lost year, and despite loading the team this year with new, young players, the patience the manager almost begged for was not forthcoming. In a big way the management made a rod for their back in 2017 that ended up breaking them and the team this year.

But back to Páidí and his blunt assessment of the demands of the Kerry supporters. It came as a huge surprise - but no surprise at all - when Fitzmaurice revealed on Saturday night that he has a box of anonymous letters that were posted to his home, the contents of which one can only imagine. In this new world of social media where someone can fire off a tweet in a moment or type up a caustic line or two on an online forum, it takes a particular type of individual to sit down with pen and paper, scribble out a letter, stamp and address it, and feel good about themselves for doing it. And you have to imagine every one of those letter writers derived plenty of satisfaction from their cowardice. And that’s what it amounts to: cowardice.

We are all critics, but the vast majority play the ball, not the man. We put our name to a newspaper column, or speak on radio, or tweet from a transparent Twitter account or vent on a named Facebook page, or even meet a player or manager in the street, look them in the eye and let them know what we think. That takes a bit of courage and thought. The anonymous letter writer or online troll doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. But Fitzmaurice, while able to deal with the brickbats himself, truly believed his continued presence as team manager was damaging to the players, especially the new, young ones, and he did a very honourable thing in stepping down.

I was at that press conference in Killarney 15 years ago when Páidí held back the hurt and said he wanted “one more year”. Fitzmaurice, as is typical of the man, stood front and centre and fell on his sword for the good of Kerry football, no doubt hurting every bit as much as Ó Sé did in 2003.

Did Eamonn make mistakes? Of course he did. Did he, as manager, make strange calls on the sideline? Absolutely. Had he become a tired voice for some of the players in that dressing-room? He said he hadn’t and we can take him on his word for that, or we can think otherwise.

Did Fitzmaurice have the best interests of Kerry football at heart? You can bet your last euro that he did. Did he deserve the personal insults, the poisonous bile that came through his letter-box? No one deserves that, least of all a volunteer in sport.

Did he get to go out on his own terms, to say a proper farewell to the large rump of Kerry supporters that appreciated his contribution to the game, regardless of results and titles? Unfortunately not. It seldom works out like that.

A managerial change was probably needed heading out of the not-so-super Super 8s and into 2019, but it’s only now that he’s gone that those cowards with their poison pens might pause for thought and appreciate that the pen is still mightier - and more cutting - than the sword.