Fitz: Boss should be held to account for biting
KERRY boss Éamonn Fitzmaurice has suggested that counterpart Jim Gavin must ultimately shoulder the responsibility of Dublin’s disciplinary issues in the wake of ‘Bitegate II’. While Fitzmaurice does not believe that biting will become a common foul in Gaelic football as the Kingdom prepare to travel to Croke Park next weekend to face the AllIreland champions in their Allianz League opener, he did maintain that ‘ultimately discipline does come back to the manager’. An eight-week ban was this week handed down by the Leinster Council to Dublin’s Jason Whelan after the forward was found guilty of ‘inflicting injury recklessly’ against a DCU player during their O’Byrne Cup clash two weeks ago. When questioned on the saga, Fitzmaurice said: ‘The biting incident happened, it was what it was, and it has been dealt with. ‘As was said by Seán Potts of the GPA, ultimately discipline does come back to the manager. I have no problem with that. I never came across it when I was playing, so it’s an unusual enough one. ‘Eight weeks is a severe enough ban, because there are a good few games involved for a player like that, who is trying to break into a panel.’ The Kerry manager half-joked that the recent introduction of mandatory gumshields should lessen the likelihood of biting. ‘All the players will have to wear gumshields this year, so I reckon that should act a deterrent in stopping you biting a fellow, if you are so inclined,’ he joked. Fitzmaurice also expressed his concern over the ever-increasing level of commitment intercounty players are expected to make to training and preparation. ‘The bar is being raised every year and you would wonder, in terms of amateur players, [whether] this is as good and possibly as far as you can take them. ‘Our amateur players train like professional athletes to all intents and purposes, except the only difference is that they don’t have the recovery time. Our players can’t rest properly because they have to work, while its part of a professional players contract to rest. ‘It’s a worry because you adopt a holistic approach and you want players to enjoy it for as long as they can, in terms of the amount of years that they are playing it, and then when they finish up that they move away from it relatively unscathed.’ Kerry head into the Dublin game without 10 regular players, including Marc Ó Sé and Declan O’Sullivan. ‘At moment we are down 10 players,’ explained Fitzmaurice. ‘We are down five or six Dr Crokes players... We will be without Marc Ó Sé until March, Declan O’Sullivan until April and we are also without Kieran Donaghy, Killian Young and Darran O’Sullivan until they are right from current injuries,’ said Fitzmaurice, who will at least be able to call on Kerry players who were committed to their colleges during the McGrath Cup. ‘We will have Conor Cox and David Culhane from UCC, Pa Kilkenny and James Walsh from CIT, and AllStar James O’Donoghue from UL. So the McGrath Cup final panel plus the college lads will give us a squad of about 28 for the first few NFL games,’