Lack of familiarity brings a freshness to old rivalry

FROM his days as a UCC student in the late 1990s through to his finals days as a Kerry player in 2007 Eamonn Fitzmaurice had his fill of Cork football. There were great days, of course, and bad days, and strange days, like in 1999 when he won a Cork County SFC medal as captain of the UCC team. Over the course of his senior career with Kerry Fitzmaurice played Cork 11 times in Championship football, with the period from 2002 to 2006 a particularly frenzied one with the counties engaging each other nine times, with the Finuge man directly involved in eight of those. Throw in four National League meetings from 2004 to his retirement in early 2007 and the current Kerry manager knows what he’s talking about when he suggest that the familiarity with the enemy at that time certainly bred more than its share of contempt. Think Anthony Lynch against Colm Cooper. Or Darragh Ó Sé and Nicholas Murphy. Or the perennial pantomime villains, Paul Galvin and Noel O’Leary.

The absence of a Championship meeting in 2016 - or a National League fixture between them this year or last - means the counties have only played twice since the Munster Final replay three years ago (although there was a McGrath Cup game in January 2017). With at least a combined 10 players from both sides of the divide involved in their first Munster Championship this year there will be a marked absence of familiarity in Pairc Ui Chaoimh on Saturday evening, something Fitzmaurice is comfortable with.

“It brings a freshness to the challenge,” he says. “When we were playing, and if there was a McGrath Cup thrown into it as well, and there was nearly always a draw somewhere along the line, you could end up playing four times in a season and there was definitely a dynamic of familiarity breeding contempt, but I think there’s a freshness about the challenge (now). It’s in the new Pairc Ui Chaoimh as well, that brings another kind of, maybe, layer glamour to the thing, for everyone, for supporters, for management, for the players, and I think’s it’s an exciting fixture.”

But while Fitzmaurice is embracing the almost novelty factor of preparing his team to take on Cork, he’s been around too long to be expecting red carpets and garlands being thrown at the champions.

“I just think with Cork and the kind of people they are, they’re going to throw everything at the game, throw everything at us, and we’ve to be ready for that. So I think there’s a lot of different dynamics that make it a very interesting fixture and there’s certainly a freshness about it in comparison to when we were playing.”

That freshness is and will be borne out by the new, young players that will be involved on either team as much as the dearth of recent meetings. Kerry handed seven players a Championship debut against Clare, while Cork had two players make their Championship debuts in their semi-final win over Tipperary.

“They’ve a good few changes in personality, and they’ve a change in management,” Fitzmaurice said, “and one of the things that struck me about them this year was that they just seem very steady. That even though the League was similar to ourselves, a bit up and down, a bit topsy-turvy, there was no knee-jerk or over the top stuff either from themselves or externally. It just seemed to be a positive climate and with that then I think you keep the group together and get a bit of growth, and I think we saw that then in the Munster semi-final against Tipperary they were very impressive, fit, well organised, had a game-plan, had experience coming in off the bench to finish off the game. They had a lot of things that you need. We wouldn’t have the same level of knowledge, possibly, about each other. They’d be similar with us, we’ve a lot of new players as well, but again that brings that freshness to the challenge.”

And on those seven debutants - Murphy, Foley, Shanahan, White, Burns, O’Shea and Clifford - the Kerry manager expects them to have absorbed the lessons from the win against Clare and put the pressures of their debut behind them.

“For a player it’s a huge day, playing your first championship game for Kerry. It’s a massive honour for yourself and your family and your club and there’s a good bit that goes with it on a personal level. I think for those lads a share of them have been knocking around the place and knocking on the door and they didn’t quite the nod so I’d say they were just delighted to get out there and play, particularly when it was in Killarney.

“After that then I think straight away they know with the competition that’s within the group, and I think that helps that no one is guaranteed a starting position just because they played well, they realise that they need to build on that. I didn’t have to go after them, to be fair to them they are mature, they’re used to the set-up, they’ve been around for the last two or three years, most of them bar David Clifford and he’s a very level-headed fella anyway. They know that game is gone now, it’s about the next game, but there’s a massive positive energy to be got from having your debut under your belt, having done well and looking to go again for the next day,” Fitzmaurice said, adding that the prize of a first Munster medal will be a huge incentive for those seven players, and others who haven’t won one yet.

“You can sing it. I imagine it is a massive motivation for the lads that don’t have one. A share of them would have had one last year, as subs, but a lot of the lads who made their debuts the last day don’t have one. It is a huge motivation for them.”

As for what comes after Saturday, the manager is typically cautious not to count chickens prematurely but he does acknowledge that victory means safe and direct passage to the All-Ireland quarter-final group phase or Super 8s.

“It does, but I also think it stands on its own and it’s a chance to put silverware on the table and win a Championship. That’s the first part, absolutely, but if you can win it then you’re into the Super 8s scenario, and you can be planning for that then. Whereas if you lose then you’ve to play a Qualifier the week before the Super 8s and it just brings an extra layer of difficulty to that. I think there’s a huge prize there, so winning the Munster Championship but also to get straight into the Super 8s and get the chance to get yourself ready and focused.

We used the league to get game-time into some of our less experienced players. It is all about Championship. Championship is different this year, but Munster is still the same. If we can get through this, then we are into new territory and that would be exciting.