Fitzmaurice didn’t deserve cheap shots from the likes of Spillane
Kerry legend was too quick to jump on board with the Kerry manager’scritics
MICK O’DWYER’S punchline – that Kerry were always at a disadvantage because they have to play against 31 and a half other counties – is funny, because it’s true.
This has been a tough week at home for all kinds of reasons, but the least of those is because we were laid low. Truth is, that felt more like a relief at the end.
No, the sadness was sourced in Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s resignation as county manager and the ugly underbelly it revealed.
Honestly, I am torn as to whether Éamonn did the right thing by revealing the poison-penned letters he, and at least one of the players, had received. There is a big part of me which thinks he should never have opened his mouth because, in so doing, you are giving the fools their moment in the sun.
Éamonn was not the first Kerry manager to receive such dog’s abuse; it came Páidí Ó Sé’s way too. Long before they literally came swinging for him on the sideline, they were sending him anonymous, loveless letters by post.
His way of dealing with it was to roll the offensive parchment out on the kitchen table and invite anyone who came through the door to scan it
‘Come here, look at what this amadán is after writing,’ he would belly laugh.
It looked like it was water off a duck’s back. Maybe it wasn’t but, by God, he was determined to let anyone know that he would not be cowed by rough language. I don’t believe Éamonn was either but, in shining a light into the darkness, I fear there are some out there who would not feel shame, just satisfaction.
Those people have names alright (even if they don’t have the conviction to always use them) and they have families, too.
I have this horrible mental picture of one of Éamonn’s pen pals turning around to his wife last Saturday night and taking credit for his departure.
‘I sent him one of those letters and, by God, he heeded it,’ the brave scribe will reveal.
Hopefully, her response would have gone along the lines of, ‘do you realise just how pathetic you are?’.
Éamonn deserved so much better than that. Of course, people would expect me to say that. I played with him and he is someone I would have huge time for as a friend, so I can see why I might be compromised.
But the thing is he never was [compromised]. He dropped me in 2014, when it would have been easier to keep me in the side. The team came first, always.
I am not saying he has not made mistakes – it goes with the territory – but self-awareness was always his strength. When he felt he erred, he did not hesitate in putting his hand up to acknowledge it.
But I don’t perceive his reign to be the error-strewn disaster which others, most notably TV pundit Pat Spillane, perceived it to be.
For the last 12 months, the Kerry public has been jumping on his back and I felt Pat was keen to jump on the bandwagon with them. It was the popular thing to do, but that does not make it necessarily the right thing to do.
Pat came out with the cheap line that Kerry’s gameplan under Fitzmaurice was like Theresa May’s Brexit strategy, in that one did not exist.
Seriously, I sat through Éamonn’s video analysis sessions when he was a selector under Jack O’Connor and the detail both frightened and illuminated.
To suggest that he did not have a gameplan is nonsense. The principles never changed – you had to earn the right to play ball and when you did, it was moved quickly to the inside forwards.
The detail that went into making that function was there – defensively, we changed shape for every match in 2014, before he set us up for the final by demanding that we retained our defensive shape in our own half to choke Donegal’s counter-attacking game.
It seems simple now, but four years ago nobody, not least Jim McGuinness, saw that coming.
I am gone off the squad a couple of years now, but I don’t believe he went from being the
king of detail to managing on a wing and prayer as some would like to portray. Spillane also suggested we had no kick-out strategy, which is utter nonsense. We always did. Fitzmaurice had as much success, perhaps more than any other, on putting pressure on Stephen Cluxton and innovatively made us press after set-plays to save lungs and legs, with some effect, in 2016. On our own kick-outs, there was always a strategy but the problem is that we don’t possess the quality to execute it. And that goes to the core of the misplaced criticism directed at Fitzmaurice; the unpalatable truth is that we don’t have the players. We don’t have a goalkeeper who can restart at the levels set by Cluxton or Rory Beggan, we don’t have a single man-marking specialist in the full-back line and we have a malfunctioning midfield, where Jack Barry’s development has not been as rapid as was hoped.
On top of all that, there has been a huge deficit of leadership from senior players who have not used that 2014 All-Ireland win as a launch pad. As much as there is potential in Kerry, there is also a huge amount of work to be done.
Who gets to do that is anyone’s guess, but the next manager will most likely come from Jack O’Connor, Peter Keane, Diarmuid Murphy or Maurice Fitzgerald.
The key is getting the right coach on board and for me that has to be Donie Buckley, who can provide the clarity that a young Kerry group needs.
Perhaps Buckley, teaming up with Maurice Fitzgerald – whose status and lightness of mood has gone very well with this Kerry group – might just be a dream ticket.
But, on the basis that paper never refused ink, even such a union will not find favour with the eternally disaffected.
Páidí would invite anyone who called to scan the letters