Éamonn Fitzmaurice: The great escape: How Kerry broke free from relegation chains
Then Kerry manager Eamon Fitzmaurice leaves the pitch their 2013 defeat to Donegal at Páirc MacCumhaill, Ballybofey
AS the final whistle blew in Ballybofey after our fourth defeat in a row in the 2013 National League, I was left scratching my head, much like Dessie Farrell at the moment.
I shook Jim McGuinness’ hand and immediately started thinking about what to say to the players. We were playing Down six days later, at the other end of the country in Tralee, in what had now become a must-win game. The message would be important. As we walked across the pitch I asked Diarmuid Murphy, Mikey Sheehy and Cian O'Neill what they thought. They were unanimous. Say nothing. We had tried everything else over the previous games and none of it had worked, so I decided to go with it.
The dressing room was silent when I got there and I made no attempt to fill it. I togged off, showered and headed for the bus. On that particular day what could go wrong did go wrong. We missed a penalty, Tomás Ó Sé was sent off and we had struggled all over the pitch. There were few positives.
The pattern continued afterwards, memorably. As we got on the bus, Pat - our bus driver at the time - had Radio 1’s Sunday Sport blaring and I boarded to the sound of myself being interviewed after the game. I was just about to tell him to turn it off when Jacqui Hurley interjected saying “there is Éamonn Fitzmaurice sounding more and more like Declan Kidney every day.”
Poor old Declan was having a tough Six Nations as well and, like me, was trying to remain positive publicly and avoid throwing anyone under the bus, which can be quite the achievement in those circumstances. Ballybofey stood out for two other reasons. The week of the match our excellent nutritionist Kevin Beasley had approached me with a novel idea for the post-match meal. As we were going to be driving the length of the country he suggested eating our dinner a good bit down the road to break up the journey. To fill the hole and to get post-match carbs into the players immediately to begin their recovery, he advised we have pizzas in Ballybofey. A lot of professional teams do this and it would be a nice treat for the lads after a win on the road (which obviously hadn’t materialised).
As I pictured it, the pizzas would be delivered to the bus and we'd consume them on the go. No such thing. We had to walk from the pitch up through the town to a little local pizzeria and pile in there as some bemused natives observed. As nice as the pizzas were, conversation and joviality were in short supply. I think as we returned to the bus I might have warned Kevin to never pull that particular stunt again.
The final thing I remember vividly from that day were the Kerry supporters after the game. I can still see them waiting for us as we approached the bus after the game and clapping us onto the bus. I was embarrassed and proud in equal measure. There was a real message in it. As bad as things were, they were going to stand with us and they wanted the team to know that. They knew that come championship it would be a different conversation. It meant a lot.
When we eventually commenced the journey south I couldn’t face watching the match just yet, which would have been the usual practice. Instead, myself and Diarmuid tuned into 'Django Unchained'. Tarantino’s dark humour reflected the mood. That wit kept us going throughout that period. There was certainly no room for feeling sorry for oneself. Some of my mates in Finuge sent me a text that was doing the rounds stating that I was up for an OBE, Out Before Easter.
Another feature of those few months were messages from an anonymous texter that let me know in no uncertain terms what he thought of me and the team after every defeat. Patrick O'Sullivan, the chairman of the County Board, and Darragh Ó Sé, the U21 manager, were getting similar messages from the same number. Poor Darragh hadn’t even started out on his campaign and he was getting grief. He was guilty by association, obviously.
On the way up to Donegal, the texter informed me “You are the worst Kerry manager of all time and you should do the honourable thing and resign, and take those selectors with you.”
I showed it to Diarmuid who was sitting beside me and I can still see the tears of laughter in his eyes. When we eventually got back to Kerry Sunday night, sleep was hard to come by, which was highly unusual for me. At some stage in the middle of an interminable night, I asked Tina was she awake. She was. I said to her “well nobody said it was going to be easy”. “Nobody said it was going to be this hard either,” she replied. While we had zero points in the league, the one thing we hadn't lost was our black humour to get us through a challenging phase.
DROP CAP
Looking back, we all remained remarkably calm despite the results and performances. Everyone believed in the work being done on the field and in the background. This was key in my opinion. We really stuck together and no one broke ranks. There was plenty of heat in Kerry and RTÉ dispatched Marty Morrissey to Tralee to do a special report on the crisis in Kerry football (with a capital C, according to Pat Spillane at the time).
I was very careful with my public utterances ensuring there was going to be no negative stuff. We kept trying to improve from week to week. We stuck to the plan, we didn’t change our training and there were no knee-jerk reactions. As a management, we were firmly focused on the big picture while also trying to win a match, any match, in the short term.
Both Colm Cooper and Paul Galvin wanted to return ahead of schedule to help out but I refused them both. I wanted them hopping and fresh for the summer and bearing in mind the mileage on the clock, I didn’t want them burned out in the league. Also, I had a special plan for Colm for that championship and I didn’t want to show too much of that early in the year. Of course, we were disgusted with some of the performances and results and, yes, there was some hard talking, particularly in the video review meetings but in general we remained extremely positive and we all firmly believed it would turn.
This week I looked back at the sessions we were doing and nearly ten years on, they still stand the test of time. We only trained once post-Donegal leading into the Down game - on the Wednesday night. We did a small bit of analysis on Down but I wanted to surprise the players with something different.
Earlier that March, Seamus Moynihan’s Laochra Gael had been aired on TG4. Seamo had influenced and inspired me consistently as a player, initially in UCC and all the way through my Kerry career. I felt his story could have a similar effect on the lads. Some of the footage of Seamus in action couldn’t but galvanise you but the way he spoke was inspiring, as always.
Thankfully it did the trick and was a factor in spurring us to a victory over Down. We beat Cork in Tralee the following week where Colm and Paul both returned as planned, as substitutes, to help see us home. What it all meant was we had to go to Omagh and win up there against Tyrone in our final game. Crucially, in between the Cork and Tyrone games, we spent a week in Portugal on a pre-planned training camp. This made the squad.
Two things stood out for me out there. First of all the physicality of the football was off the charts. For the 15 v 15 football sessions, I swallowed the whistle and let the lads at it. It was just what we needed after the challenging few months we had been through. It was cathartic. The other thing was the redeployment of Colm to centre-forward. What I had envisaged for six months would happen was now being played out in front of our eyes. It was a privilege to be able to witness it with the sun on our backs and nothing but football on our minds. When we returned we were ready for Tyrone and produced an incredible first half of football. We ran out of juice in the second half as we tired from our exertions in Portugal but did enough to win by one. I was delighted. We had been so focused on our own result that I had forgotten that the Dubs needed to do us a favour in Ballybofey. John Joe Carroll, our treasurer back then, ran towards me to tell me that the game was still on and that Donegal led by one. I couldn’t believe it. After all that we were going to be relegated. He came back a minute later to say Paul Mannion had just equalised, the match was over, we had survived and Donegal dropped through the trapdoor.
Before we left Healy Park, I jumped on the supporters club bus to thank them for backing us when the going was tough and that we could now all look forward to the championship. At 35, and in my first year in charge, it was a fair baptism of fire.
Looking back now that whole mad period still brings a smile to my face.
