You think Meath are afraid of Kerry?
A pattern rapidly developed.
“It was bad all the way,” recalls Fitzmaurice. “In my experience of Meath, I don’t think I’ve ever beaten them competitively. I made my inter-county debut in the league in Navan in 1996 and lost; they beat us in an infamous All-Ireland U21 semi-final the following year in Nenagh, when the ref from Donegal roasted us.
“In the 1999 NFL quarter-final in Limerick, they beat us; the following season in the league semi in Thurles, we came up short again. As a player, I beat them in a few challenges, but how many counties could you say have that kind of a record against Kerry?”
And nowhere in there is the nadir of Kerry football this decade – the 2001 All-Ireland semi-final.
“Meath will be gunning for us Sunday. They must be loving how they’re coming into the game. You think Meath are going to be afraid of Kerry?”
Well, possibly. Eamonn O’Brien’s side have gone from zeroes to heroes at home and while they’ll still go into Sunday’s second semi-final as outsiders, there’s no prospect that they’ll capitulate at the sight of the green and gold. Meath don’t do weak-kneed.
“We took our own observations from the Meath-Mayo game,” says Fitzmaurice. “They’re classic Meath; they don’t give up, they fight individually for their own ball. They’ve six or seven scoring forwards, and all of them were willing to scrap for everything, whether it was coming in with snow on it or hopping in front of them. They’re lunatics for the ball.”
Ger O’Keeffe has his own recollection of that 2-14 to 0-5 defeat eight years ago, but they’re snapshots compared to Jack O’Connor and Fitzmaurice’s x-ray nightmares. O’Connor was a selector under Páidí O Sé, Fitzmaurice at wing back on Trevor Giles.
He ended up watching the final few minutes from the bench after a second yellow card, but that’s scarcely remembered, even by Fitzmaurice himself.
“It was a very strange, strange day. Trying to explain it, I don’t know. Possibly now in hindsight you could look at a few things.
“We’d won the All-Ireland the year before (after a replay against Galway), on the road for a long time really, and the fact that Dublin had taken us to a replay in the quarter-final in Thurles took a lot out of us.
“Tomás (O Sé) got sent off early in that game, and while it was a great game to win with 14 men, it definitely took a lot out of us. The methods were different back then – if it was now after two hard games like that, you’d ease off and do very little before the semi-final.
“But we went the opposite and trained very hard for that Meath game. I can remember the hardest we trained that summer was between the replayed quarter-final and the semi-final. There was nothing in the tank for the second half in Croke Park.
“Ironically we started unbelievably well that day but kicked a lot of early wides. Tom O’Sullivan got his jaw broken, Mike Hassett was gone after 15 minutes (he had come in as Tomás’s replacement), so straight away you were down half your defence. Noel Kennelly ended up playing wing back.
“The funny thing is that Seamo (Moynihan) did well on Geraghty and Mike Mac did a good job on Ollie Murphy. It’s hard to explain; it could have been a game and a result to finish a team, but we moved on from it straight away. There was no real hangover.
“In fact, I’d have found 2002 (final defeat to Armagh) more disappointing than 2001 because we lost a game we should have won, whereas Meath just blew us out of the water.”
Fitzmaurice shrugs at the fallout, much as he’s done this season as the Kingdom apparently, allegedly and according to well-placed sources tottered on the edge of calamity against Longford, Sligo and Antrim.
The world invariably rights itself again. Fitzmaurice, O’Keeffe and O’Connor have seen it all before.
“We were never as bad as people were saying about us before the Dublin game, and we’re not as good as they are saying we are now. The tough period was after losing to Cork; we had to regroup while the rumour mill went into overdrive. We’d all been through that before, me as a player, them as management.
“Jack’s a bit more chilled out (this time around). 2004 was a huge year for him, and he probably felt pressure to deliver first time around. He’s developing himself all the time, he’s not the kind to sit still and say what was good five years ago will serve me again this time. The game keeps moving on – the pace has cranked up another bit.”
O’Connor also made a smart call drafting in Fitzmaurice, even at 32. He’s been a reliable and trusted sounding board for the players and an excellent coach. He’s also a voracious student of the game.
“There’s a lot made out of Kerry when they get to Croke Park, but it’s not just Kerry, it’s all the top teams in Croke Park because it suits their expansiveness.
“People who scoffed at the teams we played in the qualifiers don’t appreciate that teams can set up to stop you in smaller, provincial venues.
“Look at the Munster final – Limerick were well set up to tackle hard, turn over ball, and not let Cork generate any momentum from the back. For a team like Cork, then, it’s very hard to find space if you are playing against a fit, strong, motivated group of players that are good tacklers – and most teams are good tacklers now.
“In Croke Park, there’s space to get around that melee of bodies. It suits the teams that like to play with a bit of breadth to their play. The provincial venues are almost becoming too small for the modern Championship games – if a team drops a body back, that makes it even harder. The pitch dimensions at Croke Park might not even be that much bigger than Killarney or Páirc Uí Chaoimh but it’s the vastness of Croke Park.
“It just feels tighter at provincial grounds when the crowd are in on top of you. The walls shrink the venue.”
Despite the laboured progress through Pearse Park, Tralee and Tullamore, the Kerry management was quietly confident. “We were working very, very hard as a group,” Fitzmaurice emphasises. “The players were doing everything asked of them; we were all grafting our arses off and felt the performance was going to come every day.
“We got a bit of a performance against Longford, but the second half was a disappointment. But after the Antrim game, there was a sense of ‘yeah, we are where we want to be now’.
“We were completely written off the week building up to Dublin; it had become a bit of a laugh, the amount of stuff that was apparently going on. We knew it was perfect though – the opposition (Dublin) was right, a full house, they were being written up by the media.”
Sitting ducks. Like Kerry on Sunday.
“Meath couldn’t have written away for this build up. But we’re dealing with an experienced bunch of players here (in Kerry). If any group appreciates the adage of a pat on the back being six inches from a kick in the arse, it’s this group. They know it and understand it.”
When Jack O’Connor sounded Fitzmaurice out to join his management team, the Finuge man had several issues to contemplate. His wife, his own football, and his relationship with players he had shared the sanctity of the dressing room with. Fitzmaurice is a brother-in-law of Paul Galvin and a close friend to Darragh and Tomás O Sé, among others.
“We all appreciated from the start that I’d moved across but the fact too that I’d been out of the group for a couple of seasons broke the connection.
“There’s been no awkward situations so far. I spoke to the fellas I’d be close to, how would it work if fellas were left off the team? The conclusion was that as long as everyone is 100% honest there’d be no problems.
“I spoke to (his wife) Tina first, she anticipated everything that’s happened, except the phone. The phone just doesn’t stop, morning noon and night. I’ve also been enjoying my football with the club and Feale Rangers, and that was a big consideration.
“I’ve done a lot of the training with the (Kerry) lads this season so physically I’d be in good shape and I find now when I’m playing it’s a release from trying to think of everything and cover every angle. It’s great when you get out of the Kerry set-up, only having to think of your own game.”
Of course, the management-player axis had to grind its way through one awkward, well-publicised selection decision before the Antrim game in Tullamore. Kerry may reflect on the season’s watershed moment being the decision to discipline Tomás O Sé and Colm Cooper, but only if the season climaxes on the steps of the Hogan Stand next month. Even then it’s a ‘may’.
“I think calling it a row is overstating it,” Fitzmaurice says. “It got made into something bigger than it was.
“Different fellas have to get over disappointments at different stages. Not starting, being taken off, not getting on as a sub early enough. We had a decision to make.”
If any potential residue of unease remained after the Antrim game, it was gone 40 seconds into the quarter-final victory against Dublin.
“Goal or no goal, I think we were going to be grand,” Fitzmaurice believes. “The performance was going to be there anyway. The goal helped us because it sucked the life out of the Dubs and the Hill.
“The only time I heard ‘The Boys in Blue’ that day was in the warm up; I was doing the drills with the subs at that end, and they couldn’t hear me from three yards away;.
“Gooch’s goal and bang, that din was gone straight away; they made a few efforts, but Dublin feed the Hill and the players feed off the Hill. Even if Alan Brogan’s shot (tipped onto the crossbar by Diarmuid Murphy) went in, I think we’d have kicked on.”
The Dublin players were booed off at half time.
“I heard that, you wouldn’t wish that on any team, but our dressing room was tuned into what we were doing. There was no jubilation. They are an experienced bunch of players, 95% of them know the right direction to go anyway.”
And they recognise that quarter-finals don’t work the Richter scale at home. Old rivals stand in the way next Sunday of a grudge reunion next month. Success is always sweeter for the toil and turbulence involved.
“I always think of people who talk about Kerry’s ‘soft’ All-Ireland against Mayo in 2004. You can bet those people weren’t involved. For a bunch of players who went through what we’d been through in 2001 against Meath, 2002 against Armagh and 2003 against Tyrone, there’s was nothing soft about any All-Ireland.”
As Fitzmaurice has been reminded.
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