The new face of Kerry football

Eamonn Fitzmaurice doesn’t do public rage. In fact, he’s impossibly and unfailingly polite.

When Tadhg Kennelly broke a squad embargo in 2009 to do a commercial gig, the new Kerry coach — then a selector — walked away from his wife and down to the seafront to vent his fury at the breach of squad collectiveness.

After defeats, he takes himself off and out of reach for a few days, preferring to tease out the failure in his own head before he confronts it with the world at large. He is unbending in his self-belief, not of himself, but of those he trusts.