O’Sullivan: Closed training sessions already paying off

Darran O’Sullivan admits Kerry are already benefiting from Eamonn Fitzmaurice’s decision to stage some training sessions behind closed doors.

Management last month took the decision to depart from the practice of allowing the public to watch them being put through their paces at Fitzgerald Stadium because of prying eyes. Now, nine days out from their Munster final against Cork at the same venue, the 2011 All Star forward feels it’s assisting their preparations.

“Everybody is at it now, it’s just the way it’s gone. It’s great to go into training now hammer and tongs without some story getting out about this fella hitting another fella with a belt.

“That’s the way training should be — Championship pace, Championship hitting — and if you get pissed off with a fella, you get pissed off with a fella. As soon as training is over, it’s done.

“Years ago, you could have had a small thing blown out of proportion. I could be at home hearing about a fella giving a right belt to another team-mate and be thinking ‘Huh? That didn’t happen at all’. It’s great now because there are no stories getting out and nobody knows. That’s the way it should be.”

O’Sullivan was accosted by a Kerry supporter recently who took exception to the decision by Fitzmaurice.

“I got stopped in the street in Killarney one day and they were giving out about it. It didn’t bother me whether it was opened or closed. He said ‘it was a joke’, this, that and the other... ‘we never did it this way’. I was kinda going ‘We?’ I was laughing to myself.

“He said to me ‘People plan their holidays about coming down and seeing Kerry train’. He named fellas from a few different counties like Tyrone and Donegal. I said ‘Probably, yeah, but sure everybody knows somebody on a panel. Sure, if we try something different, they’ll all have it above’. He kinda started stuttering and said ‘that’s not the point’. I argued it was the point. If we want to do something different then we want to do something different.”