Fitzmaurice: Nice guys can finish first but they’re not always nice...

“Know your enemy” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War

It’s hard nowadays to gain any sort of insight into the mind of an inter-county manager. For starters, they’ve become extremely guarded in dialogue, not just on their match prospects but also on the training methods and tactics they employ. A mystique is generated around some managers. Like Eamonn Fitzmaurice. He is the new modern breed. Young and inscrutable, he seems in the mould of an O’Rourke, McNulty, McGeeney, McCartan or McGuinness. He is in charge of the most successful football county in the country, obviously has a clear direction in mind for this team and yet no one yet knows what this is. What are the qualities he is emphasising above others in the Kerry camp? What is he not tolerating and where is he trying to take this team? As the season progresses and as opinions form and change, this will flesh itself out. However, from previous experience playing both with and against him, some traits are revealing.

Firstly, he’s a genuinely nice guy. In February 2001, Fitzmaurice was returning to UCC for his H Dip year and to have a final crack at a Sigerson medal. Kerry had won the previous year’s All-Ireland with him at centre-back. An All-Ireland senior medal is valuable currency in a dressing room of impressionable and ambitious young men. This UCC dressing-room was an intimidating place for a first year student, yet he disregarded the insecurities and the social hierarchy and made a point of making the new guys feel welcome.

This assumed a consistent pattern. Him coming over during a warm-up or after a game and instigating conversation, letting you know he was treating you as his equal. As a first year, these life-raft moments stick with you.

A gentleman.

Reflecting now, it would appear he was taking a very clever, even ruthless view on matters. This was his last chance to win a Sigerson medal, something he strived hard for. He had surveyed the prospects of success. The players he had played with, notwithstanding they were his friends, had not delivered up to that point. He had computed that winning the Sigerson was most likely contingent on an injection of new players.

The parallels with his current situation as Kerry boss are easy to see. Kerry has a squad with a lot of All-Ireland winners, many of whom he would have established bonds with as a player and selector. The dropping of Kieran Donaghy for tomorrow’s Munster final suggest that Fitzmaurice has the requisite level of ruthlessness, but it will get trickier if Paul Galvin, his brother-in-law, begins to struggle for form. It’s likely that Galvin will do everything he can to ensure Fitzmaurice isn’t put in that situation, but his age-defying performances can’t go on forever and big players don’t tend to go quietly.

One month after my initial introduction to Fitzmaurice in UCC, we were in the Gaelic Grounds, grinding out a win over Athlone IT in a Sigerson Cup quarter-final. With 10 minutes to go, I took a pass off him about 30 yards out. Bad kick. Keeper’s hands. No big deal. We were three points up. I had just kicked a point a few moments earlier. I was a first year in only my second Sigerson game. Bonus territory. Shortly after, during a break in play, I heard the guttural roar for the first time. “Conor, put the fucking ball dead.” Typed words can’t do justice to the primal nature with which this wild man screamed at me.

It was reprised on a few occasions over the years at inter-county level, mostly when Fitzmaurice felt that some Kerry forward had not gone in hard enough or had let his man out too easy. From that point forward, I was under no illusions about Fitzmaurice’s nature on then field.

UCC went on to play Jordanstown in the Sigerson semi-final; Fitzmaurice was in his element going toe to toe with the huge physical presence of Jimmy McGuiness, Paddy Bradley, Aidan O’Rourke, Enda McNulty, Declan McCrossan, Kevin Hughes etc. If he bust a gut to win a ball and delivered it into the forwards, he expected it to go over the bar. For Fitzmaurice, football was a simple game, defined by huge commitment, intensity and accurate kick-passing into space. It’s impossible to see how he won’t try to instil that in this Kerry side. That’s why the work rate of Donnchadh Walsh was preferred to flair of Darran O’Sullivan thus far in the Munster championship, and that’s why Fitzmaurice’s team will have to work like dogs, or they simply won’t play. Fitzy will do everything he can to ensure his players are animals on the field and play with an edge.

In college in Cork, Fitzmaurice had already gained a more rounded appreciation of the intricacies of Gaelic football before most of his colleagues. Many will remember him playing at centre forward in his final year with Kerry. Also he had already operated at midfield in his own fresher year in UCC, a side which won the All-Ireland that year in their grade.

It’s interesting to note that Paul Galvin also spent most of his early career at wing back in UCC and at corner forward in Kerry underage teams, before moving to the half-forward line. By luck or design, it’s undeniable that the opportunities to play and develop in different positions served both of them well, a concept replicated in underage rugby development in New Zealand where there is no specialisation at underage level.

My first encounter in direct opposition to Fitzmaurice was in June 2004 when Cork met Kerry in the first round of the Munster championship. Lining up at No 11 for this game, I was by now well aware of Fitzmaurice’s strengths as a centre-back and primarily his ability to bully players off the ball. There is no simpler way to describe his main tool in this regard other than to coin it in clumsy terms; the “half foul jersey grab and release”. He was the foremost practitioner of this skill. If you made a dart out for the ball at a moment he reckoned the ref wasn’t looking, you were quickly hauled into reverse by this gigantic forearm while he brushed past you onto the ball and into the line of sight of the referee. Going toe-to-toe physically was not an option and so for that game, the premeditated decision was made to haul him to the ground and hold on for dear life in the hope that a pair of bookings would be issued and that any subsequent hauling would be too risky for him to try once he was on a yellow card.

Thankfully, referee Brian White duly obliged on that occasion. Every manager is keen to imbue his teams with these tricks of the trade on the basis that every successful team employs them. The push of the hip as a player takes a shot, the checking of the runner and, ironically, the legitimate opportunity to burst an opponent with a shoulder should the opportunity arise. Kerry don’t deserve any worse a reputation in this regard than any of the other top teams but Marty Duffy’s appointment for tomorrow is interesting. He has not refereed a Cork championship game since the Cork-Kerry All-Ireland final in 2009. While the Tadgh Kennelly-Nicholas Murphy incident is the most notorious incident that day, Duffy’s handling of the Cooper-Lynch duel is what caused most frustration for Cork supporters that day. Kerry ultimately deserved to win the final but three very soft first-half frees against Lynch kept Kerry in the game. Duffy’s sympathetic attitude to Kerry’s marquee forward was in stark contrast to the man-handling Colm O’Neill was getting at the other end from Tommy Griffin. To be fair, no referee can watch two things at once and perhaps the umpires and linesmen are more culpable. Nonetheless, in a game of inches, Duffy’s tendency to watch the ball and not the run, combined with Fitzmaurice’s expertise in the ‘art’ of man-marking, is certainly worth watching tomorrow.

My final encounter with Fitzmaurice was in February 2005, Cork were meeting Kerry in the first game of the League that year, under lights at Páirc Ui Rinn. Kerry had just won another All-Ireland against Mayo the previous September. Cork were building under Billy Morgan. The strength and conditioning work for the Cork team had been contracted to UCD and the panel had returned from a week of warm-weather training at La Manga at the start of the year. Two teams in very different places on the night in question. Lining up at centre-forward on Fitzmaurice once again, it was clear this time he was out of breath early on. Cork got on top early in the second half. At the time, the Cork team had been feeding off an inferiority complex. The strongest motivation within the squad was the notion that Kerry had no respect for Cork and it was gratifying to be beating them, if only in a National League game. He was spent physically when withdrawn early in the second half, and so the least I expected was that he would storm to the dressing room, as per most players of his stature. Instead, he turned around, put out his hand and simply said: “Conor, well done, best of luck.” Things were not good between the Cork and Kerry teams at the time. In that festering atmosphere, the ferocity in Fitzmaurice was seen plenty of times but when all was said and done, he was still able to show respect. That’s what endures about him, whether it be player, selector or manager.

A gentleman.