Kerry welcome timeout as plenty of work to do
Although he felt his side’s chances of reaching a semi-final were diminished by Derry’s naming of a second string team against Mayo, he expected more from his charges.
“I mean, when we saw the team that Derry picked, we figured that regardless of whether we won or lost, we wouldn’t get into the semi-finals. But the fact that we’d won three games in a row, we wanted to keep that going.
“We wanted to have momentum going forward getting ready for the championship. And you know, it’s Cork, it’s at home. We lost two out of three of our home games this year which is a disappointment.”
Fitzmaurice believes the performance against Cork indicated Kerry require more championship preparations than he anticipated. “This morning if you asked me about the gap, I would have been giving out about it. I think I’m happy to have it now because we’ve a lot to work on.
“It does seem a bit strange, alright, that we’ve played 10 competitive games so far in the first three months of the year. If you go the whole way, you’ve five for the rest of the year.
“But we’ve a lot to work on, we need the gap, we wouldn’t want to be playing championship in a week or two’s time now. We’re going to Portugal Thursday week and after that, we’ll train twice a week, Tuesday, Thursday. The lads will have club games right up to the week of the Clare/Waterford game.”
Subs Darran O’Sullivan had to be replaced early in the second half with a hamstring injury. “We have time on our side,” said Fitzmaurice. “We’re not playing until 11 weeks today so we’ll get Darran right and he’ll be fine come championship.”
