Kingdom on winner since leaving ‘spies’ out in cold

In Pat Spillane’s autobiography Shooting From The Hip, he related how Mick O’Dwyer would deal with rumours of opposition spies attending Kerry training.

Once word had filtered through that there were subversives at Fitzgerald Stadium, the instruction was passed to the players that they should play ‘ground football’ — or soccer — for a while.

Upon his appointment as manager last year, Eamonn Fitzmaurice opted for the nuclear option of closing sessions, barring a few exceptions.

Aside from ensuring that prying eyes are kept at bay, there have been other positive side-effects too, to the pleasant surprise of the boss.

“My reasoning at the start,” he said, “was that I felt that allowing an opposition person come into training, sit down and watch what a team is doing just didn’t make sense.

“A person coming in one night to watch a session, they would get a feel for it but I know that there were people consistently coming to Kerry training sessions. If you are consistently there, you know how the team is doing, you know who is going well, you know who is not going well, what’s good for one fella, how you might be able to mark another fella.

“So I did not want that going out — how we were going, good, bad or indifferent. The other side of it was that I found, when we started doing it, there was a completely different environment in the Fitzgerald Stadium, with only ourselves there for training.

“It was just a fantastic training environment because it was just us. There was no distractions. During my whole career, I trained in Killarney in front of people and I took no notice of it, because that was the way it was.

“But when you go the other way and it’s just us inside there, then everybody is more focused, I think.”

Had supporters had access to training prior to the Munster final, then perhaps the consensus might have been more positive than it was before the trip to Leeside.

Fitzmaurice accepts that, following a 12-point win over Cork, expectations have now been ramped up but that’s the nature of the beast.

“The beauty about football is that there are a lot of opinions out there,” he said.

“Everyone has an opinion and in Kerry especially, football, is so important to everyone that people are going to have opinions.

“If you were looking at the Munster final and analysing it, the only thing that people had to go on was on the Cork game in Tralee and the Clare game in Ennis and so the public was not 100% convinced.

“We knew what was going on in training, but nobody else did. In the lead-in to the Cork game, we were happy where we were at.

“But a lot of people were shooting in the dark, because they did not know what was going on within the group. I suppose then when you win and it goes the other way, it’s something you just accept. But the only opinions that count to me are the players’ opinions, the management and my backroom team around me, and ultimately my opinion.”

The task now is to take the good form into Sunday’s All-Ireland quarter-final against Galway. Fitzmaurice knows the pitfalls, especially as he was a selector under Jack O’Connor when Kerry were ambushed by Down in the 2010 quarter-final.

“It was fantastic to win the game against Cork,” he said, “and the most satisfying thing was that it was a good performance, but we can’t get carried away.

“We saw it in the past, in 2010 especially, we were All-Ireland champions at the time. We had a great win down in Páirc Uí Caoimh after extra-time, we beat Limerick in a Munster final in Killarney, and we went up to Croke Park, I don’t know, undercooked maybe and Down beat us.

“It was the same going up to Ennis, I think Clare have proved since that they are a lot better that many people thought they were, we treated that game very seriously at the time and if we didn’t, we would be beaten up there.”

Sunday presents a similar landscape ahead of throw-in, with Kerry strong favourites. Fitzmaurice is well aware of Galway’s threat too, however.

“I think the thing with Galway is that Alan Mulholland has been in charge now for a couple of years, and he has been able to put his own stamp on the team,” he said.

“He was involved with successful minor and U21 teams, and there are a lot of those fellas starting to come through.

“There is a great tradition in Galway, they play good attacking football and after beating Tipperary they have momentum and belief coming into Sunday, so they will be difficult opponents.

“Last year in the final qualifier game, they played Cork in the Croke Park and ran them really close in that game last year. So Galway will not fear playing Kerry in Croke Park, so that will have us focused for sure.”