Flynn: ‘Ruthless’ Fitzmaurice has Kerry steeled
The former Meath forward has sat back and admired just how the young manager has handled some of his old team-mates like Marc Ó Sé and Kieran Donaghy.
He was particularly impressed by how he opted to drop Ó Sé for the replay win over Mayo before the defender starred when coming on as a sub.
“I’ve had a good lot of chats with Darragh Ó Sé regularly. Even to show his true worth, like he’s (Fitzmaurice) very close to the Ó Sé family. Tomás and Darragh are his best friends. And to drop Marc the way he did for a reason, and then for Marc gave a performance after that he hadn’t given in a while. That said a lot.
“He (Fitzmaurice) has balls, he’s steely. He doesn’t mind making the hard calls. Look what he’s done with Donaghy. Discarded him for the last year and a half, if you like. Then when the situation was right, brought him back in. So there’s a ruthless little streak. But he’s a very good person and I think people forgot what he achieved with the Hogan Cup (with Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne).
“I thought it was one of the greatest achievements over the last number of years, to beat that Maghera team the way he did. And even last year he was after turning it around after being beaten in the league early on.”
Flynn can’t see Donaghy getting much purchase against the McGee brothers should he be positioned at full-forward. “I think the McGees will be ready for him physically. Look what they did with (Eoghan) O’Gara, that’s going to a problem.
“In midfield David Moran, who’s been absolutely brilliant and probably the biggest single difference with Kerry, Gallagher and the boys midfield, I think they could have something to negate his influence.
“And then you’ve (James) O’Donoghue. I think there’s probably no better team in the country to probably stop his influence. It’s going to be tight.”
At the start of the year, Flynn expected neither county to reach the final but expects Donegal to come out on top. “I just think they’re going to physically squeeze the living daylights out of Kerry.
“In saying that, you wouldn’t back against Kerry. The only thing I’ll say, Kerry in big matches since 2009 haven’t been particularly great, particularly in tight matches. Now, they’ve done incredible (getting to the final) and it’s down to Fitzmaurice. They’re probably punching slightly above their weight, Donegal are the same.”
But he doesn’t expect Kerry to be as naive as Dublin were in the semi-final. “I was talking to a very well-known Dublin footballer and he says to me ‘when you keep doing the same thing all the time... (and expect the same results it’s insanity)’. And I think that was the best way of summing it up, that I’ve seen, the way Dublin were playing.
“And it was true, when they were confronted with something else.”
