Gooch injury left Fitzmaurice soul-searching

In a brief moment of vulnerability last February, Eamonn Fitzmaurice contemplated the loss of Colm Cooper this year, and wondered why such bad luck had befallen him.

The schoolteacher had been on mid-term at the time Cooper attended the Santry Sports Clinic to have his knee assessed after being helped off the O’Moore Park pitch in Dr Crokes’ All-Ireland semi-final loss to Castlebar Mitchels. Fitzmaurice and his wife Tina were in Dublin anyway but stayed a night to lend their support to the player. When the bad news was confirmed, it hit the manager like a ton of bricks. He hadn’t anticipated a cruciate issue although his selector Mikey Sheehy anticipated the worst.

“The thing with Colm was that it happened in the middle of February and we had time to deal with it,” recalls Fitzmaurice. “It was hugely disappointing and I remember the day after I was in Santry with Colm, my wife was with me and we stopped in Avoca on the way down on the M7 and I was saying like ‘what have I done to whom here?’ But by the time I got to Kerry that evening, I was in the frame of mind that Colm was gone for the year and (surgeon) Ray Moran was very clear that even if we got to an All-Ireland final, it was going to be beyond Colm this year.