O’Donoghue fell on injured shoulder

Eamonn Fitzmaurice was not able to provide a prognosis on James O’Donoghue’s shoulder injury following yesterday’s All-Ireland quarter-final.

The Legion man damaged the same right shoulder which was operated on last November as he attempted to round Kildare goalkeeper Mark Donnellan in the 30th minute.

He landed awkwardly and was replaced by Barry John Keane.

With three weeks until an All-Ireland semi-final against Monaghan or Tyrone, he has to be considered a doubt, although Cillian O’Connor returned to start from a similar problem in a similar time-frame two years ago.

“He got a bang on the shoulder so we will just have to wait and see,” said Fitzmaurice of O’Donoghue’s setback. “Hopefully, it is not too serious. He will have a scan and we will assess the seriousness of the injury. I don’t think it popped out but I’m not sure.”

Fitzmaurice, who also revealed Kieran Donaghy hadn’t been risked after injuring his groin on Thursday, said his dressing room was a satisfied one afterwards. As he expected, the replay win over Cork had sharpened up his players.

“I think we were well tuned in. You could get from the vibe when we met up yesterday that there was a good focus.

“And I think the replay has been a big factor. In the past, we’ve been coming in cold. There’s been county championship, there’s been distractions in the month of July, you don’t know your opposition until the week beforehand. That wasn’t as much an issue this time around (because of the replay).”

Donaghy’s replacement Colm Cooper finished top scorer for Kerry with 2-3, 2-1 coming from play, and Fitzmaurice couldn’t have been happier for the Dr Crokes man in only his second start this summer.

“Again, since the drawn Munster final he has trained well.

“The way it worked out with Kieran’s injury it gave us a chance to start him and he got 70 minutes under the belt which was brilliant and we have three weeks to get ready.”

Describing Stephen O’Brien as “outstanding”, there was also good news for Fitzmaurice in the performance of Darran O’Sullivan and Tommy Walsh off the bench.

“Darran’s another fella who has trained really well for the last couple of weeks and he has put his hand up in training and he knew today coming up he was going to get a cut at it at some stage and, to be fair to him, he did the business.” On Walsh, the manager remarked: “Tommy was another who was frustrated that he got no action in either of the Munster finals and he had been going well in training. Unfortunately, you can only put on six subs and he was one of the ones to miss out both of those days.”