Eamonn Fitzmaurice: I don’t think there was an undercurrent there

Eamonn Fitzmaurice will have been expecting the line of questioning but he wasn’t all that keen to dig all that deeper into the debate he had stirred in the run-up to this decider last week.

His talk of narratives and balance when it came to allegations of wrong-doing in the meeting of his Kerry team and Dublin in Tralee three weeks ago had served as an intriguing and unusual backdrop to yesterday’s league final and neither side played like saints.

“I don’t think it was too bad though today, was it? I didn’t think it was as incident-packed as the game in Tralee now. I said what I said during the week. I wanted to provoke debate. I succeeded in provoking debate whereas I think if I hadn’t said something, which I would prefer not to have said to be honest because I just prefer to focus on the football, there wouldn’t have been a debate at all. But there was a debate so from my point of view it was mission accomplished.