Maurice Fitzgerald on Kerry's injuries, Cork's confidence, and the return of the old Munster final feeling

Kerry great Maurice Fitzgerald. Picture: ©INPHO/James Crombie

For the first time in too long, Maurice Fitzgerald feels both tension and excitement about Munster football’s concluding afternoon.

His are not manufactured words or sentiments. There isn’t a hint of green and gold yerra at play here.

The Kingdom great sees a settled and growing-in-confidence Cork team, fresh from promotion to the League’s top tier, travelling to Killarney to line out opposite a Kerry side that continues to be without six starters from last year’s All-Ireland final, and that’s before you add Tom O’Sullivan, the latest confirmed absentee for Sunday, to the casualty list.

Stir all that together and you have a real sense of anticipation getting on the road to Fitzgerald Stadium - for both camps.

For the first time in too long, there is no contrived Munster final build-up. There’s none of the familiar hoping that a genuine contest will present itself against all available evidence.

Sitting in the corner of Cahersiveen’s Ring Hotel lobby, this footballing legend has expectancy only for an uncertain outcome.

“This is one of the first years coming into it where, really, we’ll be going up with a lot of excitement about the possibilities on the day, and by that I mean the tension around the result. You have to have that going to the game. That is very real this year,” Fitzgerald began.

“You saw Down overcome Donegal, a fantastic result for Down and extraordinary to see, but that’s what championship football should bring. I think John Cleary and his team will be coming with a lot of confidence, hope, and belief. That augers well for the championship, for everybody really.” 

The last Cork-Kerry Munster final was a massive non-event. Kerry annihilated the Cork kickout and finished 22 points clear on the scoreline. The semi-final meeting of 10 months later in May 2022, while far less one-sided, still had a 12-point difference at the finish.

Maurice Fitzgerald, Jim McCarthy and Jack O'Connor at the launch of O'Connell's GAC Sponsored cycle from Cahersiveen to Tullyallen

Of the four get-togethers since, three were one-score games. Only one of those close encounters, though, played out on Kerry soil. We won’t waste time here in rehashing Cork’s record in Killarney. Suffice to say, it's not at all good.

“If you go on the tradition of Cork coming to Killarney, that's probably an extra difficult assignment, but there'll always be a day where that is going to change.

“If you were in this Cork camp, you’d probably say, we are back in Division 1, we are not coming down for the day out, so it does lend itself, from a supporter's point of view, to an exciting day.

“It would be lovely to have that provincial lift on the football side that we see in the hurling. For the province to be strong, it has to have teams that are challenging each other for the honours.” 

Maurice played in 12 Munster finals. Introduction to the province’s concluding afternoon was brutal. He lost the first three he was involved in. That unkind run stretched to four from five when Clare sensationally bettered them in ‘92. It was 1996 - at the fifth attempt - before he was finally part of a Kerry team that had Cork’s measure in a Munster decider.

He did wind up with six Munster medals, but given there were also six final defeats in the opposing ledger, maybe that is why when asked for his happiest Munster final memory, he reaches for childhood excursions out of South Kerry.

“I went to the Munster U20 final last week with my daughter, Aoibhinn, and it was a reminder of younger days, as a 10, 11, and 12-year-old, when Munster final weekend meant leaving Cahersiveen, boarding up in the car jammed with everybody, packed sandwiches and the lot, parking a good bit out from Killarney because it was chock-a-block and trying to make your way in through the crowd.

“We wouldn't have been doing too much travelling, outside of big Kerry football games. The excitement of those Munster final days, I don't know if anything could ever quite beat it as we weren't going much further at the time. I don’t think I saw Croke Park until 1986.” 

Like a great many other Kerry footballers across the 40 years since, Fitzgerald never tasted back-to-back Sam Maguire success. That’s the sole show in town in 2026.

The outstanding difficulty he sees in achieving successful retention of football’s main prize is keeping your key players healthy and on the pitch.

Kerry have not fared well in that department in recent months.

Diarmuid O’Connor’s Munster semi-final outing being his first full 70 minutes on the inter-county stage in 11 months was a rare bit of good news. Still out, as per Jack O’Connor’s update last Monday, are Shane Ryan, Paul Murphy, Brian Ó Beaglaoich, Joe O’Connor, Seán O’Shea, and Graham O’Sullivan.

In their absence, there were sustained spring auditions for Evan Looney, Armin Henirich, Cillian Trant, Tomás Kennedy, Keith Evans, and Liam Smith. The 2026 class is deeper than last year’s all-conquering edition, reckons the former footballer of the year.

“If your management, it is frustrating if you are not getting everybody out. But where they are at is quite a healthy place in that I don’t take too much reading into the League final. It wasn’t something that overly worried me. Jack and Co are well used to the timing of championship.

“He used the League to look at a lot of new players, so from that point of view, twas very successful. There’s a stronger panel even than probably last year, so that would give me a lot of confidence.

“I know Jack would love to go back-to-back and all that type of thing. The difficulty probably is that you don’t have any major injuries to key players and you can keep them on the field, but I wouldn’t have any question marks over their desire or hunger for repeating it.” 

Before he heads back to the company he’s keeping in the dining room, we ask him for his thoughts on the new rules. He goes straight to midfield. He doesn’t see any piggery, he sees a welcome return of a too-long shunted away skillset.

“If you have got two or three natural players in the middle of the field who are good fetchers, it is not a game of chance, that’s a game of skill.

“That is a fantastic skill that we shouldn’t have wrapped up and put away. That competition for gathering a ball from a kickout has become much more honest. You have that contest we all would have been missing. It is very much back and it is very attractive.” 

• Maurice Fitzgerald was speaking at the launch of ‘The Liberator Tour’, a fundraising cycle organised by Armagh club, O’Connell’s Tullysaran. Over three days in early August, a group of locals will cycle 285 miles from Cahersiveen to O’Connell Park, Tullysaran. All monies raised will go towards the redevelopment of the O’Connell’s club ground. Fundraising link found here.