Éamonn Fitzmaurice: behind closed doors in the Kingdom - how Kerry respond to a looming crisis
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: A few players did contribute and as the meeting was about to wrap up, Declan O'Sullivan cleared his throat to have his say. The younger players worshipped him. He spoke so well that evening.
Pic: ©INPHO/Morgan Treacy.
KERRY found themselves in a strange situation this week. This time last weekend they were heading for Tullamore as All-Ireland favourites, with the chief worry in Kerry being were they road tested enough for the All-Ireland quarter finals, and beyond? Meath ensured they were tested and more.
Now they find themselves in a position they would hardly have envisaged. Either it awakes them from their slumber or it’s bye bye for 2025. Another year gone for a golden generation of talent, without Sam coming to the south west.
While Jack O’Connor hates losing, and is at his crankiest in such situations he is seriously experienced and has a fantastic gut instinct for sensing what the group needs at a given time. I imagine his fellow selectors got more calls off him this week, than they have in the previous month combined, in terms of charting the way forward.
The message will probably have been to keep the head, hold their nerve and get back to basics. They can see all around them how one weekend's football can reshape a team in this years topsy turvy championship. They have recent experience to draw on as they have been in this situation already this season.
When Armagh came to town for the league game on St Patrick’s weekend they had their backs to the wall. They responded, cut loose and played great football for a spell, culminating in them winning the league. Recently they have been unremarkable, but click, get it right and they have four matches in five weeks to win the All-Ireland.
There will have been a bit of blood-letting this week internally, with the forwards work-rate without the ball and the approach to both kick-outs high on the agenda. Bring detail and energy to those areas and let their football do the talking then. Earn the right to play, and then play.
Early in the week the group would have sat down and thrashed out what went wrong and a way forward. These summits can be feisty and testy but are critical in galvanising a group. There were plenty of them in my time playing and involved in management with Kerry, too many to document here, but the following are a few of the more memorable that spring to mind.
Cork had just beaten us in a Munster semi-final replay in Cork. Micheál Ó Sé, Páidí’s brother and Darragh, Tomás and Marc’s Dad had passed away between the two games. As a group we were hellbent on playing for them the following weekend. Instead the opposite happened. We were hopeless. We were heading down the qualifier route for the first time. The context of having been hammered in the previous year's All-Ireland semi-final to Meath is also important here. Such defeats, even in isolation, is one thing - coming so close together is something different entirely.
On the Tuesday night after the game we had a players' and management meeting before training in Austin Stack Park. Páidí insisted that he wanted to hear from everyone in the room. So we started in one corner of the dressing room and went around the world for sport from there. It was raw. I can recall Barry O’Shea being very strong and honest in his assessment of some of the management. A young Declan O’Sullivan was with the squad for the first time that night. He told me years later that the meeting had left a major impression on him about what we expected of each other. He was often to the fore in such meetings subsequently.
By 2009 I was at the other side of the table as a selector with Jack O’Connor. We had again lost to Cork in the Munster championship. We set off through the qualifiers, beating Longford playing poorly and then Sligo in Austin Stack Park, where our whole season hung by a thread as David Kelly stood over a penalty in the 67th minute. Diarmuid Murphy saved it and kept our season alive. It was a Saturday night game in Tralee and we were limping along rather than powering towards Croke Park. Famously, the night of the game, and the day afterwards some of the players went offside. Tomás Ó Se and Colm Cooper ended up taking the rap but there were more than that involved, as we subsequently found out.
On the Monday evening, we met as a management team in one of Jack’s favourite bolt holes, The Bianconi in Killorglin, and made the decision not to start Colm and Tomás the following weekend. On the Tuesday night before training we met the two lads in the Great Southern in Killarney, separately. Prior to the start of training in Fitzgerald Stadium the players were having their own gathering. I wasn’t in attendance but from various accounts afterwards, it was a pugnacious meeting. In terms of high performance I doubt it would be prescribed and it was far from ideal. The critical point was that group of grizzled veterans were brimming with personality and character. Everything being questioned a week out from a knockout championship game didn’t knock a stir out of them. We survived the following week against Antrim in Tullamore, drew Dublin in the quarter-finals and away we went.
Cork hammered us by 10 points in the last league game in Austin Stack Park. While our Division 1 status was safe it was an embarrassing performance in front of our own supporters. Amazingly 11 of the team that started that day would also start the All-Ireland final the following September.
During the post-match meal I felt the mood was a bit too jovial for my liking, particularly after suffering such a chastening defeat against our biggest rivals at home. The lads had a week off at the end of the league before we reconvened for championship. The first night back we had another one of these player and management summits. Standards were set and we all agreed to reset and move forward.
Probably because it was such a young group I had to do a lot of the talking. A few players did contribute and as the meeting was about to wrap up, Declan cleared his throat to have his say. We had rested him for the league. He was minding his knee. It was remarkable that he managed to play at all in 2014. Luckily for the rest of us he did as his leadership that season was central to the ultimate success. The younger players worshipped him. He spoke so well that evening.
Declan's punchline challenged the group to the core. He said that if we didn’t rise our standards and play as we should be playing, he would cross the street to avoid meeting lads in the future. He outlined how he wouldn’t be able to look people in the eye if they didn’t do the bare minimum - giving it absolutely 100% with a Kerry jersey on their backs, and to never ever give up.
You could hear a pin drop. Meeting over. When we won the All-Ireland the following September Brian Kelly, in his debut season, made Declan off that night to tell him that he could indeed look him in the eye in the future and that he wouldn’t have to cross the street to avoid him now. It showed how impactful Declan’s contribution had been.
We played Galway in the inaugural Super 8s in 2018 in Croke Park. We felt we were in a great place approaching that game. We had prepared extremely diligently for the unique challenge presented by Kevin Walsh’s Galway. On the day we stank the place out, losing by three. While Galway deserve credit for their performance, we were remarkably poor. We did not do what we set out to do. As we were away to Monaghan in Clones the following weekend we had taken the decision to stay in Dublin for a second night on the Sunday night after the game. We were trying to cover every base. The plan was to have recovery sessions on the Sunday evening and Monday morning and to review the Galway game before hitting the road for Kerry. By Monday evening that game would be in the rearview mirror, we would train once and point the bus north on Saturday morning with Monaghan in our sights. It would allow the players plenty of space for recovery that week, both mentally and physically. Our performance, more so than the result, sunk that plan. Instead after the game on Sunday evening we decided to have one of those fabled meetings. The theory was it would allow us to park up the Galway game, deal with the non-performance and move on. We still had it all to play for the following weekend, and there was no time to be wallowing in self pity.
However, everyone was tired and cranky and in hindsight it wasn’t the best call. The players watched the game together, something we had never done previously, and we as the management team watched it in another room. Afterwards, we reconvened to analyse it. That was when the fun started. There was too much emotion and exhaustion in the room and it reflected in some of the contributions.
When I was involved with Fossa recently, David Clifford reminded me of a funny one over a pint that I had forgotten. Purposely, I said very little in that meeting as I was anxious for the players to have the floor. However, as the meeting was reaching its conclusion David was nominated by his group to be the spokesperson. He was a rookie and had been one of the few players who had played well on the day. The more experienced boyos put him out front, as a human shield, if you will. Anyway, as he gave the feedback he made a point on behalf of his band, that players had been moved around in the second half and some fellas ended up in positions that they wouldn’t normally play in. That pushed buttons and got a reaction out of me. I told David that we had to move players around because they weren’t performing as they should have been, that we would always move players if we felt the need and that if I felt like putting him in goals that I would - in slightly less polite language than that. It was very unlike me but highlighted where we all were at that evening.
We had a good laugh when David recounted the story to me, but there wasn’t much laughing at the time. The meeting ended soon after. In fairness to the lads we did react the following weekend and drew in Clones with a very good Monaghan team, thanks to David’s late goal, but the damage had been done and we exited the championship after beating Kildare in the last game. What I would have done for three teams qualifying out of the group that season!
