*Mark Fitzgerald. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
AS OVERWHELMING underdogs, Mark Fitzgerald has a tricky task in guiding Clare’s attempted takedown of Kerry in the Munster senior football championship final.
On a personal note, this is made more difficult as the Tralee man comes up against his native county.
Fitzgerald is in his first season as Clare manager where his selectors include fellow Kerry man James Costello. Costello was manager of the Kerry minors for four years from 2019 to 2022 with Fitzgerald part of his minor management.
He doesn’t expect either himself or James to receive much abuse from Kerry supporters this weekend. “I think probably Kerry just go about their business themselves, that is the way they do things and we just have to look after ourselves in Clare and try prepare the best we can and get a performance from the lads and see where that takes us”.
Initial slagging has mainly been from his friends. “I presume it will ramp up this week a little bit, in one way it will probably help us in that Kerry have one eye on down the line and probably rightly so but the camp is in good form and we’re looking forward to it”.
Their time in charge of the Kerry minors offer invaluable intel in trying to plot the Kingdom’s takedown. “James was there for four years, I was there for three of the four years with him, we’d know a good few of those U20s coming through now, James had a good lot of those lads coming through but knowing them and stopping them is a different thing. Everyone knows what David Clifford is going to do but stopping him is a different ordeal, we’re looking forward to it”.
Reaching a Munster Final was “not really” part of Fitzgerald’s overall plan when he took charge of the Clare senior footballers. “We’re delighted to be there and be competing for a chance to see can we do better than we did last year,” he told The Clare Echo.
Given that he wasn’t involved with Clare for last year’s Munster Final, Fitzgerald is reliant on watching the game in-person and on tape since to try apply lessons from that heavy loss. “I would have looked at the tape, I was at the game last year and I’d have looked at it a good few times since, the lads themselves have learned a lot from it, I know there is a good few missing but there is still a good few lads that have played in it. We’ve had a couple of tough matches this year albeit at Division 3, we’re well aware of what this challenge is going to be like but those few games that we had against Westmeath and Down will certainly help us and we hope the lads will have learned a good bit from last year, at least the whole rigmarole of getting to a final is done and dusted”.
There is no complaints from the Kerins O’Rahillys clubman on a two week build-up from the semi-final win over Waterford to their final clash with Kerry. “At that stage you are trying to judge your run in and get challenge matches, there’s a whole other thing whereas I think the two weeks is okay, the season is condensed absolutely and everyone knows that but that is for another day, a two week break is fine”.
Securing home advantage via a coin toss has been an early win for Clare. “A huge boost for Clare football, for the Clare public and for the businesses around the place, it’s a great little venue as we saw with the hurling but the challenge for us is to make that count to our advantage”.
Explaining what benefits there are with home advantage, he said, “There’s that bit of familiarity with the routine, with we do, it will help us, we don’t have to get on a bus and go to Killarney or Páirc Uí Chaoimh and with the home crowd you’d be trying to get a good start and take it from there”.
Few extra work-ons from the Waterford game have been identified by Fitzgerald since watching the game back. “My thoughts now are the same as they were after the match, I felt we dropped our workrate and our concentration, we went from seven to eight in terms of kicks, we’re well aware of what is ahead of us and how good we need to play, that is the challenge for us”.
Plotting the downfall of Kerry, one of the top teams in the country for Sunday’s Munster Final stands out as among one of the most enjoyable aspects of inter-county management, he admitted. “It is really. Clare were in the last sixteen last year, back in the last sixteen again this year, we want to do ourselves justice and prove that we deserve to be there, I keep saying that we’re well aware of the challenge but we want to test ourselves against the best, we’re fully aware of what that entails too, Kerry are an awesome side”.
