KERRY MANAGER EAMONN FITZMAURICE has asked his players to ‘chill’ before considering any thoughts of retirement in the wake of the Kingdom’s seven point defeat at the hands of Dublin in today’s All-Ireland senior football semi final.
“Today’s not a day for thinking about things like that,” Fitzmaurice told RTE after the game.
“Some of those lads are among the best players to ever play the game, never mind for Kerry, so they’ll probably have a chill now and think about it.
“Their dedication and the example they set to the younger lads this year was phenomenal, we couldn’t ask for more.”
Despite scoring three goals and leading numerous times in the game, including with five minutes to go, Fitzmaurice could take little solace from his side’s performance, even if it did answer some of Kerry’s critics.
“We were up for the challenge, we’ve been written off for a lot of the summer.
“We wanted to answer a lot of people today and, most of all, we wanted to play for ourselves and play for the group and we nearly got there but not quite enough in the end.
“It’s not much consolation, we came up to win today and we came up just short.
“We’re bitterly disappointed and we’re going down the country empty-handed.”
Asked about Kerry’s gameplan that saw them score three first half goals, Fitzmaurice said it wasn’t unexpected.
“The game panned out the way we thought it would and we knew we’d get goal chances the way Dublin play they do leave themselves open at the back, we felt we’d the forwards to punish that and that’s they way it played out in the first half.
“[Dublin] are a serious team, we knew that – they were favourites for a reason today – and the same man who broke our hearts two years ago got the goal today and that was the difference between the two sides.”
Despite the result, there was one positive Kerry could take out of today’s game according to Fitzmaurice:
“We’ve a lot of good young lads in the squad and maybe that point has been missed over the summer.
“We trust them, we trust every fella that was togged off there today to do and job and that experience those lads got playing in front of a full house against Dublin, you can’t buy that sort of stuff. ”
