EAMONN FITZMAURICE HAS defended the role Kerry played in the injuries suffered by young stars David Clifford and Sean O’Shea in the past week.
Both Clifford and O’Shea endured heavy schedules recently as they juggled Sigerson Cup and Allianz Football League commitments with college and county.
Three games in seven days took their toll as Clifford limped off with a hamstring injury just 19 minutes into Kerry’s win over Mayo last weekend. As a result, the 19-year-old missed IT Tralee’s Sigerson Cup quarter-final defeat to DIT on Tuesday night.
O’Shea played 55 minutes for the Kingdom in Castlebar and was subsequently ruled out of UCC’s quarter-final loss against NUI Galway due to a calf problem. Both players will remain sidelined this weekend as Kerry travel to Monaghan.
Tralee manager Liam Brosnan told Radio Kerry’s Terrace Talk this week that Clifford’s injury was “bound to happen” given the workload on the youngster.
But Kerry boss Fitzmaurice said the Kingdom did take the welfare of the duo into account.
“David Clifford and Sean O’Shea will miss out injured but it was the plan all along that they would play two of our three opening league games,” he said on Friday night.
“We intended to rest them and give them a weekend off, so we figured they might still be involved in Sigerson and that would equate to games next week. We stuck to that plan.
“In fairness we have this debate every year with regard to the scheduling of the National League and the Sigerson Cup on at the same time,” Fitzmaurice continued.
“It places big demands on young players. From our point of view it was one of the reasons we did not play in the McGrath Cup this year because we wanted to reduce the amount of games in that period of the year.”
Fitzmaurice said Kerry closely were closely tracking the workload on their college players in recent weeks.
“We monitor the lads very closely and player welfare would be top of our list of concerns always. For example, all the lads who played Sigerson Cup this week would have worn GPS units from us to monitor their load, so we are on top of where they are at.
“But unfortunately you do get situations where David tweaked his hamstring last weekend and it was disappointing for everyone. Sometimes depending on the profile of the player these things can be flagged, sometimes they can happen and not get headlines.
“For example, on the night Ger Cafferkey went off almost at the same time as David, and he was the man who was marking David, with a hamstring injury. He played no Sigerson Cup and many more like him (got injured), but they don’t get flagged.
“So these injuries can happen and with regard to any rift or row that has been reported between IT Tralee and me, there wasn’t one. I dealt with Eamonn Fitzgerald (IT Tralee GAA Officer) the whole way through it, the same as I deal with Billy Morgan in UCC, the same with John Divilly in UCD.
“There were open lines of communication and we both knew what was going on. There was no problem from my point of view or from Eamonn Fitzgerald’s point of view.”
Fitzmaurice also responded to Lee Keegan’s criticism of the “very dirty tackle” by Ronan Shanahan on Evan Regan which left the Mayo forward with a broken jaw and a concussion.
“They (Keegan’s comments) were way off the mark,” said Fitzmaurice. “It wasn’t a dirty tackle at all. It was a genuine attempt to play the ball and I don’t think Lee looked back at the replay of the incident to be honest with the comments he made.
“There was absolutely no intent in Ronan Shanahan’s part, I spoke to him and he said the same thing. I knew it from looking at the replay of the incident myself. So no, I don’t agree with Lee and I refute Lee Keegan’s assertion that there was any malice in Ronan’s tackle.
“From my own point of view and the Kerry point of view we would be wishing Evan a speedy recovery because with an injury like that it’s not nice and nobody likes to see that happening.
“We had a similar injury ourselves last year early in the league when Shane Enright picked up a head injury and it’s not nice. As I said hopefully Evan recovers quickly and we will see him back in Mayo colours again pretty quickly.”
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