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Maurice Fitzgerald and Darragh Ó Sé.
IT must be pretty handy for Kerry footballers when preparing for a big match in Croke Park to know a legend with sage advice is only a phone-call away.
Darragh Ó Sé gives an account of one such phone-call he had with Maurice Fitzgerald days before he entered the fray at headquarters.
In his Irish Times column this week, Darragh says; “I used to ring Maurice Fitzgerald for advice before games. Even when I had been playing well enough, he was good to talk to. Maurice wasn’t just one of the best players Kerry ever had, he was one of the best winners.”
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“Come here to me,” said Maurice on the blower to his former teammate. “What you should be doing now is throwing a surprise at them the next day. What don’t they expect from you? They think you’re dangerous at kickouts, they think you’re physical and that you will cover for the defence. But they’re not worried about you going forward and kicking points against them. That’s what you should surprise them with.”
Darragh said; “I know. Telling a footballer to go and kick a point, it’s probably not the biggest tactical innovation you’ve ever heard of. But maybe that just shows it was something lacking in my game that had to be put right. I went out and kicked a point in the first half and another in the second. And in fairness to Maurice, I could see it had an effect on the other crowd…It was as though they were thinking, “Hang on now – this wasn’t in the slide show we got the other night.”
The six time All-Ireland winner was no stranger to Tyrone in his playing days, he also had something interesting to say about Mickey Harte’s current batch.
“Tyrone are bit different this year than other years. They’re landing into Croke Park with people talking them up. Nobody has a beef with them. Nobody’s calling them cynical, nobody’s looking for a rule to be changed because of them. People actually like them in 2016,” he said.
We’ve had Brexit, a Trump presidential run and now a likeable Tyrone team, the world has gone topsy-turvy this year.
Read Darragh Ó’Sé’s full article here
