'He wants us to express ourselves' - The Clare supremo facing his native Kerry
ON ANY GIVEN night at training in Caherlohan, there’s one man right in the thick of it all.
Mark Fitzgerald rolls his sleeves up and gets stuck in.
The new Clare manager is hands-on, and his approach appears to be paying dividends.
Fitzgerald has steered the county to back-to-back Munster senior football finals for the first time in 87 years.
The task of succeeding Colm Collins was no easy one, but the Kerry native seems to have taken to it like a duck to water.
“It’s been very good,” Ikem Ugwueru confirms.
“Obviously with a new manager, everyone was like, ‘Is he gonna be good or is he not gonna be good?’ Everyone was so used to Colm, and Colm did such a good job with Clare football, so obviously it’s gonna be big shoes to fill.
“To be fair to Mark, he has done a good job so far in my opinion.
“He’s in the middle of the training, he is just as enthusiastic as we are so that’s obviously good to see. He’s just telling us to play our own game, he’s not putting pressure on us.
“If you met him, you wouldn’t think there’s any pressure on him. He’s just taking it in his own stride and that’s a credit to him.”
Fitzgerald has always taken things in his stride, whether that be playing or coaching amidst home comforts in the Kingdom, or challenging himself further afield.
The Tralee man was a talented soccer player in his younger years, even pursuing a scholarship in the USA. He balanced his sporting endeavours with his marketing studies at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, and received several League of Ireland offers on his return, but opted for the pleasure of balancing club GAA and junior soccer with a full-time job.
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He won a county senior medal with Kerins O’Rahillys in 2002, and later moved into coaching with his club and Kerry underage teams.
Fitzgerald with Cormac Murray.
The senior inter-county scene came calling in late 2022, when Fitzgerald was recruited by Ray Dempsey as a selector for the Limerick footballers.
A steep incline followed: Dempsey departed after just five games, and his selector’s title quickly changed to interim manager. The season ended in a Tailteann Cup quarter-final exit and relegation from Division 2, and ultimately, Fitzgerald didn’t land the job on a full-time basis.
He refused to lie idle for long, however. Clare turned in his direction to take the mantle from the long-serving Collins. The Cratloe mastermind had been synonymous with Clare football, but stepped down after 10 years of great progress.
Fitzgerald didn’t shy away from the “difficult challenge” of following in his footsteps — made no easier by significant player turnover — but he has fully embraced the opportunity.
“Mark hasn’t come in to try change anything crazy,” Ugwueru notes.
“He’s obviously come in to play his own style of game and I feel like it’s working for us. He just wants us to express ourselves on the ball, really. Don’t be too bogged down about the other team.
“We’re there to play so we should play our own style. He’s done really well so far in my opinion.”
Clare bounced back from narrowly missing out on Division 3 league promotion by reaching back-to-back Munster finals for the first time since 1937.
A routine 14-point win over Waterford secured their passage, and Kerry now lie in wait in Ennis’ Cusack Park tomorrow [throw-in 1.45pm, RTÉ 2].
That Fitzgerald is the latest in a chain of Kerrymen at the Clare helm adds to the intrigue of it all.
John O’Keeffe guided the Banner to a famous win over Cork in Ennis in 1997; John Kennedy was manager when they won Tommy Murphy Cup; Donie Buckley, Páidí Ó Sé and Mick O’Dwyer also took the hot-seat.
There are other links of note. Former Kerry minor manager James Costello, for whom Fitzgerald was a selector in 2021, is now working under his tutelage. Many of the players they oversaw featured in Wednesday night’s U20 football final against Cork.
(Declan Downes is a link to the previous management, while former Limerick footballer Seanie Buckley is on board as a coach after his recent success with Éire Óg Ennis.)
Another tie ahead of tomorrow’s game: Fitzgerald previously replaced Kerry boss Jack O’Connor in a management job.
He was in charge of Kerins O’Rahillys in 2009, when they lost to Clare’s Kilmurry-Ibrickane in the Munster senior final by a point. O’Connor oversaw a Kerry county final defeat the previous year.
Kerry manager Jack O’Connor.
Now, the pair face off on the line as their sides meet in a repeat of last year’s annihilation.
The Kingdom were 5-14 to 0-15 — or 29-point — winners on that occasion, but Fitzgerald and co. will be hoping for a better underdog story this time around.
Should the result go as expected, they’ll join the Ulster champions, Tyrone and Cork in the group stages. A seismic shock would see them pitted against the Leinster runners-up, Monaghan and Meath.
It’s all about an upturn tomorrow first.
“Last year was last year, this year is this year,” Ugwueru concludes. “It’s a different team that we have this year – and it feels like everyone is more confident in a way. Even though people might not think we’d be more confident with the players that we’ve lost.
“We will not want to make the same mistakes we made last year and not be as afraid.
“We want to go out there and put our best foot forward and really express ourselves because I don’t think we did that last year. We let the occasion get the better of us and maybe everybody was talking about Kerry and that might have gotten into our heads.
“This time it’s all about us.”