Kerry resume but Fitzgerald is absent

After two weeks of controversy off the field the Kerry football team got back to routine matters last night with the first training session of the New Year at Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney. And for the first time in that same period not all eyes were on the management.

Now that manager Páidí Ó Sé and coach John O'Keeffe have made peace, most of the interest is back on the make-up of the senior panel for the coming season. At this stage it remains unlikely that Maurice Fitzgerald will be a part of it.

Speaking yesterday Fitzgerald appeared to quell the recent rumours that he had already committed to the team for the coming season. He didn't attend training last night, nor did he indicate any intention of returning in the near future.

"I've made my position clear to the people that count," he said. "I don't want to comment any further than that, but maybe they didn't get the answer that they wanted to hear."

Fitzgerald has almost certainly ruled himself of Kerry's forthcoming National League campaign, which starts on Saturday night week against Cork. "In fact football is the furthest thing from my mind right now," he added.

It's now almost a year and a half since Fitzgerald last played for Kerry, when they lost heavily to Meath in All-Ireland semi-final in September 2001. It was the previous June in the Munster championship against Limerick when he was last part of the starting line-up.

He missed all of last year's league and championship, although he has continued to play successfully with his club St Mary's.

But Fitzgerald, who is still a few weeks short of his 33rd birthday, wasn't making any link between his plans for the future and the problems that plagued that Kerry management set-up over the last two weeks.

"I'm not up to date at all on what's been said and who's been saying it. And I certainly won't be commenting on that right now. The most important thing for the management at the moment is working with the players they've got."

His continued absence from the panel has drawn much talk of imminent retirement, yet a player of Fitzgerald's calibre and natural ability won't be far from talk of a return either.

Ó Sé has said recently - among other things - that Fitzgerald was still a big part of his plans for the future, though any firm decision on that is now clearly a matter for the player himself.

There is a lot more certainty about the Kerry football captaincy for the coming season. Barry O'Shea from the county club champions Kerins O'Rahilly's has been nominated to take over from Darragh Ó Sé and is sure to hold the position for at least the duration of the league.

O'Shea had been a regular feature of the Kerry full-back line until a serious knee injury in March 2000 interrupted his senior career. He underwent a cruciate ligament operation a month later, and then required about eight months of physiotherapy - including some visits to Gerard Hartmann's clinic in Limerick - before he was finally able to kick a ball again in January of 2001.

It then took O'Shea the best part of a year and a half to get back on to the senior panel, but he was rewarded with several appearances as a substitute in last summer's championship campaign - most notably the successful All-Ireland semi-final against Cork (when he replaced Tomás Ó Sé) and the unsuccessful final against Armagh (when he replaced Donal Daly).

O'Shea built on those appearances to play a key role in Kerins O'Rahilly's victorious county championship campaign, where he consistently shone at full back. Even though they were beaten by Nemo Rangers in the Munster club championship his form rarely dipped.

It is widely suspected that O'Shea will take over the full back position on the Kerry team for the immediate future, with Seamus Moynihan moving further out the field.

Otherwise there are unlikely to be any drastic changes to the Kerry panel in the coming weeks. Johnny Crowley was also absent from training last night, but only because he had yet to return from the All Star trip in San Diego, while Mossy Lyons is also more likely to feature in the starting 15.