Tomas O Se says Eamonn Fitzmaurice is up there with Jim McGuinness and Kieran McGeeney in the shrewdness stakes.

And the legendary former Kerry wing back believes the Kingdom manager's tactical astuteness could see them over the line against Mayo on Sunday:

"How would I describe Eamonn?," he asks in The Irish Independent. "If I told my parents I was going on a night out with Darragh, they'd say, 'Jaysus will you watch yourself for God's sake'. If I was going out with Fitzmaurice, they wouldn't ask a question. He could have the craic with the best of us, but would always be sensible too.

"As a manager, I have never known anyone with a greater attention to detail. If you went to him with a problem, within half an hour it was sorted.

"But he's incredibly shrewd too. I see himself and the likes of Jim McGuinness and Kieran McGeeney as the new, modern breed of GAA managers. Tactically, they can come at a game in really clever ways.

"Like there was a lot of doom and gloom in Kerry before the Munster final. Nobody really saw that performance coming, most people actually expected Cork to win. But I would put a lot of Kerry's performance that day down to Fitzmaurice.

"I think he could be the difference on Sunday by getting the match-ups right. But if ever there was a game in which Kerry's middle eight needs to function now, this is it. In that respect, I'd expect Eamonn to try to, as we call it, "hammer the hammer". In other words, target Mayo's strengths."

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