It wasn't looking so rosy for Eamonn Fitzmaurice in February when ace attacker Colm 'Gooch' Cooper was ruled out for the year.

Seven months later, the Kingdom have been crowned All-Ireland champions for the 37th time, even though their talismanic attacker missed the entire championship due to a cruciate ligament rupture:

"The thing with Colm was that it happened in the middle of February and we had time to deal with it," Fitzmaurice reflects in The Irish Examiner.

"It was hugely disappointing and I remember the day after I was in Santry with Colm, my wife was with me and we stopped in Avoca on the way down on the M7 and I was saying like 'what have I done to whom here?'

"But by the time I got to Kerry that evening, I was in the frame of mind that Colm was gone for the year and Ray Moran was very clear that even if we got to an All-Ireland final, it was going to be beyond Colm this year.

"So he was just written out of the season so there was no chance of him being back, meaning there was clarity and we had to accept it. We moved on and when we won Munster that day, a lot of the younger lads came of age that day.

"After a serious performance, they saw that they were good enough and were up to it. I think fierce belief came out of that then."

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