As he stepped away from Kerry after six years in charge, 'hate mail' constituted a notable feature of Eamonn Fitzmaurice's parting remarks. Coming under increasing scrutiny from within his own county, the former Clare and Dublin manager Anthony Daly can certainly relate to Fitzmaurice's experience.
Speaking on the Irish Examiner's 'Paper Talk' podcast, Daly recalled being confronted with a similar series of "cowards" during his spell in charge of his native county.
A scenario that scarcely replicated itself when in charge of Dublin, Daly nonetheless sympathised with Fitzmaurice's plight, and wondered aloud whether "Páidí [Ó Sé] wasn't all wrong" when his assessment of sections of the Kerry fan-base was made public.
In his own inimitable way, Daly did manage to find some humour in what was, nevertheless, a fairly disheartening - occasionally worrying - situation. Recalling one particular unwanted correspondent, "an expatriate from Clare" living in Mayo gave him cause for action:
In my Clare time, God, I used to get letters from a fella [living] in Mayo, and I remember mentioning it one night to Fr. Harry [Bohan] who had been the manager of the '70s team, and he said; 'Is that fella still writing letters? I thought he was dead.'
Surmising that "your own are nearly the worst in some ways," Daly found a way of dealing with the abundance of abusive letters he began receiving from the marooned Clare fan:
I looked up his name in the phone book, and found this uniquely Clare name and I rang him.
I told him, 'If you ever send a letter to my house again, I'll personally drive to Mayo and meet you at your front door.'
A frightening prospect alright, it would appear that the irate fan's issue with Daly's management of the Clare hurler was stopped dead in its tracks.
