Paul Murphy says that although the Kerry football squad met in the wake of last year's shock Munster SFC semi-final defeat to Cork, WhatsApp messages that circulated about the content of the meeting were inaccurate.
The Kingdom had been seen by many people as the most likely team to stop Dublin achieving six All-Irelands in a row after pushing them to a replay in the 2019 decider. A late sucker-punch of a goal from Mark Keane at Páirc uí Chaoimh put paid to that however.
Images circulated online after the meeting, which took place before Christmas, appearing to show that the knives were out amongst the players for manager Peter Keane.
'It's 1983 all over again!!' - Kerry are out of the championship. Here's that extraordinary late goal from Mark Keane which won the game for @OfficialCorkGAA - watch the highlights on @TheSundayGame #rtegaa pic.twitter.com/IoRBaWfxDD
— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) November 8, 2020
According to Kerry captain Murphy there was only one element of the whole saga that was factually correct.
"The only piece of truth in the message was that we had a meeting. The rest of it was just an act of pure fiction," he told The Examiner.
"We had a meeting at the end of the year, a review that we do at the end of every season, and we do it during the season, as well.
"It was disappointing to see rumours like that surfacing.
"As a group, we came out of that meeting knowing that we were all pulling in the one direction - players backing management, management backing players.
"If you go on Twitter, there’s a pile-on on somebody else every week. It just so happened that, that given week, it was us and it was on WhatsApp maybe more than Twitter," the captain continued.
"Without getting too deep about it, it’s the way of the modern world at the moment. It’s just something you just deny. But, you know, some people probably will believe those rumours until their dying day. And there’s nothing you can do about that.
"As I said, we’re very happy with the set-up we have in terms of management of the backroom. We’re looking forward to getting back at it. Hopefully, there’ll be some more positive rumours and positive stories about us."
Although insisting that the content of the messages was fake, Murphy admitted that there were elements of the approach to the game that could have been better from Peter Keane and his management team.
"You set up the way you think you'll be best served to win a game. We lost the game, so maybe we weren't set up in the best way," he acknowledged.
"I know there was talk that we had Brian Ó Beaglaoich as a wing-forward, but I think if you asked fans what has been their best day out watching Kerry over the last couple of years, a lot of them would say the Mayo match in Killarney in 2019.
"We played with Gavin White at number 10 that day and it wasn't a defensive approach then."
