“It’s just an easy thing to ask, I suppose,” he said, speaking at yesterday’s launch for the Go-Ahead Dublin SFC final. “If you run out of questions, you can just ask me that! If you bump into me and you don’t know what to say, just ask me about football.
“If people keep asking you your plans for the future, in any aspect of life, it’s like, ‘I don’t know. I’m just living day to day’. You just shrug your shoulders. People think you’re being coy but you’re actually not.”
It’s not a new experience. Fitzsimons recalls that it only took two hours after last year’s All-Ireland final before he was asked in an interview whether that was him, done and dusted.
Before that, he had been basking in the glow of a ninth All-Ireland win. Those famously golden hours afterwards with team-mates, family and friends.
Two hours grace was all he got before being forced to consider the following year, the implication being that he had already resolved to that being his final season.
Here’s the thing. As much as we assume, it’s rarely the case. With Fitzsimons, nothing was set in concrete before the start of 2024 and nothing has been chiselled into tablet since.
This year was different. One that needs a bit more time to digest and analyse than he has been able.
The main variance being that Dublin lost. Out of the championship before the semi-final stage for the first time since 2009, the year before Fitzsimons made his senior debut.
“Once the club season comes about, you’re just focusing on that. I haven’t really … like I thought about the Galway game in the immediate aftermath but I haven’t thought about it since then.
“Your focus shifts and you go with the club and we’ve been really fortunate that we’ve gone on a run that occupies your time outside of work.”
Lots to consume him. Work and football. It is ever thus.
Fitzsimons, a doctor, is currently on placement in Temple Street Hospital. Cuala are in a county final this Sunday against Kilmacud Crokes. Their first since 1988.
Outwardly, they might be considered a surprise presence. It’s only three years since they were playing in the Dublin SFC 2 competition, a championship they won twice in a row in 2020 and ’21 – the first year having the prize of promotion removed due to Covid regulations.
That didn’t detract from their ambition. Fitzsimons recalls them identifying this very specific target a couple of years ago, just a season after winning promotion.
“Some people were like, ‘Does Jim Gavin not say stick to the process?!’
“I was just like, ‘I think you’re taking that out of context.’ Everyone who played with Dublin understood what their goal was. You have to mention it at some stage and then you can start sticking to the process.”
He and Luke Keating are survivors of an Dublin under-21 club winning team from 2010. They beat Kilmacud that year, a team that included Rory O’Carroll, Cian O’Sullivan and Kevin Nolan.
Otherwise, proximity besides, there is no rivalry to speak of.
“But we’re a long time on the road – a lot of the team. We wanted to plant that idea early that if we got our act together … it was something we could do.”
“We were probably thinking we’d like to get somewhere like this back when we were in the intermediate championship,” Fitzsimons adds.
“That was always the goal. We were always stating it.
“It’s probably just taken longer than we would have liked.”
