When the Laochra Gael producers came calling, Kieran Fitzgerald knew exactly what it would entail without their saying it.
The series’ popularity has grown in recent years as the documentaries doubled in length to an hour and now portray stories more personal in nature instead of poring over playing careers and medal counts.
And while Fitzgerald has a collection of honours for Corofin and Galway that any footballer would envy, he knew that none of that would be at the centre of any production on him.
Instead, the focus would be more on the trauma caused by the death of his girlfriend, Mairéad Meehan, sister of his former Galway teammates Declan, Tomas and Michael, at the age of just 25 in January 2007 following a battle with cancer.
“When they were coming knocking, wondering would I be interested in the programme, I knew where it was going,” says Fitzgerald.
“I suppose to be true to the nature of the programme I had to be as open and as honest as possible and I knew Mairéad would have a huge part to play in that story.
“She was a major part of my life for a lot of years so it wouldn’t be a true story if I didn’t go down that route and tell that story so it was difficult, it probably brought back old memories that I had put to the back of my head but it was a great opportunity for me and gave me a great platform to remember Mairéad so fondly again.
“I know the Meehans have seen the programme already and I’m just so happy that they’re happy with it and they enjoyed it. So yeah, I was really privileged, so thankful to TG4 and Nemeton for giving me the opportunity to tell that scéal.”
Fitzgerald, 41, is in a good place now and happily married to former Galway ladies footballer Emer Flaherty, but for years he struggled with his grief. Sometimes he blocked it out with football, the Connacht Championship opener against Mayo in 2007 a standout example in that regard.
“We had beaten Mayo and I felt zero satisfaction from it, zero joy. It was still as raw as ever and it just meant nothing to me to be honest. Yeah, it was a vehicle for me to take my mind off things for that period prior to the game.
“It did that, but I don’t know what I was expecting after the game - did I think things were going to be different, or my outlook was going to be any different? It wasn’t.”
Things came to a head during the 2011 League opener against Monaghan in Clones. Fitzgerald’s appetite for inter-county football had waned but he led manager Tomás Ó Flatharta to believe otherwise. Conor McManus torched him and, after the game, he retired from Galway duty.
“I shouldn’t have put myself in that position. I should have been brutally honest with Tomas about where my head was at.”
He was just 30 and while his decision to retire at that stage probably elongated his club career with Corofin, had he given himself more time and space from football in 2007, he would likely have played another few years with Galway.
“At times you would have been just encouraged to go back and play ball, to take your mind off it, to go back with the lads and it’ll help.
“When you’re back and you’re involved in an inter-county set-up, as I said in the doc, you have to earn your crust and sentiment goes out the window.
“If you’re thrown in against the top inside forwards, obviously they’re not thinking what Kieran Fitzgerald’s mindset is like on any given day and, you know, if I’m off it on any given day, they’ll go to town on you and they’ll seize the opportunity.
“In hindsight yeah, maybe that was something I should have availed of. It probably did shorten my inter-county career that I just got back on the road again because, as I said, it’s so difficult to maintain form and it probably just compounded my sense of sadness and grief and accelerated my exit from inter-county.”
Back in 2011, McManus wasn’t quite the household name that he is now and Fitzgerald took some comfort from the heights he scaled thereafter.
“It definitely helped anyways, to be honest with you, to see this buck become one of the best forwards in the country,” he smiles.
“When people were reminding me that my last game was against Conor McManus I can say he has gone on and proved how good he was anyways! He didn’t have too much trouble from me that day.”
Laochra Gael airs on TG4 at 9.30pm tomorrow.
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