Last weekend Fitzmaurice said he had a “a box full of anonymous letters” at home, and Kiely admitted that the possibility of such abuse had been “a consideration” of his before accepting the Limerick manager’s job.

“I’ll be straight with you, it was a consideration before I took up the job,” said Kiely.

“My girls were young, and I decided to take it on and that was one of the factors, that the girls were so young. They wouldn’t be exposed to that stuff because they’re young.

I’ve no regrets on that score. There are so many different outlets — some of them are legitimate, they’re fair, but more of them are sub judice and anonymous.

“If someone here wants to do something that isn’t positive, that’s fine. It’s someone’s opinion and they’re putting their name to it. That’s fine, 100%. And maybe they’re right, too. There are times we get it wrong, and maybe they’re right.

“But the anonymous stuff is just nasty. Eamonn is right. It has no place in the game, it’s unfortunate, but it’s just there.” Kiely added that the negative feedback exists even when the team enjoys a victory: “Listen, you get it. You do, even when you win, would you believe?

“I find that strange, that even when you win you get a letter of criticism. It’s a free world, and I know you’re up for criticism. That’s the bottom line.

People want the team to win and to do well, and other people have their ideas about how it could be done or should be done, the tactical approach, whatever it may be.

“But they came, and I have a box at home too. I keep it in the box, it stays in the box. My wife picks it up and vets it and doesn’t let anything too serious come my way.

“They wouldn’t want to meet her, or they would be anonymous.” Reminded of the occasion when he was abused following a Munster League game against Cork early in his tenure, Kiely played the incident down: “There was too much made out of that. There were a couple of boys who’d been out the night before and hadn’t been home, they should have gone home, we shipped a heavy defeat to Cork...

“It was just those couple of guys, the way they were behaving, I didn’t feel they should be there. Things have moved on, it was just a small incident.” The Galbally man added that younger players in particular are accustomed to social media but tend not to pay attention to negativity in that sphere.

I think players may have one bad experience and steer well clear from it. You’re not going to back for a beating — you won’t go down the same dark street if you get a clipping the first night. I think players stay away from it.

“That’s the advice they get but you can’t police what they do either. They’re on social media, they’re young lads and they’re reared to social media, but they have the good sense to stay away from it as much as possible.” Kiely said he has never been tempted to use anonymous abuse as motivation for the players.

“No, never. I would never bring it up with the players and they’ve never brought it up with me. That’s false motivation, not real motivation. That’s not why we play the game.

“It’s not a big deal. We haven’t spoken about it this year at all and we haven’t discussed it. It’s out there, and that’s it.

“It doesn’t really bother me at all, to be honest. My own forgiveness would be the slowest to come if I got something wrong, or if there were something I could have done. I’d be the slowest to forgive myself.

“You only get one chance at each of these games, and I’d be my own worst critic at the end of the day.”

So no anonymous letter since the All-Ireland semi-final? “No. Maybe it’s still in the post. It’s not a big deal, it doesn’t bother me.” Limerick have a clean bill of health ahead of their date with Galway.

“We’re good,” said Kiely. “The deck is clear at the moment.

“We trained at the weekend and we got the odd bump, but nothing to be concerned about, touch wood.”