The pair held their first peace talk last week, and while Considine is believed to have wanted a fortnight to discuss and decide the issue with his selectors, the pair have at last agreed on something by arranging to meet again next week.

Both men are in a dilemma. After losing team trainer Dave Mahedy during the week, Considine can hardly afford to let another high-profile figure permanently depart the scene, while cutting one of the two current goalkeepers on the panel could cause disharmony in a group that prides itself on the work ethic of the past two months.

Fitzgerald, meanwhile, could return, only to suffer the humiliation of being rooted to the bench for the season.

It is the second consecutive league campaign that Clare have started under controversial circumstances. Exactly a year on from the Lough, Cop and Smoking Barrel controversy that culminated in the departure of Colum Flynn and Ger Hartmann from the Clare scene, again the county is back to that theme from the GUBU controversy and that old line from Cool Hand Luke: 'What we've got here is failure to communicate'.

This past six weeks the Clare panel have been training savagely, collectively, four nights a week, and programmed to work out, in their own time, the other three days of the week. Fitzgerald had no problem with the amount of work involved. What he had a problem with was the time he had to do it.

At 35, he needed extra time to recover.

Undoubtedly, another issue was his commitment to other teams. Last year, he coached Limerick Institute of Technology, Galway's Liam Mellowes and his own Sixmilebridge, and this year he had committed to being involved with all three again. Management assumed such commitments were interfering with his commitment to Clare, and lay behind his objections to training with the group four nights a week. Team members in recent seasons were beginning to resent how much early-season latitude Fitzgerald had been afforded, and privately objected to him then lecturing in March about the importance of 'commitment' within weeks of rejoining the group.

All that could have been explained to Fitzgerald, rationally, softly, yet unmistakably. So too, other issues, such as his high-octane match-day approach which was unsettling teams, but something never broached, the assumption being Fitzgerald was incapable of change.

Instead, when Fitzgerald voiced his concerns after a training session in Ballyline on a Wednesday night, he was bluntly told he could either take or leave the system. Fitzgerald stormed out of the dressing room, jumped into his car, then jumped out again, stormed back into the dressing room and told Considine he could leave it.

That was his mistake, his regret and, as Considine keeps pointing out, his choice.

And it is the ace card Considine or anyone could hold in this game of poker. Last Thursday in the Irish Examiner, he reiterated the point. 'It was entirely his (Fitzgerald's) own decision, made for his own reasons - that's something he's going to have to sort out for himself, ' Considine said.

By commenting on Fitzgerald, Considine had deviated from a protocol he'd set upon being appointed to the job. When asked last November about the retirements of Brian Lohan and Sean McMahon, Considine declined to comment about players not involved in the set-up and it was the line he trotted out again the day the Fitzgerald story broke. Last week though he had to say something about Fitzgerald to throw some water on another story. By then Mahedy had left the set-up.

According to Considine in Thursday's Examiner, Mahedy's involvement was always going to be a six-week stint, yet only the previous day he'd told the Irish Times that Mahedy would be on board for today's opening league match against Down.

'There was no problem' between the pair, he'd assured the Times. Obviously, there was, even if Mahedy has diplomatically refused to expand on the now obligatory work commitments refrain.

Why would Considine claim Mahedy would be in Down today when, in the same article, Mahedy stated he had already given his last session? Again, 'what we've got here is'. . .

After talking to the Times though, Considine soon found the urge to communicate. He contacted county secretary, Pat Fitzgerald, to arrange a meeting with his son that night, where the goalkeeper was told 'the way back'. In Thursday's Examiner, his vice-captain, Gerry Quinn, also relayed the clear message that the players, for all their admiration of Fitzgerald, were staying completely out of that issue and were happy with their preparations.

It was a statement as accurate as it was important. Falling off teams and falling out with coaches is something old team-mates do all the time, and players move on too. The commitment Considine and his selectors had given as well as demanded had impressed the group. The county might not have been united but the group was.

Now though, some players are privately wondering how well that commitment is being channelled, and doubting how coordinated and scientific a programme they're on. After Limerick's debacle last summer, they had reservations about Mahedy but his technical capacity had dispelled them and they assumed he was there for the year. Tim Crowe, a PE teacher by profession, is now supervising the training, and has taken several sessions this past six weeks. But if he was the number-one physical trainer all along, then why was Mahedy so prominent?

Would Considine have got the job in the first place if he hadn't Mahedy on his two-year ticket? Whose physical programme were the players working to this past six weeks, and who's is it they'll be working to for the summer? The suspicion in Clare is that Considine was quizzing and dictating to Mahedy to the point he was doubting him and someone of Mahedy's standing wasn't going to tolerate that.

Now Crowe and other selectors take sessions, and while Considine has prided himself on delegating coaching and training responsibilities for the sake of variety and the value of having a 'different voice', players know the desire for a different voice can easily lead to a different and inconsistent, haphazard approach.

A few things have to be said in Considine's defence. Considine has also been treated shabbily in the Fitzgerald saga.

Fitzgerald loyalists accept the player may have thrown a few personal insults to his manager, something he'll have to apologise for. When the Clare county board appointed a three-man delegation to try to coax Fitzgerald and Considine into meeting one another, it was an affront to Considine's authority. The offer of a one-man, objective facilitator or mediator might have had some prospect of success but not a quasi-committee consisting of two board officers and a delegate from Fitzgerald's own club. What qualifications or track record had they in conflict resolution?

Was the board going to round up a delegation for every player that dropped off or was dropped off the panel? For all Fitzgerald's status and contribution within and to Clare, this was always an internal, team-related issue, never a county board one, and Considine rightly refused to meet or recognise that committee.

Considine was the man to resolve the Fitzgerald impasse or have in place a facilitator to do so. Unfortunately, he didn't adopt the style required. A Mickey Harte would have taken what's known as the 'fox' approach. Instead Considine took that of the shark, and with Fitzgerald being one too, there was always going to be blood in the water.

There's a further complication now.

Two years ago as Sixmilebridge coach, Fitzgerald dropped five starters after they forsook training for the Galway Races the day after a championship defeat. Niall Gilligan was the highest-profile of the Ballybrit Five but a player called Cyril Crowe was another. Fitzgerald's censure split the club down the middle, with sections and families of it still not on talking terms with Fitzgerald. Tim Crowe, Cyril's father, would be particularly reticent with Fitzgerald. For the past three months he's been one of Considine's selectors.

Now that Mahedy's gone, he's the team trainer. If Fitzgerald comes back, he'll have to train not just with the group, but to Crowe's whistle. Someone else who he fails to communicate with. . .

That's the problem with Clare. Too many key figures carry grudges and ghosts from the past. Fitzgerald and Crowe still aren't over Ballybrit, while Considine is desperate to dispel the (unfair) notion that all he did in '95 and '97 was sing the Rose of Clare. He didn't. He knew when to make a switch as well as when to crack a joke, but right now he wants to show that helped define the 'My way or the highway' philosophy of Loughnane and Maughan and that it can work for Clare again. Only thing is, the GAA has moved on. For every Cody that wins an All Ireland, there's three Hartes or Allens or Jack O'Connors.

'In the 21st century, ' a writer recently noted, 'leadership will be through persuasion and goodwill. It will replace leadership through power and intimidation.'

Considine needs to realise that. But if he doesn't win Munster, he realises another leader will replace him.