Davy Fitzgerald is with us a long time. Spring always brings the milestone – a couple of weeks back it was 33 years since he first pulled on a jersey as a senior inter-county hurler.
He was 18 then, green as the grass underneath him above in Ballygalget. Clare beat Down away in the old Division Two and, save for the occasional stint with The Sunday Game, he’s been on the road ever since. No end in sight, either.
Twice a week, he gets in the car around two in the afternoon and heads for Waterford, knowing he’ll hardly be back before midnight. His travelling companions are the same now as in the five years he was going back-and-forth to Wexford. Michael ‘Gazzy’ Collins is 84, James ‘Bomber’ Hickey is 28, Davy is 51. As the miles pass under them, nothing is sacred.
“We kill each other,” he chuckles. “I take the piss out of them unreal and they do the same to me. We’ll talk serious stuff, we’ll talk hurling, we’ll talk anything. We have a rule – whatever’s said in the car stays in the car. But we give it to each other.”
Thirty-three years of Davy Fitz. If we take everything before Clare’s tidal wave summer of 1995 as a kind of a soft launch, he’s been a public figure for 28 of them. Hurling doesn’t have too many crossover personalities but, for good or for ill, he is one. Ask half the country how to hold a hurley and they wouldn’t know where to start. Ask them to hold forth on Davy Fitz and they might never stop.
Who’s like him in Irish life? Look at all the coats he’s worn. He’s been a player, a coach, a pundit, a manager. A columnist, a businessman, a TV exec. To some a figure of fun, to others a stirrer of shit. He’s been called everything – tactical genius, headbanger, leader of men, pain in the hole. Take your pick. It’s important to him to at least try and not get too bothered about it anymore.
“Aren’t there a lot more important things in life than fellas giving abuse and roaring and shouting at hurling matches?” he says. “You can get totally caught up in it but then when something might be wrong with a family member or somebody belonging to one of your players, don’t you realise then that some things are so much more important?
“I have perspective on life a bit better. As you get older, you see life for what it is. There’s certain people who I would have dealt with in the past and I would be extremely disappointed in their carry-on, right? And I would find it hard to understand them. But I’m not going to let it eat me up any more.
“It would have bothered me at the time because you might have been involved with a few of them. Whether I’m right or they’re right, it doesn’t matter. It’s actually stupid. There’s way more important things in life than hurling.”
He knows what you’re thinking too. Yeah, Davy. Big perspective guy, sure thing. Believe it when we see it. And you’re right, up to a point.
The game, the life, the whole push-and-pull – all of it bubbles and froths away within him and it’s pointless pretending that some isn’t going to spill over the sides from time to time. Chances are, he will annoy you before the season is out. Maybe, if you’re in Thurles tonight, before the evening is out. But he’ll keep trucking all the same.
“People often say to me, ‘Why are you doing it? You’ve done everything. You’ve won everything you need to win’. Enjoying it for me is where I can get a bunch of players a certain way and try and develop them. My thing about a player is, give them a certain amount of stuff and build into it an opportunity for them to express themselves in different ways.
“I know a lot of people would think I’m very intense and I would be intense at times. But I also want to have the fun and the enjoyment of it to be a real part of it. The big thing for me is that I want every player to think that they have an opportunity to win. There’s just not the one or two teams that are going to win all the time.”
In all the noise and static, that aspect of the Davy Fitz experience often gets lost. It’s hard to think of a hurling figure in the modern era who has been involved in ending more famines. He’s most alive when he’s in a dressing room that has a point to prove. Cajoling them, provoking them, convincing them that how it has been is not how it has to be.
“People often talk about, ‘Aw, he’s only doing it for the expenses’ or whatever. That is the biggest load of rubbish ever. Trust me, you don’t spend 50, 60, 70 hours a week involved in the GAA to become rich. I can tell you that for sure.
“The thing that makes me tick is doing something with a team that hasn’t done it before and seeing the raw emotion of people in that county or in that club. Nothing can buy that. That really rocks my boat. I love seeing emotion. I love seeing teams do something they’re not meant to do, winning stuff they’re not meant to win. When you see emotion around the ground, when you make a difference, that’s the thing.
“A lot of the teams I’ve had came from a place of no success. Be it LIT winning from scratch. Be it Broadford winning an intermediate after a number of years. Be it Killaneena winning their first intermediate. Be it Ennistymon winning their first junior. Be it Wexford winning a Leinster after a length of time. Be it Clare winning an All-Ireland after a length of time. I’ve been so lucky to be part of serious things. That’s what motivates me. That’s what I miss from being a player.”
In Wexford, he found the perfect lab conditions. They had been down for so long when he joined, they barely knew what up looked like. Bit by bit, Fitzgerald got them to build on their underage success and start stringing firsts together. First defeat of Kilkenny since 2004. First Leinster final since 2008. First Leinster title in 15 years. Within touching distance of a first All-Ireland final in 23 years.
None of it was inevitable. They had to earn every inch. It helped that Wexford had a serious crop of players and they were ready for Fitzgerald’s particular brand of coaching. Intense, structured, technical, ferocious. There’s a shelf life in that, though. By the end of 2021, it looked from the outside like he’d worn them down. Himself too.
“I actually disagree with you, right? I actually think I should have stayed another year. I don’t go on with that perception that ye go on with – that three and four years is enough. That’s a load of bullshit. That’s my opinion. If you look at the Leinster semi-final that we played against Kilkenny that year, it was as good a hurling game as I was over in my time with Wexford and we were quare unlucky not to win it.
“If we had won that, there was a very good chance we could have won Leinster and there’s a very good chance that we’d have been right there knocking on the door for an All-Ireland. So I don’t get that perception of, ‘Why is Davy here too long?’ I would emphatically say that my last year with Wexford, we were wicked unlucky. I actually think my last year with Wexford, we did some unreal stuff. We just didn’t get the break of the ball that you need. I’m just giving you the facts.”
I am going to put my faith in the players that, over the next two to three years, that they will deal with being contenders
This is the thing with Davy Fitz. You can joust away with him and he’ll joust back. A few weeks ago, the stewards in Portlaoise moved one of his selectors from the terrace behind the goal. Nobody was able to provide him with a rule or a reason why a selector couldn’t stand there. Soon enough, social media was alive with pictures apparently showing his keeper wearing an earpiece. Are ye wired for sound now, Davy?
“Not at all, not at all!” he laughs a not-really-a-denial denial. “I don’t know where you got that from. But I will tell you that there are goalkeepers who have worn earpieces over the past few years. And not just my teams. My teams might have worn them but I wasn’t the only one!
“You’re not going to be on it constantly. What you’ll do is you might give a small bit of information like: ‘Lost the last three long, go short.’ You might say, ‘Will you move 2 out to 5.’ Just saves you going around the place.”
They look a decent fit so far, himself and Waterford. They are riddled with talent but they’ve seemed to quail at the sight of success. Davy reckons he can help with that. There’s an obvious, gaping hole in the county that has needed filling since 1959 and he intends pouring everything he can into the endeavour.
e became a father for the second time last May, 25 years after his first go-round. Every hour he spends away from home has to mean something.
“I am very open-minded about where we are right now in Waterford and where they were before. I’ve heard every side of the story from day one. I am going to put my faith in the players that, over the next two to three years, that they will deal with being contenders. I think we will get up there and be contenders. I do think there’s a process for us to get there though. I think it will take two or three years. But we’ll be giving it everything.
“Am I a perfect person? I’m not. Do I make mistakes in life in general? I do. I’ve yet to meet the perfect person. And I know that, I know I’m not perfect. But I like seeing people happy if I can. It bothers me sometimes that we always look at the negative in life.
“I like to think that we’re lucky to be able to be involved, we’re lucky to be able to go out and play. With all the sickness and stuff that’s going around, let’s embrace what we can and enjoy it and stop knocking it. And that’s the kind of person I would be.”
