Davy a hit with players from day one, says Fitzpatrick

GERRY FITZPATRICK, Waterford’s hurling trainer for the past five years, has no doubt Davy Fitzgerald’s appointment was the catalyst for the team’s steady recovery of form.

But he does agree that he took over a team which had been built up over a period of years and to which a lot of people had contributed hugely.

A lecturer in Waterford IT and a former Irish basketball coach, Fitzpatrick was associated with the college’s Fitzgibbon Cup teams in the mid-90s and previously trained Waterford for one season. His CV also includes the winning of the women’s National Cup with Wildcats.

His philosophy is that if you keep putting in the hard work, you are eventually going to get to ‘that spot’ where you give yourself a chance to achieve your goal. And, there’s always Davy.

“He has been there and done it. He’s trying to pass it on — the things they should be doing to stay focused. The thing that helps them most is they keep working hard, keep training, keep doing what they can do. As long as you feel you are doing something, you are heading in the right direction. I think they are enjoying the build-up.”

The message that has kept coming through since Davy arrived is that he has freshened things up. The question people are asking now is, what did it involve?

“When a team is around for a long time you are more concerned about burn-out,” says Fitzpatrick. “You are looking at other teams like Kilkenny and Cork. Last year Limerick might have been another example of a team which got going and gathered momentum later on in the year — whereas last year we seemed to have momentum from the very start of the year.

“That snowball was rolling for maybe seven or eight months. There was probably an element of not getting the momentum going too early this year and maybe unfortunately it didn’t work for us with some results.”

In simple terms, Fitzgerald brought a new approach and the players were able to respond.

“Somebody else could have come in with a new approach that would have been brilliant but might not have got the response. The players just seem to have taken to him very well and bought in to what he does and the way he does it,’’ he explained.

“He just came in with buckets and buckets of enthusiasm. There was such a change in such a short period of time. Someone described it as a whirlwind. You were either going to respond to all that change in a short space of time, or you weren’t. And thankfully everybody did.’’

The end result is that the team is definitely in good shape. And, if proof were needed, Fitzpatrick says that in their recent games they managed to stay the distance fairly well.

“Kilkenny are a great team and going for three-in-a-row is intimidating to anybody. This particular game is new to the Waterford players, but they have been through the big games in Croke Park before. We’re actually enjoying it. It’s not as if you were fearing it or dreading it.”