The Davy I know
“The hurling sessions Davy took were the best I have probably ever done. He had such enthusiasm. You'd arrive to training early in the morning or in the evening and within five or 10 minutes you were flying around the field and that's all credit to his motivation. It was always about speed. You'd be under more pressure going for the ball in training because he'd be running up beside you and roaring at you. He’d drive you that way whereas you could be doing drills in other sessions and you'd wonder if the coach was looking at you at all. He was always keeping an eye on you and always had a comment or zoned in on something you were doing. You could be at a college league game and think it was a waste of time but the next night at training he'd be working on something from that game. The one thing he did with LIT was break down all county boundaries. He never had any time for it and he would put a huge emphasis on the captaincy and vice captaincy. He'd appoint lads from counties like Kilkenny and Galway and took the focus away from him being from Clare. He would always make sure there was a good spread from the counties, which wouldn't be the case in a lot of other colleges. In my four years in LIT, he mellowed as he went on. He matured into a manager as opposed to a player. He went from being the focal point to the background. He'd even travel on his own to games just to let the players have the craic on the bus and not be worried about 'what Davy thinks of us'. He'd know how to make fun of himself too but he was always serious about his hurling.”
