Davy Fitzgerald: Seeing the bigger picture

Tired isn’t the word, he says.

Davy Fitzgerald’s shattered. Wrecked. Exhausted. More so than he was at the height of the Championship.

He knows his players and backroom team — those he credits just as much as they credit him — are just as fatigued.

Any All-Ireland is a famous one but this one, because of the way it was won, was of epic proportions.

It needed to be celebrated, to be shared, but Fitzgerald knows it has all been worth it. Aware of the legacy it could yield not alone what it meant to the people of the county, he sent himself and his players out on a promotion blitz across Clare and beyond.

He’s never known three months to fly past as they have. Time has stood still on the odd occasion, though. Early last month, six-year-old Liam Foley passed away. On their homecoming, the Clare team had stepped off the bus to greet the ill Cratloe boy with the cup.

“To see what it meant to him and his family, you couldn’t imagine. We’ve brought it to so many people who are sick and it’s like giving them a tonic,” says Fitzgerald.

“They would give anything to feel healthy and feel good and there we are, bitching and moaning about different things. I think we need to enjoy life.

“Maybe the recession wasn’t a bad thing because it made us realise what’s what. It’s all about people and not talking behind their backs.

“Trust me, I know I have flaws as much as anyone but we all try to work on them and try to be the better person because of them.”

He’s received thousands of letters since the replay win over Cork. He’s kept 300 of them to reply to over the next while. His account of how he was bullied as a child on RTÉ Radio provoked a response he could never have imagined.

“Your heart would melt with those letters. I know it came up with Miriam O’Callaghan. I didn’t bring that up, it was a documentary I was doing and they asked me why I had the attitude I had and I just mentioned I was bullied. Next thing it took off but I’m glad I said it. The amount of people who have written to me or stopped me on the street (about it), that means a lot to me. If some people who feel like they’re in a bad or a lonely place and that I can relate to them and talk to them, then great, and I have talked to some.”

He kept the poisonous letters too. The ones he received when things weren’t going so well for Clare earlier in the season. He doesn’t forget how some in the county were calling for his head last spring. Despite a 70% winning rate in 2012, the opening league defeat to Waterford generated a lot of negativity. Their style of hurling was also seen as more ugly duckling than swan.

“This group is a unique bunch, the reason we won this All-Ireland is because of the way they are. They’re driven young fellas, they work hard at training, they never give in and they just love hurling.

“We always talk about the empty vessels who made a lot of noise. There is them outside (the camp) and that won’t change. They’ll be there if we lose games next year. Some of them feel they have to vent their anger and maybe they’ve issues themselves to deal with and get out. If they’ve got to do it, that’s fine. I’m not going to pay any attention to them anymore and I didn’t last year to a lot of it.

“But there’s way more genuine people out there. The amount of people who came up and said ‘look, a lot of people are making noise but we felt we didn’t need to because we felt what you were doing was right’.

“My dad would have often said when he thought things were getting to me. ‘Trust me,’ he said, ‘There’s a lot of people supporting you’. It’s like when I heard Brian Cody getting abuse. I said to myself if he was getting it after this length of time we definitely have people in the GAA who haven’t an absolute clue what they’re on about. If he didn’t win another match for five or six years you couldn’t say nothing to him.”

Mention of Fitzgerald’s father and county secretary Pat brings to mind his recent annual report when he hit out at those who said his son’s appointment reeked of nepotism.

“I didn’t see it but if Pat has something to say, he’ll say it. Me and him have words on regular occasions. We fought about the medal presentation. He had his ideas and I had my ideas. He’ll fight tooth and nail and I’ll fight tooth and nail. Trust me, I probably get the roughest doing of anyone in the whole Clare management set-up but he is straight down the line.”

The Fitzgeralds make up quickly, though. “We had a big barny a few weeks ago and he rings me back 10 minutes later and asks me a question! That was it.

“I’m certain whether it’s U21 hurling, senior football or hurling, everyone is treated the same. I think he’s unreal. A hard, tough man. Certain people wouldn’t like him because he’s so straight. He makes decisions. He won’t do what you want him to do all of the time. He’s the same with me in that way. He gives it to me but I would have awful respect for him the way he does his job. I think under his time as county secretary it’s been the most successful time in Clare’s history. I would be very proud of him.”

Like he is of his partner Sharon O’Loughlin, who’s seen Fitzgerald at his lowest ebb, particularly after his Waterford team were crushed by Kilkenny and Tipperary in All-Ireland and Munster finals.

It was even tougher on her when her brother Ger was in charge of Clare and Fitzgerald was on the other end of the line for that 2010 Munster semi-final. “Ger, his selector Danny Chaplin who’s one of my best friends and my dad on one side, and Sharon caught in the middle.” He smiles about it now.

“She’s always been good. She’s gas. She has her opinions, she plays camogie quite a bit and played at the highest level but she also lets me sit back and do my stuff. Not too many ladies would let you do that. I can remember seeing her in Croke Park (after beating Cork), she knows the moment and it was nice to see her the way she was afterwards.

“She knows I’ve gone through unbelievable low points, which were second to none. I had an awful lot of success but you take being beaten in an All-Ireland final heavy, you take being beaten in a Munster final heavy. I had to ship the blame for them. They could happen to anyone.

“Managers will get beaten well every now and again and it’s hard to take. You get slaughtered but she gets slaughtered, all your family does whether it’s my mam, dad or sister — we’re all in it. I know it affects them an awful lot. They’ve a lot to put up with, as do the backroom team.”

His experiences with Waterford were mostly good ones, as the rush of well-wishers from the county in recent months have reminded him. But there were the minority who were out to make his life misery.

They’re not far from his mind now even as he stands on the summit. He’s a forgiver, not a forgetter. It doesn’t escape him either what Tipperary did to Clare in this year’s league. The image of Eamon O’Shea cajoling his Tipperary players to heap more pain on his already beaten team tattoos his memory.

“I remember looking at him with five minutes to go and he was roaring for them to go for goals. They were up 10 or 12 points. Did it annoy me a bit? It did.”

Fitzgerald opted not to do something similar to Wexford when Clare led them comfortably in extra-time of their qualifier later in the year.

“We got a penalty at the end of the game. I would not have been happy with Liam Dunne because he wrote a lot of untruths about me when he was working in the media. It was in my head to go for it because of it but I thought of the bigger picture and roared out to Tony Kelly to put the ball over the bar.

“We didn’t need to do it because it wasn’t the right thing to do. I left that small, personal thing I had with Liam Dunne aside. That’s why when Eamon O’Shea was roaring to go for goals it was good for us. It got me more steeled up, so it did.”

He also addresses the negative reaction to his absence from the press evening before the first All-Ireland game. “I wasn’t going to take the limelight just because it was the All-Ireland final. Ye (the media) might have wanted me to take the limelight but it was one of the guys’ turns and he was going doing it. They did interviews after the game and that’s the way it will continue as long as I’m there.

“Yet there were a few journalists who went off the head. It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t having a go. We do things in rotation. It happened to be my one for the replay. Specific guys do specific jobs at different times and that’s the way it goes. I’m one of the cogs on the wheel.”

Last Wednesday, Clare headed to the US and Mexico on their team holiday. Fitzgerald’s beaverish fundraising post-All-Ireland final has ensured the board won’t be in the red as a result of it.

After that then come the hard yards. With a raft of new players coming into the panel later this month, there will possibly be a parting of ways with some of this winning panel.

With Kilkenny up first in Division 1A, they know a crash to earth awaits them if they are even slightly off key. “I know they’re going to be coming with all guns blazing. Hopefully, we’ll be able to put up some sort of a show. We won’t be able to get back training properly until January 20 so we’ve about four weeks to get ready.

“It’s unusual because Kilkenny will probably have a lot of work done at that stage. We’re looking forward to it. We’ll try our very best to retain Liam MacCarthy. We’ll certainly be trying but there are six or seven teams I genuinely feel can do it and that isn’t a bad thing for hurling.”

After dinner on Christmas Day and with Sharon out visiting, he closed the curtains, pushed in the DVD of the All-Ireland final replay and plonked himself on the sofa with his dogs. It was the first time he’d watched it in full. “I wanted that feeling,” he says of what overcame him at the final whistle. “I waited so long to get it again. When I got my hands on the Liam MacCarthy again... ah (sharp intake of breath), what a feeling.

“I’d always believed we’d get there. I remember meeting Brian Cody a couple of times after matches and he was going well and I’d say to him ‘we’ll get there’. I would have said that to him and he smiling. I believed we would get there.

“What a feeling to get there with a team that’s not meant to get there. That’s the biggest thrill for me and it can never be taken away. If we don’t win another game in my next four years, they can never take that way.

“It’s what I often say about Cyril Farrell in Galway. Some people in Galway rate him, some don’t. I’m saying to myself ‘how can you not rate him?’ Three-time All-Ireland winning manager. He’s done it, he doesn’t need to prove to anyone anything. He’s done it at the highest level. There are a lot of hurlers on the ditch and they’ve never done it.

“I’m so delighted for the players. I love them boys to bits. Will I have to hurt a few of them over the next few years? I will and that will be the hardest thing ever, to make those decisions. Will I have rows with my backroom team? I will. We wouldn’t be successful without the fantastic team around me and the rows we have.

“This is great, when I’m not under any illusions. I know there’s ups and downs. The one thing is my memory. Please God I’ve a good few years ahead of me and I can look back and be extremely proud of 2013 and that can’t be taken away.

“It’s there and I will always cherish it.”