Davy Fitz doesn’t expect ban for pitch incursion

Davy Fitzgerald has insisted he won’t repeat yesterday’s pitch incursion after he entered the field to remonstrate with referee Diarmuid Kirwan.

He risks being handed a sideline ban for Wexford’s Leinster quarter-final clash against Kerry, Laois, Offaly or Westmeath on May 27 or 28 and possibly beyond, although he doesn’t believe he will be punished in such a way.

Fitzgerald, who had no regrets about his behaviour, said: “I don’t think they’d do that to me (a suspension). It would be no fun if I was up there in the stands. You’d have nothing to fucking write about if I’m up there! I know ye’ll do me all the favours under the sun tomorrow, saying that shouldn’t happen.

“Whatever it is, it is. I’d like to think common sense… I won’t do it again if that’s any consolation. Whatever it is, it is,” he said before asking journalists: “Don’t dwell on that tomorrow, if you’ve to mention it do, but I think the game deserves it, the Wexford boys worked extremely hard.”

The Wexford manager was irate after Kirwan allowed a Noel McGrath goal to stand despite an apparent foul on James Breen in the build-up.

He came to the centre of the field where he exchanged words with Tipperary forward Niall O’Meara and shoved him before he advanced closer to Kirwan when O’Meara’s colleague Jason Forde shouldered him and the Clare native reacted.

Fitzgerald also explained he had also crossed the whitewash in a bid to arrest Tipperary’s initiative. “I thought we had fought our way back into the game and a decision like that can turn a whole game. That would have been one of the reasons. The other one was when Tipp start to get a blitz on you, you just have to make sure Tipp don’t get a run on you.

“If Tipp get a run on you… they went up five or six points and we kept coming back. We gave ourselves opportunities when we were two or three down, we just didn’t take them. I’d love to have seen us get ahead. The crowd really got into it.”

Tipperary manager Michael Ryan felt Fitzgerald had reason to be angry about the decision to let McGrath’s sixth-minute goal stand. “Yes and to be fair, from what I saw I can understand the frustration. There was certainly a high hand or a high-looking tackle and we turned over the ball, whether there was a foul in the middle of it, I’d need to see it again and I fully understand that (annoyance).

“I’d have had our frustrations at the other end but that’s the game, it ebbs and flows like that. But it was a big deposit for us getting goal number two out of it.”

As he intimated, Ryan had his own concerns with Kirwan’s officiating. Informed of the 16-3 free count against Tipperary, he remarked tongue-in-cheek: “Yeah and I think none inside the 65. So clearly Wexford are a super clean team and we’ve a lot of work to do on our discipline.”