Davy Fitzgerald: I didn’t want Jason Forde suspended
As the counties face off in Thurles tomorrow evening, Fitzgerald regrets the Tipperary forward was suspended for the Munster SHC clash with Cork after incurring a one-match ban for contributing to a melee.
As a result of the ban and the incident, Tipperary will bring forward a motion to Annual Congress in Dublin tomorrow week defining what constitutes a melee but for now Fitzgerald hopes there are no hard feelings.
“I didn’t want anything to happen to him,” he said of Forde. “I think you’ll see what I did out on the pitch was not to have a go at the Tipp players.
"I wanted to make a point about the goal that had just gone in. I know I shouldn’t have gone onto the pitch but I didn’t go out to make a row and I didn’t want Jason Forde suspended.
“I rang Michael Ryan the next day and told him anything he wanted me to do I would. No matter has happened in the past, this is going to be exciting stuff on Saturday.
"I think Tipp will be up for it – they named a strong side the last day and I expect they will again.”
Forde, who has been in flying form, lines out with UL in tomorrow week’s Fitzgibbon Cup final against DCU meaning he could be unavailable to line out against Kilkenny the following day.
John McGrath is also involved as is Barry Heffernan and Paul Maher. Fitzgerald faces a dilemma as he has four players including Paudie Foley and Aaron Maddock on the DCU team that will be in action the day before the county face Fitzgerald’s native Clare, although the Banner will also be stretched as they have Tony Kelly, Conor Cleary, Aidan McGuane, David Fitzgerald and Ian Galvin on the UL side.
With Wexford currently down six men — Eoin Moore and Shane Tomkins had ankle operations on Wednesday, Simon Donohue broke his hand against Cork, Jack Guiney is likely to miss tomorrow’s game with a slight knee complaint, Conall Flood is out for the year and joint-captain Matthew O’Hanlon is struggling to make the trip to Semple Stadium, Fitzgerald is not sure he will be in a position to rest Foley and Maddock for the Clare fixture.
“We don’t know exactly what the story is going to be yet. We are so short of players we might have to tog them out.
"We’ve looked after our Fitzgibbon players to ensure that everybody had the same loading every week.
"If they had a game the day before or the day after training they would skip the session. You understand the competition and the value of it and we have to play Clare the next day who themselves could be down players.
"We’ve a lot of injuries but it’s the one thing we don’t try and make an excuse of.”
Wexford sit pretty on top of Division 1A alongside Clare with two wins from two.
Another point and Fitzgerald will have secured another season in the top flight for last year’s Leinster runners-up.
“Our motivation at the start of the year was we were totally being put down as the team to be relegated. We were favourites.
“We’ve been taking things game by game and doing as well as we could. We’ve aimed to be as competitive as we could and so far we’ve done that but Tipperary will be another big demand of us.”
