Why Cork’s Darragh Fitzgibbon feels less pressure in 2018
Accepted wisdom has it that youngsters tend to play with freedom when they make the climb up to the top tier and that their progress is usually tempered as the altitude of their surroundings and the stakes involved finally dawn.
It’s a theory summed up as second-season syndrome.
Darragh Fitzgibbon seems to have got the order of things mixed up. Ushered in to the Cork senior hurling setup in 2017, the Charleville man has noticed a lightening of the load on his shoulders as he goes about backing up his brilliant rookie campaign.
“This year there’s less pressure on, maybe,” he said. “You’re less nervous, a bit more settled, there’s a bit more freedom. I’m just enjoying it more this year. Last year went so quickly. You were just going from game to game and trying to not make a mistake.”
It’s not that he wasn’t given every support in bedding in on his promotion.
Kieran Kingston showed supreme faith in a wedge of youngsters that included Fitzgibbon by pitching them into the Munster furnace last summer.
The then Cork senior manager followed up with the advice that the players should hurl with the sort of freedom you’d see in a friendly puck around — John Meyler and his backroom have worked under the same template in 2018.
“Kieran showed a lot of faith in us, springing a load of us at the one time. I think it was five debutants last year.
“From my point of view, I wasn’t really in the team coming up to the championship so it was a bit of a surprise that I was named.
“I was named to start against Tipp last year. The management showed a lot of faith in us, a lot of confidence. They just told us to go out and play with a lot of freedom, not to be afraid to make a mistake. That even if you do make a mistake, you were trying to do the right thing.”
Fitzgibbon’s schedule remains as hectic as ever. First off is Sunday’s senior final against Clare with the Bord Gáis Energy Munster U21 hurling championship decider against Tipperary down for decision on Wednesday night.“It is tough but it’s hugely enjoyable,” he said of the demands. “As a player you want to be playing in as many matches as you can. It’s a new format, less training, more matches, so I’m really enjoying it so far.
“On Wednesday I’ve a Munster final but you can’t really think about it because we’ve another one on Sunday, so it is difficult but it’s a good complaint as well. We just love playing matches and the performance has been enjoyable and the more matches the better.”
Few took their chance with such aplomb as Fitzgibbon, whose talent and athleticism and eye for a score from the centre of the park were a feature as Cork claimed the Munster title before bowing out to Waterford in an All-Ireland semi-final.
Yet, when he looks back now at the senior season he sees little more than a blur and he was suspended for the U21 decider, which they lost.
“I guess last year felt like I left the lads down or whatever,” he said of that absence.
Fitzgibbon is one of eight or maybe even nine players who will double up again in the coming days as Cork’s seniors face into Sunday’s senior decider against Clare before the U21s contest their provincial final, against Limerick, next Wednesday.
The good weather will make for a sumptuous backdrop. These are the weeks which players dream of and he realises that it needs to be embraced and cherished. The fact he has been playing with a fair few of his teammates since U14 only accentuates that.
Meyler’s squad has enjoyed a hugely encouraging but taxing few months to reach this point. Fitzgibbon doesn’t need telling that the margins between themselves and Waterford — first and fifth in the table after the round-robin stage — are razor thin.
Two draws, against Tipperary and Limerick, were the most obvious proof of that but it won’t be forgotten that it took them until injury-time of their opening fixture, against Clare, to engineer some breathing room on the scoreboard.
“Clare have improved a lot since the first game, made a few positional changes. They seem a bit more settled. Any time we’ve ever played Clare there’s been nothing between us, all the way back to 2013 really, nothing between Cork and Clare.
“We know that there’s going to be nothing again on Sunday and we’re just ready to go.”
Win and they would only face a four-week wait for the All-Ireland semi-final. Fitzgibbon felt the five-week pause last summer didn’t help them against Waterford in Croke Park while offering the rider that the loss to a red card of Damien Cahalane didn’t help either.
“Waterford’s system is hard enough to play against when you have 15. They cut us open in our back line and just got the goals. Look, they were the better side on the day and we just knew that we weren’t good enough on the day to get to an All-Ireland final.”
Galway’s win in the decider passed him by. He has seen Cork play four times on the big day at HQ but generally turns a blind eye to games not involving a red jersey. All the more reason to go a step further up that ladder this time around.
- Darragh Fitzgibbon was speaking ahead of Cork’s Bord Gáis Energy Munster U21 hurling championship final against Tipperary. Fans can visit instagram.com/bgegaa for news, behind-the-scenes content, and competitions over the course of the summer.
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