Davy Fitz: 'There’s a lot of trouble in our camp, isn’t there?'

The Waterford manager was entitled to his mischievous humour after Sunday's win over Cork.

Waterford manager Davy Fitzgerald celebrates at the final whistle

Behold the madness that is the aftermath of a Big Match. The call was made over the loudspeaker minutes from the end of Sunday's tussle in Walsh Park for stewards to assume their end-of-match positions but stopping crowds on a day like this is like trying to catch rain.

They swarmed onto the sward from all angles and at all paces. For the home supporters this was a release from the fear, a declaration that Munster round robins don’t need to be prisons of hard borders and recriminations. They slapped players on the backs and shoulders and pleaded for autographs, and they buzzed around Davy Fitz like moths around a lamp.

The Waterford manager had slumped to his knees and clasped his face in his hands when Michael Kennedy blew his whistle for the final time. Those few seconds, his head touching the turf as if in thanks to the gods, were the last moments of peace he would know for the next hour or more as he was led from pillar to post through the hubbub.

There were mere seconds to catch his breath before the ‘record’ button was pressed for his GAAGO interview on the side of the pitch. Fans from both counties crowded about, cocking an ear, when Fitzgerald raised a smile and dropped a little quip before the rest of his words went around the world.

“There’s a lot of trouble in our camp, isn’t there? he said.

The Clare man was entitled to his mischievous humour. Waterford had clocked in for this latest shot at the provincials with an appalling record of two wins and a draw in 16 previous group games. They had never earned a point against anyone other than Tipperary. Relegated to Division 1B of the league, their only win all spring had come against Offaly.

And now this?

“If you really look at the league, we had a lot of injuries,” Fitzgerald told a bunch of reporters in the relative calm away from the masses. “The team we had today, we were missing maybe six or seven every day. We were within a score – and I kept telling ye that we weren’t too far away.

“To go out when we were missing as many as we were and be right there, I knew we weren’t far away. The thing we had to do is just not listen to what was being said outside. As I told [a local reporter] earlier on in the year when you heard rumours about certain players not playing, I said don’t always believe what you hear.” 

His aside before the TV interview showed that the outside noise had rankled but he claimed a more laissez faire attitude to it when asked if it had been tossed into the stew he prepared for his squad in the days and weeks leading up to Cork’s visit. Whatever the message was it wasn’t one for public consumption.

“Am I going to tell you what I said during the week? Not a fucking hope.”

There was an understanding that their role as underdogs had probably made things that bit easier for them here, but this performance didn’t come out of the ether. Talk of a comfortable Cork win had softened as last week aged and more than one local of note had predicted a day for the ages for the Déise.

Waterford manager Davy Fitzgerald greets mascots from Waterford’s primary games before the game

Derek McGrath had put it out there in these very pages that Waterford could “fool them all” and, to be fair to Fitzgerald, he had said all along that April 21st was the day to be judging him and his team. It speaks for him, then, that he went back on that to an extent after this. After all, one swallow never made a summer, and certainly not before May.

“Do I know we can still improve? I do. I’m really proud of the effort. You can see the tackles that went in today. That’s what you want. Today is today. I’m not stupid. We’re not there, we have more to do. I know that. I know we’re a long way off qualifying yet. We’ll enjoy this 24 hours and go again, yeah?”

He’s right to think it. He’s bang on in suggesting they can only build on this when you consider that guys like Iarlaith Daly, Calum Lyons and Tadhg de Burca all played enormous roles in winning here despite having so little hurling under their belts so far this year.

De Burca, such a superb player at full flight, and a talismanic presence in the heart of defence for a side operating without Austin Gleeson, broke attacks and tackles and turned the ignition on charges of their own again and again.

“He didn’t do bad for a lad that had no game time in a year. Tadhg is a special guy. To do what he did today, to come back from [his Achilles injury] last year, that takes a lot of character and it takes resilience.

“You can see he is a very smart player as well. He hasn’t played a full game. Even a training game, the most he had played was 55-60 minutes. For him to last outside there today, it was his mental resilience got him through that.”