Michael Moynihan: Garrett Fitzgerald was a gentleman to his fingertips
You can read in Eddie O’Sullivan’s autobiography an interesting snapshot of life before the bandwagon: in his last season coaching Connacht, O’Sullivan’s players took on Munster in the Sportsground. It was the day before Christmas Eve in 1995.
“I doubt there were 200 people in the ground,” wrote O’Sullivan.
“Walking down the line at one point, I bumped into the Munster coach, Garrett Fitzgerald.
“‘This is like flogging a dead horse, Eddie,’ he said to me.
“‘You can sing that,’ I responded.
“Little did we know what the Munster brand was destined to become.”
Garrett Fitzgerald, who passed away last Friday, was a key man in steering that brand to its destiny.
Last Friday itself illustrated the distance travelled on the journey, in fact: that evening in Cork, Munster played the Southern Kings of South Africa in the PRO14.
Among the many tributes that have poured in since his passing, the normality of last Friday’s game in Musgrave Park — a South African side dismantled by the home team in a league game, not a tour — is an implicit salute to the work done by Fitzgerald and others.
There was a time, as O’Sullivan’s book reminds us, when interprovincial rugby games were a private function, not the inclusive festivals they became under Fitzgerald’s watch.
Perspective is a great arranger. Looking back now, Munster’s rise seems inexorable and irresistible, written in the stars, but it was nothing of the kind.
We forget that the early days of professional rugby weren’t just a Wild West, but a frontier with entrenched positions. The French had been operating a studied shamateurism for years, and economics of scale made England a honeypot for promising Irish players in the late nineties.
Fitzgerald and co had a promising crop of youngsters coming through at that time he settled behind the CEO desk in 1999, but recruitment — of coaches, of players — was a fraught process: they were operating without the benefit even of Youtube as a basic scouting tool, and it’s to their immense credit that their good signings — positive and driven — far outnumbered the negative.
A native pragmatism no doubt helped. This writer encountered Garrett off and on during the years, with a reassuring shape to the (usually phone-conducted) encounters.
“Garrett?”
“Michael?”
“How are you keeping?”
A semi-exasperated: “Do you need a ticket?”
“If there’s one going . . .”
“Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do.”
More often than not he came through. If not there was no false cosseting — “Not a runner” sometimes replaced “leave it with me” — which meant we could all get on with our lives in peace.
On one occasion Munster had a press call for something or other and yours truly trooped out to Musgrave Park to hear the good news.
There was a slight delay so I fished out a paper out of the bag (it was so long ago nobody had a smartphone) to while away the time.
The paper, it should be noted, was not the one you hold in your hand today.
Peaceful reading was interrupted by a snort over my left shoulder: “Jesus, The Guardian? The Guardian, if you don’t mind? Michael, who are you trying to impress?”
And on he went to the top table.
I wouldn’t overstate our relationship, because I was always just dipping in and out of rugby for an occasional piece or game (or ticket).
But Garrett was someone I always enjoyed meeting and someone I always felt was straight in our dealings. A gentleman to his fingertips.
If that sounds like faint praise, it shouldn’t be taken as such; in this business it elevates him to an all-time top five ranking immediately. He’ll be missed.
Condolences to his wife Áine, children Megan, Jamie and Michael, and the extended O’Donnell-Fitzgerald family.
Waterford’s hand on heart
Kudos to Lee Power of Waterford FC on an initiative that a reader forwarded to me last week.
The issue of cardiac care in the southeast of the country is one that has exercised many minds in recent years, with GAA county teams in that corner of Ireland rowing in behind the drive to get 24/7 cardiac care in various shows of solidarity.
Credit, then, to the League of Ireland side: a club release quotes Power as saying Waterford have partnered with “24/7 Cardiac Cover for the South-East and using our primary sponsor space to spread awareness of this most vital cause to not only the people of Waterford but the entire South East”.
Not only is it a valuable boost to the campaign, Waterford are putting their money where their mouths are, or where the logo is, in a manner of speaking.
“We could have selected the next highest bid for our main sponsor,” says Power in the statement.
A decision that some would say financially makes sense but with a cause this important but I feel that we as a club need to reach out and remind people that Waterford FC is not only a football club.
Only a couple of weeks ago the GAA issued a statement saying counties supporting this campaign with a ‘hand on heart’ gesture before games weren’t breaching guidelines on political involvement.
Even allowing for the proximity of the general election, was that really necessary?
Weather headache for sports schedule
I don’t want to be an... alarmist, or anything, but what does last weekend have to teach us about sports scheduling going forward?
Whether it’s the wind that prevented TV camera crews from covering the Bohemians-Shamrock Rovers game, or the downpour that forced the cancellation of the Harty Cup final, or the terrible driving conditions all over Ireland which made it unsafe for many events, there was plenty of food for thought for sports administrators.
I’ve written here before about the need for sports fans to take a look at what constitutes unnecessary travel, where ‘take a look’ translates roughly as ‘having to forgo’ (with ‘constitutes’ obviously deleted then in turn for everything to make sense, I know you’re following me).
But a weekend like the one just past raises questions on a parallel track. If climate change is going to bring more extreme conditions should those who schedule events be more cognisant of same when working out master fixture lists? Will certain times of the year become no-go areas for certain sports?
And as ever, will anyone think of the journalists?
Forget it Jake,it’s Chinatown
Many thanks to the good folks of Faber for sending on a review copy of The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood by Sam Wasson, which is proving hugely entertaining.
The book breaks down the process by which the movie Chinatown was made in granular detail. True confession: your columnist is a bit ambivalent about the movie itself, but a couple of chapters of Wasson’s book are enough to convert me, or re-convert me.
The account of screenwriter Robert Towne whittling away at his story, stripping out the extraneous elements and focusing on what exactly drives the narrative forward, are particularly interesting, as is the background to Los Angeles’ development as an urban city.
Forget it? Not likely.
In November, Garrett Fitzgerald sat down with Tony Leen to chat through his life and times in rugby. You can listen to the two-part interview below.
