DRIVING WITH DAVY
Vincent Hogan hits the road with the Wexford boss
RAIN, endless rain, loud as ball-bearings on the windscreen. “Championship weather,” cackles ‘Gaz’.
He’s been defending himself from attack here and sees the appeal of diversion. One day last year, doing umpire in a Clare club game, the referee came seeking his counsel. Usual thing. A skirmish in the square, bodies down. Buckets of heat and noise, precious little light.
“You could have stood up for me!” says ‘Bomber’.
“Sure you capsized three of them!” counters ‘Gaz’.
He is 78, real name Michael Collins. “They shot the wrong one!” says ‘Bomber’ now, the Skoda jolting with laughter. Our opening rendezvous was at Setrights in Cratloe and now, after a stop for diesel and soup in Birdhill, we’ve just swung off the Curragh, Co Kildare, heading towards Tinryland. Davy Fitz at the wheel, beaming. “Only for the company, I couldn’t keep this going,” he says.
Water bottles roll loosely under the car seats and Davy, himself, swigs constantly from a litre flask. He’s shed a stone and a half in recent months, much of it by bypassing the sugary temptations of petrol stations. He had to. The week of his final game as Clare manager, Davy spent two days in Blackrock Clinic, undergoing minor coronary care.
Yet, he manned the line that Sunday in Thurles, propelled to work on artificial energy.
He’s doing things differently now. “In the past, I was always looking for a sugar hit to get my energy levels up through fizzy drinks and chocolate,” he says. “That was a disaster. I wasn’t in a great place health-wise.
“But I haven’t had a fizzy drink in four months!”
ENTOURAGE
Accompanying ‘Gaz’ and ‘Bomber’ is Davy’s son, Colm. When people harp on about Fitzgerald’s extensive managerial entourage, maybe these are the people they tend to see. Yet none of these men gets a single euro for their commitment to Wexford. Their only contract is loyalty to the man at the wheel.
‘Gaz’ was Clare kit-man for 15 years, serving the last seven managers. But the call to continue never came this season and he was at a friend’s funeral in Tarbert last January when Davy Fitz rang. “Will you come to Wexford with me Gaz?” “Ah Davy, I don’t know...” “No, c’mon Gaz, you’re the man I need!” His role? Anything that’s asked. He bands hurleys in his spare time, but no chore is too awkward or too menial. For 44 years, he worked the bar in Shannon Airport, loved every minute of it, yet nothing ever energised him like a hurling dressing-room. “I’m never short of a few words I suppose,” he says, laughing.
“And one thing Davy wants is that lads aren’t looking stressed or uptight, he doesn’t want fellas too wired.”
James ‘Bomber’ Hickey is 23, works as a hotel barman but, essentially, shapes his hours around this Wexford schedule. “Sometimes, if there’s a wedding, I mightn’t finish work until 6am,” he admits. “And, if we’re on the road to Wexford the next day... that’s when you feel it!”
‘Bomber’s’ asleep as we ease through Bunclody, ‘Gaz’ lamenting the suspect stamina of youth.
The chat flows on, about everything and nothing. Someone mentions the recent death of Georgie Leahy and Davy is, instantly, engaged. The week before Wexford’s league game against Kerry, he travelled to a function in the James Stephens club, organised to recognise Jackie Tyrrell’s inter-county retirement. Tyrrell hurled Fitzgibbon under Davy at LIT.
Leahy was in attendance and, though clearly in poor health, his mind remained unclouded. “We had a good chat,” says Davy now, “and Lord God what a great hurling man!” Also in attendance, naturally, was one Brian Cody. The two exchanged pleasantries as they always do. And left one another smiling.
“Definitely the most ruthless man I’ve come across on the line,” says Davy, now sitting in a 15-minute jam to get across the bridge in Enniscorthy.
Nobody needs to tell him the storm brewing.
HIS phone chimes incessantly and, often as not, it’s people enquiring about tickets. At a stretch, they can shoehorn 20,000 people into Wexford Park, but demand has been outstripping supply this week.
Wexford-Kilkenny selling itself as an authentic championship collision is a welcome throwback here. On the walls of the canteen where the players will dine are framed black and white images of distant heroes like the lgendary Rackard brothers and Nick O’Donnell.
Along the corridors, other familiar faces peer out at you from Wexford’s better past. An old, concrete-boned Tony Doran. All-Ireland-winning captains, Dan Quigley and Martin Storey. Hurling’s power to move the spirit is everywhere you look here, but Wexford’s recent relationship with Kilkenny has been challenging it.
The win at Nowlan Park last April was, after all, their first in 17 years against a Cody team. Now can it honestly be plausible to be thinking back-to-back?
Davy won’t be working the line, of course, and he isn’t working it now. Seoirse Bulfin and PJ Ryan will have that role this evening while he sits, high in the stand, JJ Doyle and Páraic Fanning for company. It won’t be ideal, but he’s not complaining.
Of the suspension, Davy is sanguine now.
“Listen, I’m disappointed because these are the games you love to be in the thick of,” he says.
“Especially with Brian being on the other side. Like, I thought I might have been done just for encroachment, because I can promise you, I didn’t go looking for a problem with any of the Tipperary lads. I wasn’t even looking at them.
“But, look, I’m not bitching about it. I don’t think you’ve heard any complaints from here. And there won’t be.”
The art of delegating has been fundamental to this Wexford journey and, these past weeks, it’s become written into the tiniest detail.
“It’s important to trust the people around you,” Davy says. “You know Seoirse’s been with me for ten or 12 years now, knows exactly what I look for. PJ’s a great person, a driven man who, I promise you, is going to have a lot to offer teams over the next few years.
“Páraic and JJ? Straighttalkers, right from the hip. No messin’ with the two of them. One thing I never do is surround myself with yes-men. I like having guys with opinions.”
He’s sensed familiar mischief rolling up out of Kilkenny, not least his old friend, Tyrrell, branding use of a sweeper as “an easy cop-out”.
Davy’s ‘contacts’ tell him that Cody’s men are intent upon “devouring” Wexford now, on avenging their April effrontery. And he finds the idea of Kilkenny storing hurt for this fixture vaguely amusing.
“All I’m hearing is how much Kilkenny are hurt and how they won’t be pushed around when they come down here” he says. “But if you think about it that way, sure Wexford have been taking their treatment for a long number of years.
PRIDE
“Do you honestly not think there’s hurt down here?
“Listen, we don’t have the AllIreland medals, but there’s serious pride in this county. And whether it’s this year, next year or the year after, Wexford are going to come to the table. And I think hurling needs that to happen.
“Because I had a taste of what this ground can be like when we
ALL I’M HEARING IS HOW KILKENNY ARE HURT AND HOW THEY WON’T BE PUSHED AROUND. DO YOU NOT THINK THERE’S HURT IN WEXFORD?
(Clare) came here as All-Ireland champions in 2014 and got beaten. There’s going to be another six or seven thousand people in on top of that crowd now. I suppose the Wexford lads haven’t played on anything like the number of big days Kilkenny have, but I’m hoping they’ll just have a right cut.
“Look, we know Kilkenny are coming on a mission. Let’s see what happens. If we don’t get them this time, we’ll come back and go again.”
There’s been more bad news than good this week in the territory of injuries.
Last Saturday, near the end of a smoking Av B game, Liam Óg McGovern went down with a knee injury, since confirmed as his second ruptured cruciate.
A viciously low blow for the St Anne’s man who was “flying”.
David Dunne blew out a hamstring and Damien Reck’s still out with a long-term ankle injury.
Wexford could do with all three, but they’re not looking backwards here.
“We’ve had injuries all year and haven’t been making excuses,” says Davy. “I still believe in what we have!”
IT’S almost half ten as we head for home, but ‘Bomber’ and Colm request a pit-stop.
Our driver summons a false protest before swinging up the Enniscorthy hill to Mariu’s takeaway in Market Square.
The stop adds 20 minutes to this safari, but he’s not complaining. “You know ‘Gaz’ and ‘Bomber’ and Colm, they’ve all added so much to this thing for me,” says Davy.
He mentions Mike Corry too, general manager of Shannon Golf Club and a hugely trusted friend who travels regularly to video the sessions.
Wexford wasn’t on Davy’s radar last October when, while holidaying in the US, he drew an end to his stewardship of Clare.
That parting bruised him, yet he wasn’t home two weeks when unveiled as Wexford’s new manager. A few people, his consultant included, were inclined to question his sanity.
“The thing is I need to be doing something,” he argues. “Yes, this is tough. It’s 12 hours out of your day basically. When I was with Waterford, the journey might have been 30-45 minutes shorter. But I was on my own all the time doing that.
“Some people told me I was off my head coming here, they didn’t seem to see anything in Wexford. But the hunger for the game in this place is incredible and that carries you a long way.”
The chat in the car begins to taper now, fatigue slowly kicking in. Davy spends much of it making phone calls. He knows precisely the energy he’d like to impart to his team this weekend, but is conscious too that you can overdo the device of rage. These big championship games need reasoned fury. They need the central characters to think.
He believes Kilkenny to be “as good as any team out there”, if no longer quite at their 2008/’09 zenith.
“Anyone thinking they’re gone is making a big mistake,” he counsels. “They’re probably going to try and put us away in the first 20 minutes, but I just want us to meet that challenge head on. See where it takes us.”
ACTIVE
It’s 1.20 am by the time he makes Sixmilebridge, his brain still much too active for sleep. He watches a video of that evening’s training, then switches on Sky Sports, the screen a familiar blur of transfer speculation. Fifteen minutes in, the Disney figures begin hitting him like a sedative. Belotti £87 million. Morata £53 million...
And that’s when Davy Fitz finally slips away, his world a babel of more important things.