John Mullane
Fitzgerald knows strengths and weaknesses of these Clare players and that can be Wexford’s decisive weapon
Davy Fitzgerald may have led Clare to All-Ireland glory in 2013 but sentiment will play no part when his Wexford side do battle today
SENTIMENT goes out the window at Páirc Uí Chaoimh today as Wexford boss Davy Fitzgerald aims to plot the downfall of his native Clare.
What a position for Fitzgerald to find himself in, up against the majority of the squad he would have managed for five years, when All-Ireland and National League honours were collected.
Fitzgerald knows that this Wexford team is good enough to take down Clare, and knock them out of the race for the Liam MacCarthy Cup.
He won’t have mentioned Clare in public this week but I can tell you they were the hot topic of conversation at Wexford’s training sessions. This isn’t the first time that Fitzgerald has found himself in this situation.
In 2010, he managed our Waterford team against Clare in the Munster semi-final.
We won and Fitzgerald had taken down not only Clare, but his former teammate Ger ‘Sparrow’ O’Loughlin, who was managing the Banner men. O’Loughlin is a brother of Fitzgerald’s partner, Sharon, and you can imagine how difficult that scenario was.
After all, Clare is the county that Fitzgerald was born in, reared in, went to school in, started hurling in, made his first Holy Communion and Confirmation in, and probably had his first kiss in. MISERY I wondered to myself if I could really do it to my own people, to inflict misery on them after so many years of joy?
I’d find it hard to do it but life presents many challenges. I can’t imagine many greater, in a sporting sense, than patrolling the opposition touchline against your home county.
You’d want to be pretty headstrong to remain cool and clinical in that environment but business is business.
Eamonn Cregan was Offaly manager when his native Limerick was defeated in the 1994 AllIreland final.
There are other examples – John Allen managing Limerick to a Munster title against Cork in 2013, and closer to home, Justin McCarthy when he managed Waterford against Cork.
I remember the 2007 Munster semi-final and Justin was just about to board the team bus after the game when he was met by a Cork lady who wanted to vent her fury.
That seemed to be the Cork way of thinking – how dare you manage against your own.
Justin was calm in his handling of that particular situation. I really felt for him in such an awkward moment but when we jumped on the bus, I was met with a wink and a smile.
As far as Justin was concerned, all that mattered was winning for Waterford and getting us back to a Munster final.
The bigger point is that inside knowledge is simply invaluable. Galway manager Micheál Donoghue gained experience in the Tipp camp and then used it to his own benefit to end the Premier County’s reign as All-Ireland champions, having also poached strength and conditioning coach Lukasz Kirszenstein from them.
The difference there, of course, is that Donoghue’s a Galway man through and through and sometimes, it just doesn’t seem right when you see a leading figure in hurling going up against his home county.
Donal Óg Cusack facing Cork during his time with Clare springs to mind but this is sport – it happens.
You’ll have seen Thierry Henry in the Belgium back-room team for the World Cup semi-final against France, and Joe Schmidt took down his native New Zealand to seal a famous victory for the Ireland rugby team in Chicago.
I can tell you that from a player’s viewpoint, having a person in your camp from the county you’re playing against most certainly helps.
Davy had Bertie Sherlock from Toomevara with him when we played Tipperary in the 2008 AllIreland semi-final. Bertie was my type of guy – he’d train us hard but he’d also bring a fun element.
In the build-up to that game, he was brilliant in one-to-ones, going through every Tipperary player’s strengths and weaknesses.
It was the weaknesses drilled into us over and over again that had us thinking and believing that there was no way we were going to lose that game.
Justin, during his time with us, was also brilliant at instilling belief in us that we were better than the Cork players we were going to be marking.
And this is what Davy will bring to Wexford’s psychological preparations.
He’ll home in on Clare’s danger-men and look to exploit their weaknesses at the back.
He’ll have a man marker on Tony Kelly, and will be confident that Liam Ryan can negate the influence of John Conlon.
He’ll go like for like with a big man marking Peter Duggan and he’ll try to free up Lee Chin and Rory O’Connor, who’s been excellent in that deep-lying number 11 role for the Wexford U21s.
O’Connor will also have taken note of the damage that Cork’s Darragh Fitzgibbon caused in a similar position during the second half of the Munster final against Clare. We might even see Seamus Casey parachuted in from the U21 set-up to hit the frees, which have been an issue for Wexford.
The key for Wexford is to get big performances from Chin and Conor McDonald. If they fire, Wexford are in with a cracking chance. They’re 5-2 with the bookies but they won’t fear Clare, as we saw in 2014 when they ended their reign as AllIreland champions.
You might also recall that in 2013, Wexford took Clare to extratime and this is a better Wexford team now compared to then. Clare remain close to Davy’s heart and he’ll also come up against his father Pat, the longserving Clare county board secretary, once again.
But he’ll say to his Wexford players what he said to us – ‘I’m here to do a job for you and it’s a job I’m going to do.’
And he had Clare down to a tee, knowing them as he did through Fitzgibbon hurling or the underage ranks.
When it came to breaking down the Clare players in terms of their positive and negative points, we were at an advantage straight away.
It’s a strong hand that Wexford can play down in Cork and Clare may have to box clever.
After five years with Davy, we found ourselves up against him in 2012.
Myself and a few of the other Waterford players knew that we couldn’t be too predictable and we went to our manager, Michael Ryan, with a couple of ideas that might throw Davy on the day.
To be fair to Michael, he took everything on board and said ‘lads, if ye are comfortable doing it, myself and the selectors are happy to run with it.’ I’d be surprised if similar representations weren’t made to Donal Moloney and Gerry O’Connor in Clare this week and from what we can gather, they’re two guys open to player input.
And yet, while it might seem unpalatable to him, I’ve a feeling that Davy might be the one enjoying a wink and a smile behind closed doors this evening, having led Wexford to a first All-Ireland semi-final since 2007. This is their fourth quarter-final in five years – now it’s time to take the next step.