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DAVY FITZGERALD insists that Wexford face a major challenge, whether he is on the sideline or in a box in the stand as per the win over Kilkenny.
In his first official engagement since his two-match ban expired, the Wexford manager was all smiles as he patrolled the Ferns Centre of Excellence for the official media gathering on Tuesday of last week.
As he entered the room his first words to the press were ‘ did you miss me?’, before taking his seat in the middle of the media scrum.
The question was then thrown back at him by a journalist: ‘did you miss us?’.
‘Well, sometimes I feel I have,’ he joked, ‘and sometimes I feel I haven’t.’
The charismatic Clare man has been freed from his eight-week suspension for ‘interfering with an opposition player’ during Wexford’s Allianz League semi-final loss against Tipperary, and maybe he has missed us just as much as we have missed him.
While the suspension has hung over Fitzgerald during the early part of the summer, it has made little difference to his team as that famous provincial championship semi-final win over Kilkenny outlined. That led to an emotional surge of thousands of Model county supporters onto the pitch on the final whistle, having earlier set up this momentous occasion with a quarter-final victory over Laois.
Fitzgerald took his ban on the chin, with no appeal. He admitted that he thought about it, but the circus that surrounded the incident made him decide against it.
‘Naturally you look at every avenue and think about it. I thought about it but one of the deciding factors for me was how much all of ye (in the media) made of it. I just decided I am not giving ye another week of making another meal of it.
‘That would have been part of my reason, that there was already too much made of it. So I just decided to cut it dead, take it, and get on with it,’ he added.
And while he believed that his own suspension was fair, he felt that Tipperary’s Jason Forde, who was served with a one-match ban, was hard done by. Fitzgerald even contacted the Tipperary County Board to say that he would make representations on Forde’s behalf.
‘I actually hated the fact that he got banned as well. I think I rang Tipp at the time and said if there was anything I could do. I don’t mind getting a bit of stick whatsoever. But I didn’t go looking to give anyone stick.
‘I said to Tipp that if I could help them out, because no matter what, I didn’t like him getting a ban. There was very little in that, what he did. People will make a meal out of it and I’d prefer if he didn’t get any ban.
‘I deserved the ban. I was on the field, and if you’re on the field, that’s it, and you accept it. No problem, I can’t say I was hard done by because I did deserve a ban.
I’d have took my ban and hopefully he would have got off with his. That’s what I was actually hoping. That’s being honest about it. He’s a good hurler. I prefer to see him out hurling away for every game he could possibly play.
‘Look, it’s done for me, now it’s over, and I’m happy now it’s gone. If this was me three or four years ago I might say something different to ye now. But nah, it’s done, it’s over. It’s grand, no problem.
‘Trust me, I could go to games most weekends and you could see someone going in giving out to the referee, I didn’t actually give out to the referee. It wasn’t on his report. I thought they might have done me for encroachment onto the pitch, but I didn’t go looking fo
Fitzgerald is no options, whether to t the stand or return to provincial final clash
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