Semis had the good, the bad, and the Davy

IT didn’t much feel like the type of day where something explosive would happen. Just a regular lazy Easter Sunday afternoon with much too much chocolate floating around to be healthy for anybody. A day for family and friends and little else.

Down in the Gaelic Grounds there wasn’t much chocolate floating around (except, perhaps, in the stands and on the sparsely populated terraces if people were so inclined). The laid back theme was present nevertheless.

Over seventy minutes Limerick and Galway went through the motions of a National Hurling League semi-final. The intensity wasn’t really there. The quality certainly wasn’t. Too many mistakes, unforced, to do anything more than generate a moderate, and often times waning, level of interest from this observer at any rate.

If it was a football league semi-final people would have been calling for the semi-finals to be scrapped. Hurling, we suppose, gets the benefit of the doubt where football does not and maybe that’s just as well too.

The second semi-final redeemed the first by being a good old-fashioned fire and brimstone type affair. No quarter asked, no quarter given. This was a game with a story to tell, featuring two teams out to drive their own narrative (we can thank Eamonn Fitzmaurice for making the term mainstream in the GAA!).

Tipperary are in the process of solidifying a fearsome reputation for metronomic efficiency. Wexford, meanwhile, were out to show that their revival this past couple of months is the real deal, that 1B success can be translated into top flight competitiveness.

After Clare last year – and Waterford the year before – it’s a well trodden path by now. The quality of the Yellow Bellies’ performance in Nowlan Park against Kilkenny earlier this month suggested they have what it takes to make that all important step.

Back in the marble city again for the second time in the space of a couple of weeks, Wexford had to prove themselves all over again. With the breeze favouring Tipperary in the first half that wasn’t going to be easy and, indeed, it wasn’t.

After seven minutes Wexford found themselves five points down – 1-2 to 0-0 – before they eventually found their feet. A second Tipperary goal after quarter of an hour, however, rocked them back on their heels all over again.

The most frustrating thing about it was that it should never have been awarded. A Wexford defender, James Breen, seemed to have been fouled at least once in the build up to Noel McGrath’s strike.

It was with this that a run of the mill, mundane Easter Sunday afternoon exploded to life. From seemingly out of nowhere – well the sideline actually – Davy Fitzgerald was centre stage at centre field shouting and roaring and gesturing at the referee, Diarmuid Kirwan.

On one level it was understandable – what manager wouldn’t be hugely frustrated with a decision like that? – but on another it was typical grandstanding from the Clare man, heaven forbid the game be about anything other than Davy Fitzgerald.

Had he left it at that and gone back to his place on the sideline that would have been something. Instead he exchanged words and jostled briefly with Niall O’Meara and later ended up shouldering (or being shouldered by) Jason Forde.

The whole affair left a bitter taste in the mouth. Kirwan should have been much stronger than he was, he should have frog-marched Fitzgerald to the dressing room and made him stay there for the rest of the game.

Referees take way too much crap and do themselves no favours over the long term, but even that is of secondary concern. The only person responsible for Fitzgerald’s actions is Fitzgerald.

After the game he suggested that part of the reason why he did what he did was to halt Tipperary’s momentum at a crucial period of the game and, if that is the case, it’s an absolutely outrageous piece of cynicism by the Clare man, one worthy of serious sanction.

The other, much more worrying, possibility is that the man simply cannot control himself. The red mist descends and he has no control over himself. Ranting and raving himself into a lather and getting himself, inevitably, into trouble.

For his own sake, for all our sakes and for the sake of this promising Wexford team, the GAA should throw the book at him. If not he’ll never learn. His comments after the match on Sunday suggest that he sees it all as one big joke.

“I don’t think they’d do that to me [suspend him],” he said.

“It would be no fun if I was up there in the stands. You’d have nothing to fucking write about if I’m up there! I know ye’ll do me all the favours under the sun tomorrow, saying that shouldn’t happen.

“Whatever it is, it is. I’d like to think common sense… I won’t do it again if that’s any consolation. Whatever it is, it is.”

Where do you start with that? Even if said, we presume, tongue in cheek some of that is frankly jaw-dropping. We’ll forget for a moment about us having nothing to write about without Davy – somehow column inches get filled day in day out without him making an eejit of himself during league semi-finals – just focus on his promise not to do it again.

If the GAA falls for that – and they won’t – it’d be like the frog escorting the scorpion across the river. One way or another Davy will sting you by doing something like this again sooner rather than later. Why? As the scorpion might say, because it’s in his nature.