Fogarty scoffs at the very suggestion of a new hurling world order
After years alongside Brian Cody, Westmeath’s coach says you write off the Cats at your peril
ARE YOU trying to get me into trouble?’ asks Martin Fogarty with a knowing laugh, as the topic of conversation turns to Kilkenny versus Tipperary in this afternoon’s Allianz Hurling League final and whether Tipp have underachieved since their stunning 2010 All-Ireland success.
‘It’s probably fair to say,’ he answers.
‘A bit like Cork in 2006, they were expected to put us away and kick on but it didn’t happen. Tipperary had a hugely talented team who won the All-Ireland and a hugely talented Under-21 team who did the same straight after, so you’d expect that they’d be very hard to dislodge.’
Except history will show they have spent the intervening years under the thumb of their fiercest rivals, Kilkenny. However, for the first time since Fogarty joined Brian Cody’s backroom team for the 2005 season, the result of this fixture is not a going concern for someone who coached Kilkenny to six All-Irelands.
Instead, in one of the more intriguing plot twists to the 2014 season, events at Cusack Park in Mullingar (where Westmeath host Laois in the round-robin stage of the Leinster Championship) will be uppermost in his mind after being recently installed in a coaching capacity with Westmeath.
It started with a phone call out of the blue from Brian Hanley and a simple request: ‘Do you want to give me a hand?’
Fogarty knew the Westmeath manager well enough to know he wouldn’t ask unless he needed to, especially after weathering criticism following a turbulent League campaign in Division 2A. The reply? ‘Sound Brian, I’ll come up.’ And so he finds himself with a new allegiance. Still, he is making the adjustment well. ‘It’s not much of a culture shock in January or February not going training in the muck and the rain or going to watch the Walsh Cup. That wouldn’t have been a big thing. Sure, I’ve been at all the games.
‘From a spectator’s point of view, it’s been a good League. Very fine margins in so many of the games. No more than ourselves last year, Tipperary looked out of it early on and turned it around. Things were always going to be a lot different for Clare after the All-Ireland.
‘There’s so much that goes with it, then the team holiday and, before you know it, January is on top of you and you’re trying to get up to speed. It’s a nice problem mind; but it does bring its own issues.’
This time last year, Clare were hardly mapped in the All-Ireland race.
‘Last year, you had the usual questions about the season ahead and Kilkenny, Tipperary and Galway were the subject of a lot of conversation. But I would have always had a liking for Limerick and Clare.
‘Two counties with a lot of good, young talent – very similar in many ways. I remember we played Limerick at the opening of new club grounds [Staker Wallace] and my instinct walking out was that they would have a say in the summer.’
Limerick bringing home a Munster title for the first time since 1996 was matched by Dublin knocking out Kilkenny to win provincial
Nobody in the Kilkenny dressing room would be counting what they’ve won. That’s fantasy
honours for the first time since 1961. And that’s before Clare stole a march on everyone in the fight to bring home Liam MacCarthy.
Just don’t try and overplay the value of Championship 2013 to Fogarty. ‘The best Championship ever? I don’t think so. The drawn All-Ireland final was a poor enough affair. When you have Kilkenny, Tipperary and Galway gone there is a colour and excitement about a new team coming along. That’s natural. But the quality wasn’t on a different level.
‘When you have the likes of Kilkenny winning so many titles, of course there is going to be a big reaction, especially when it was Clare who made the breakthrough.
BUT THEY got the breaks along the way as well. I thought Limerick were very unlucky in the All-Ireland semi-final. Seamus Hickey went off injured early on and things just didn’t go for them. I thought Dublin could have gone on and won the All-Ireland. The sending off was just wrong.’
Fogarty left Croke Park that day fuming over Ryan O’Dwyer’s controversial dismissal in the All-Ireland semi-final against Cork (right) on two yellow cards and increasingly disillusioned with the way the summer had been defined by contentious and hugely debateable sendings off – Cork’s Patrick Horgan
in the Munster final; Henry Shefflin in their All-Ireland quarterfinal loss to Cork, and O’Dwyer.
‘If a player goes to hurt another player, he deserves to get the line,’ he says. But too many players were sent off who didn’t deserve to be, where there was no badness. It just wasn’t right.’
It contributed in part to Fogarty’s decision to walk away from the most successful hurling team the game has known. He just felt it was time to go and recharge the batteries. There was no hint of a row or a suggestion of anything other than a natural parting with James McGarry and Derek Lyng stepping into the breach. Fogarty’s son, Conor, might have long earned his place on the panel on his own merits but it keeps the family element out of any squad selection.
On a broader front, he sees the new hurling committee, chaired by Liam Sheedy who managed Tipperary to All-Ireland success over Kilkenny in that 2010 final, serving a useful purpose. ‘If they are listened to. The big one that I can see is allowing the advantage rule in hurling. That’s vital.’
While Kilkenny icon Eddie Keher has called for red and yellow cards to be abolished altogether, Fogarty can’t see the GAA taking such a step and isn’t averse to the introduction of the black card, which is changing the face of Gaelic football, for cynical offences.
‘Where a player is replaced? I wouldn’t be against something like that. If a player deserves one, fair enough. The punishment of a free in hurling though is a big disincentive to deliberate fouling.’ So, where did it all go wrong for Kilkenny? ‘You have to have 90 per cent of your players right. You wouldn’t be making excuses but injuries were a huge issue. Dublin were well better than us on the day; we could have no complaints on that front. And we didn’t hurl well against Cork.’ He insists Henry Shefflin bidding for an unprecedented 10th All-Ireland wasn’t a motivation in the dressing room last year – and won’t be this year.
‘That’s a little bit of fantasy; it gets you away from reality when you start thinking like that. Nobody in the Kilkenny dressing room would be counting what they’ve won.’
For Fogarty, the last day of days in the Kilkenny dug-out be this year. ‘That’s a little bit of fantasy; it gets you away from reality when you start thinking like that. Nobody in the Kilkenny dressing room would be counting what they’ve won.’
For Fogarty, the last day of days in the Kilkenny dug-out came at Nowlan Park last July for the historic qualifier when the old enemy Tipperary were again vanquished.
‘A lot of people were expecting Tipperary to beat us, so to get the win was hugely satisfying. It was a brilliant night because of the atmosphere. Even though there were no medals or trophies, that was one of the special matches I’ve been involved in.’
Davy Fitzgerald’s differing tactical set-ups were a feature of Clare’s progress through the All-Ireland stages but Fogarty warns about over-playing their significance.
‘As Mike Tyson once said, game plans go out the window when you get a punch in the face.’
And he doesn’t buy the idea of Clare’s win, together with the provincial breakthroughs of imerick and Dublin, ushering in a new order.
‘New world order? Certainly not.’ The League final pairing is enough evidence of the empire striking back.