DAVY HAS REALLY CROSSED THE LINE
AFTER the furore over my comments about Sky Sports and why our games should be free-to-air, the last thing I expected last Sunday was to make headline news again, this time because of a rant from Wexford hurling manager Davy Fitzgerald.
I actually wasn’t working for RTÉ, either on live co-commentary on the All-Ireland quarter-final against Waterford, or on The Sunday Game that night. Yet I found myself attacked for a simple tweet put out during a match that was a poor spectacle, along with 10-time AllIreland winner Henry Shefflin.
‘Sweepers should be outlawed! Not the game I love. Coach players to tackle and to use their heads instead of using extra backs to compensate!’
Calling for a ban was tongue-incheek, certainly not meant to be taken literally. After responding to Davy’s outburst after the game in the Irish Daily Mail, I was happy to leave it there. I didn’t want to get into a tit-for-tat exchange. And then Davy went on Off The
Ball and reheated the whole thing. I’ve great time for Newstalk but I thought Joe Molloy’s interview was simply one-sided – you’d think that Sunday hadn’t happened.
Davy or his tactics or managerial record wasn’t challenged properly at all. I was training our club’s minors on Monday evening and when I turned it on I found myself getting more annoyed as it went on.
Then Davy appeared at an event on Tuesday and went through the whole thing again. After questioning my right to be an analyst on RTÉ, a statement that threatens a part of my livelihood, he even went so far as to reveal he’d previously had talks with RTÉ at a high level over their coverage.
I have media commitments to RTÉ and the Irish Daily Mail and Mail on
Sunday, and I feel compelled to address a concerted attack that ran for three days running. More or less calling for my, or Henry Shefflin’s head as analysts on The Sunday
Game because we haven’t managed at a high level isn’t just total nonsense – it’s a bit more sinister than that. I lost a lot over the last 10 years, including my business. Media work helped me to make up for that in part.
I’m not getting paid the massive fees people might think but I’m making a living out of it. I’ve one son in college, bills to be paid. Where I feel he crossed the line is starting to tell RTÉ about who they should employ. Davy has made calls to papers and the likes of RTÉ if he doesn’t like what he’s hearing. To me, that’s totally out of order.
I don’t think it’s appropriate for any inter-county manager to have contact at a high level in RTÉ. Or to be calling for anyone’s contract to be cancelled. He has his own programme on RTÉ, Ireland’s Fittest
Family, and I am thrilled that he has a successful television show. Delighted. I watch it the odd time myself. If I didn’t like it or decided it wasn’t for me, can you imagine me calling for it to be decommissioned? Taken off air? Or if I questioned Waterford manager Derek McGrath in his role as a teacher? There are lines you don’t cross. A soft-soap interview on Newstalk, and then trying to laugh it off – that just doesn’t cut it.
Ithink it’s important for readers to understand why my work as a pundit is important to me and why I stepped away from intercounty management.
I retired in 2001 after 15 years playing senior for Offaly. I went out on my own in business the same year. My first son Sean was born in 1998, then Brian in 2000 so with the new financial services business, there was a lot going on.
I found retirement from intercounty very difficult and did socialise a bit. I struggled to adapt and to try and fill the hurling vacuum, I got involved with Meath as senior hurling manager in 2002. At 34 years of age, it was a way of dipping my toe, and we had a fantastic year. Johnny Murray, who had trained Offaly with Babs Keating, came with me, and there was a great response from the players. We beat Laois in the Leinster Championship before going out to Offaly and rounded off the year by organising a players’ holiday to Lanzarote, which had never happened before.
In September, my wife Edel was diagnosed with breast cancer. I went back with Meath in 2003 but some players didn’t recommit – maybe they didn’t want to put all the effort in a second year because we had trained very hard.
We moved to Offaly and in 2004 they came calling. Mike McNamara was in charge and I took up an offer to help with coaching. We beat Laois, then Dublin in the Leinster semi-final and, but for Damien Fitzhenry’s saves, we should have won the final against Wexford.
My own club St Rynagh’s was going through a bad patch. A big rebuilding job was needed down there and I got involved to help out but then Edel got rediagnosed.
It’s well documented that I found it hard to cope after she died in September 2009. It’s the small things that make the difference, make you keep going. Getting the kids up in the morning. Cooking dinner. Doing the homework. It’s called life.
There was my management window but I had other priorities. I don’t need Davy telling me that I’m not positioned to give an honest opinion because I haven’t managed at the highest level – I had a life to lead, a family to bring up.
And they remain my priorities. I
Calling for a ban on sweepers was clearly tongue-in-cheek nFitzgerald’s comments threaten a part of my livelihood I have had opportunities to manage, but I’ve other priorities
spent the time involved with the club where my sons were playing, while doubling as juvenile chairman with Ballinamere/Durrow, and I’m still involved coaching the minors who won a first ‘A’ title last year.
In many ways, it might be more lucrative for me to go and manage an inter-county team. I branched out from a banking job with AIB after I retired in 2001 and ended up becoming an auctioneer. I had very good years when times were good, and then things came crashing down. I lost my business when the Celtic Tiger bubble burst.
Doing media work became part of my livelihood but I have never been critical for the sake of it, especially in co-commentary where you have to go in with a clear head.
That’s why I feel Davy’s comments really were out of order. They sounded premeditated – especially when he mentioned a previous ‘incident’ that I should have commented on, presumably the whole Brian Cody thing where I felt the Kilkenny manager didn’t have a case to answer for an innocuous coming together with a sideline official. After all the fuss over the Diarmuid Connolly suspension, it wasn’t the popular thing to say. But it was my honest opinion.
I’m sure Davy felt aggrieved I supported his suspension for running on to the field and getting involved with Jason Forde in the League semi-final – a whole different case altogether in terms of crossing lines.
My issue with the sweeper is that I don’t think it helps team realise their potential, whether it’s learning to defend man-on-man or attack in numbers to put up a winning score.
In Davy’s last three years with Clare – 2014, 2015 and 2016 – the 2013 All-Ireland winners failed to win a single match in Munster, and they won just three qualifiers – against Offaly, Laois, and Limerick – playing a sweeper.
I have been critical because that’s my job. And the results back it up. So where is the evidence that it works? I said last week that it’s been a very good year for Wexford, that Davy deserves credit, and it’s fairly obvious the regard I have for Derek McGrath. He has developed this game plan to another level.
I would argue that if they play their best players up front, and keep them there, they have one of the best forward lines in the country. Capable of winning an All-Ireland.
Waterford or Wexford can play any way they want to – but I don’t have to like it.
I’m sure Davy felt aggrieved I supported his suspension for the incident with Jason Forde