I THOUGHT DAVY WAS A MAD MAN
O’Hanlon insists that the caricature of county boss Davy Fitzgerald couldn’t be further from reality
THERE wasn’t a night quite like it in the entire 2017 Championship. Wexford Park heaving at the seams. The county’s manager Davy Fitzgerald, then under suspension, tucked away inside a specially-constructed viewing box, complete with one-way glass, near the press box in the main stand.
Lee Chin performed comic-book feats on the field. Wexford turned over Kilkenny for the first time in the Leinster Championship since Michael Jacob brought Brian Cody to his knees in the 2004 final with his dramatic late goal.
When Mathew O’Hanlon looks back on the season just past, it’s hard to look beyond that evening when Wexford confirmed their potential and Fitzgerald celebrated the final whistle by bursting out of his viewing perch and whooping to the acclaim of the crowd.
‘To be honest, what was going on in the background wasn’t too much of a sideshow,’ he says of the manager not being allowed to be near the players or the dressing room on that special night.
‘The ban was the ban, there was nothing to be done about it. We knew Davy wouldn’t be there. We used that to give us extra motivation. Knowing he wouldn’t be on the line, we were doing it as much for him as for ourselves. Wexford Park was packed to the rafters. The supporters had hope after beating them in the League but Championship is a different animal.
‘Colin Fennelly had a penalty in first few minutes — TJ Reid stuck it — and you’re thinking in the back of your head, “Here we go again… another one of these. Kilkenny will start like a train, go nine or 10 points up, and then you’re chasing the game”.
‘But bit by bit we clawed them back. Fennelly was having an unbelievable game, causing us awful problems. So any time we seemed to get a couple of points ahead they clawed us back. We found it difficult to get over the line. But anything they threw at us, we came back and got ahead of them.’
It franked Wexford’s promotion from Division 1B — beating Galway along the way — and the thrilling quarter-final victory over Kilkenny at Nowlan Park, a first League win at that venue since 1957.
O’Hanlon played a major part in it all, a dynamic, commanding presence at centre-back. When Wexford needed leaders, he surged forward to hit a crucial point as things came to the boil in Wexford Park. He tries to frame the impact of former Clare manager and goalkeeper Fitzgerald in his first season in charge.
‘When he first came in — I’d never worked under Davy — to me, he had always been the mad man on the opposite sideline. He’s ultra-professional. Every session is planned out to a tee. We’re training at a higher intensity than we would have been in previous years. We’re fitter.’
Anyone who watched Fitzgerald featuring in an episode of the Living
with Lucy TV show, knows there is a different side to the whirling dervish on the sideline.
‘There’s two parts to Davy. When it comes to training he’s a law unto himself. Then you ring Davy and you hear the dogs barking in the background. He’s a very soft person underneath it all. He holds family dear and is a very loyal character. He builds that into his panel. What he asks of us, it’s very much you perform for him. You’re doing it for him. That loyalty, he pays back.
‘He’s one of the most passionate men you could come across and he probably finds it a little bit hard to control himself on the sideline. But I think people mistake that and find he’s a bit out of control in what he does, but he’s ultra-professional. People don’t give him enough credit for what he actually does and anywhere he’s been he’s had success including with us so far.
‘He plans everything meticulously and leaves nothing to chance, and as a group of players every single player knows exactly what role they are playing and exactly what’s expected of them. To get to a place where everyone knows that is somewhere we haven’t been really.’
In the Leinster final against Galway, missed chances proved costly for Wexford and Conor McDonald’s saved penalty early in the second half was a big moment. That day, O’Hanlon ensured he would be an All-Star nominee and make this weekend’s tour to Singapore by outscoring Hurler of the Year Joe Canning two points to nil from open play. Not bad for a centre-back.
‘I knew I’d be marking him in the lead up — I was given the task of man-marking him. It definitely does play on your mind. When you play against top players like that, they’re a threat from anywhere. Number one on the list was to try and ensure he got the least amount of ball as possible. And if I could get the ball, put him on the back foot. That was my mentality. It just so happened a few times in the first half I got up the field, was found with a pass, and got a few scores. That settled me then.
‘The way it panned out, our halfback line pushed up big time. We were attacking the whole time. But it left an awful big gap. Shaun Murphy who was playing sweeper for us, he probably had too much space to fill.
‘Conor Cooney got six or seven points. Even with a sweeper, the way Galway were playing the ball in was very hard to defend against. There was so much space there.
‘Potentially, if we had scored the penalty and a couple of frees that went astray, it might have been a different game.’
He understands the yearning for success in Wexford since the last All-Ireland win in 1996 and the weight of expectation that is there. ‘In terms of the generation gap in Wexford the talk of ’96 has been there for the last 20-plus years and it’s very much evident there. I won’t say there’s a pressure, but for us as a group of players it’s about our legacy and what we did, and that will only happen if we win something.
‘I’m not going to say we are sick of hearing about 1996 but it’s 20 years ago and people have to realise that. 20 years is a long time and it’s probably too long a time for a county like Wexford to be starved of success. We’ve had it at underage but now it’s about bringing it to senior level where it really counts. We are very aware of that but we are in one of the
He’s very passionate and probably finds it hard to control himself