Departing as he played - on his own terms

INTERVIEW JAMES 'CHA' FITZPATRICK: KEITH DUGGANtalks to James 'Cha' Fitzpatrick who has plenty of good
memories and no recriminations from his time at the top table with Kilkenny

‘CHA’ – THE name became a byword for nimble, elusive skill and mesmerising stick work in an era when power became the overwhelming force on the hurling field. And in the week that he announces his retirement from the Kilkenny hurling team at the age of 26, the last word on James Fitzpatrick is that he came and departed on his own terms, which is often the hardest trick for any sportsman.

Ireland has changed beyond recognition since that spring in 1998 when DJ Carey’s decision to retire at just 27 prompted a national keening.

But even if Fitzpatrick never emulated Carey in terms of profile or extravagant scoring feats, in his bright burning career he too will be remembered as one of the rare ones – an out-and-out natural. Fitzpatrick’s announcement this week that he was calling it quits wasn’t a complete shock: a five-time All-Ireland winner (three as a starter) and three-time All-Star who couldn’t buy a minute of championship action last summer was not likely to hang around the edges of the scene for too long. So he called it as he saw it and got on with his job teaching in Dublin.

On Thursday night, he drove home for a schools presentation ceremony as promised. His phone was busy this week, but life goes on and he reckons the players with whom he played for the last seven years might have guessed they wouldn’t be seeing him at Nowlan Park next January.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t say they were too surprised because even some of the lads said to me during the year, ‘God, I don’t know what you have to do, you are flying in training,’” he said during the week, sounding perfectly content about his decision.

“So I can’t say they would be too surprised. A few of the lads have texted me over the last few days and just saying, ‘fair play, I understand why you are doing this.’”

There are no recriminations or sour grapes on Fitzpatrick’s part, just an acceptance that Brian Cody and his management didn’t see him as part of the master plan anymore. Fitzpatrick enjoyed three dreamily perfect years in the black and amber stripes.

After 2008, the twin setbacks of mumps and a broken hand broke that spell and, as he admits himself, he also battled to summon the necessary appetite in 2009 and 2010. “By the age of 23 I had achieved every honour in the game so I suppose it was hard to keep that going.”

But by last summer he felt he had recaptured a game which is based on the coiled steel frame of an elite bantamweight and an ability to read the game that few players could match. He broke into the Kilkenny team at the age of 19 – now, he found himself pushed to the edge of relevance and the frustration grew.

“To be honest, I felt that the form book went out the window this year at training,” he says. “We were always told that the team was picked on how you performed at training. I felt that went out the window this year. I found it hard.

“In the semi-final against Waterford this year, I wasn’t playing but I was ready to be brought on and a half back was brought on ahead of me and that was that. I said nothing after the match and put the head down and trained harder for the final but there was still nothing giving. So yeah, I thought it went out the window a bit.”

For all that, part of him enjoyed the All-Ireland success this year.

Last September was a symbolically important All-Ireland title for Kilkenny, shattering Tipperary’s aspirations of a new order. He pushed his personal disappointment to one side.

“I’m only one person the county,” he says. “You have to recognise how important the victory was to all the players and the supporters. And maybe my training as hard as I did helped the team to win. But you know, I was the one doing all that training and the feeling that you were training as well or better than the player next to you but were getting overlooked just became very frustrating.”

There was always something of the independent spirit about Fitzpatrick; you could see it in the way he played the game. His reputation literally preceded him, he was exhibiting a level of stick craft at primary school level that drew comparisons with DJ.

He was on a Ballyhale side that won the Féile na nGael when he was 13 and then he won the individual skills competition just a year later. His grandfather John Fitzpatrick won All-Ireland medals with Kilkenny in 1932 and 1933. He died when Fitzpatrick was six, but the grandson has this steadfast memory of the old man sitting in his regular chair by the cooker, ever reading the newspaper.

“He was a corner forward,” Cha says now. “Probably had the same build as me, but I imagine he was quicker as a forward.”

And there is a photograph taken of that 1930s team on a team trip in America and early on, the idea lodged in Fitzpatrick’s mind that he might someday hurl for Kilkenny too. But the important thing to understand is that adults fully expected that of him years before he fully had time to consider what it all meant.

“I suppose I was aware of the attention although I was very young,” he says lightly. “It was fairly obvious from a young age that I had something extra.”

For hurling boys in Kilkenny, adolescence follows a predictable rites-of-passage and Fitzpatrick enrolled in St Kieran’s College. His early appearances for the school drew a curious audience and it is said that one early show of potential produced rhapsodic declarations of greatness coming.

In 2003, Fitzpatrick duly captained the school team to the Dr Croke Cup at midfield, scoring two points. But that success was hardly carefree – his mother had died suddenly early in the year.

“That’s why that year and that win will always be important to me. I think the hurling probably was a break away from the sadness around the family home at that time. To get out there and start hurling and enjoying it was a reprieve from that and there was a lot of dedication there and real purpose to go out and win it because of what happened.”

Outstanding displays in two successful minor years for Kilkenny brought about a call-up to the senior squad. “I wasn’t apprehensive,” Fitzpatrick laughs. “I wanted to enjoy it.”

But ‘enjoy’ wasn’t quite the deal. “Dog-eat-dog” is how he describes his first impression. What he remembers about those early sessions is the physicality of the exchanges and the ferocious level of competition.

DJ would sometimes offer a quiet word of encouragement but more often than not, players would be looking after their own skin. Fitzpatrick impressed sufficiently enough to earn a starting place for the 2004 All-Ireland final against Cork.

Kilkenny were chasing a three-in-a-row that afternoon but they looked tired and even dated against a resurgent Cork. A year later, Kilkenny lost an All-Ireland semi-final to Galway in a shootout that caught everyone by surprise.

That defeat seemed to confirm the suspicion that the pack had caught up with Kilkenny. For Fitzpatrick, it was an uncertain time, he played no part in the 2005 championship and admits that it wasn’t until the summer of 2006 that he felt secure about his prospects of nailing down a starting place. One evening in Nowlan Park, it all fell into place.

“A lovely sunny evening and sometimes you just get into the zone. Anywhere the ball was, I seemed to be and shortly after that, I got the nod for the Galway game. I was kind of hurling on adrenaline after that.”

It is often forgotten how much hinged for Kilkenny on that July evening in Thurles against Galway. A defeat would have meant three seasons of disappointment in a row. Not long before that match, Kilkenny went for a training weekend in Wexford. “Blood and feathers flew,” Fitzpatrick laughs when he recalls it. “The whistle was never really blown at all.”

But it was a brilliantly honest session and when they were on the bus on the way home, the quarter-finals draw was made and it was then that they learned they would play Galway.

“There was a real sense of unity on the bus that evening,” he says.

Fitzpatrick’s own form for Ballyhale – he had landed 11 points from 12 shots over two games from midfield – highlighted his potential from that position and when he began to partner Derek Lyng in training, he thrived. Fitzpatrick scored a goal and two frees in the win over Galway. nobody knew it then but Kilkenny had begun a winning streak that would fall just one game short – the All-Ireland final of 2010 – of five perfect years.

Fitzpatrick contributed arias for three successive years when he was comfortably among the best midfielders in Ireland.

“It just seemed to take off and it felt like I hardly missed a ball in those three years. My partnership with Derek worked great because he is a powerhouse and he would run with the ball and break up tackles and I suppose I was more feeding off those breaks and trying to read the game.”

Any athlete who finds themselves operating on an elevated level season after season inevitably battles the nagging voice which tells them that this can’t keep on happening. They know they you can’t hold mercury in your palm forever.

“You just try and keep that voice quiet,” Fitzpatrick says. He was captain when Kilkenny won the three-in-row in coldly magisterial style in 2008 and marked the day with a distinguished speech. It was the high point – two disrupted seasons followed and when he felt light and good again, he discovered that the brand of magic he brought to Kilkenny’s game was ancillary to requirements.

On the radio this week, he spoke dismissively about his own speed, surprising for someone who always seemed to have the footwork of John Joe Nevin and a quick burst.

“No, what I meant was you’d never see me going on a solo run for 40 metres. That was never my game anyhow: for me, it was always about one or two touches and gets it into the forwards. But now you have to be able to run from 21 to 21 and I wouldn’t have been one of the fittest that way.”

Perhaps, as an established player, last summer he could have asked Cody and the management for answers but to do so would have seemed indulgent to him.

“I suppose I always respected Brian’s opinion even if I didn’t always agree with him. The boss is the boss and I wasn’t going to kick up a fuss. Kilkenny won the All-Ireland so I suppose I had no real argument in that respect. My way was to just put my head down.”

So he celebrated and attended yet another homecoming and maybe even then drew his own conclusions. Fitzpatrick has always known what’s for him. This is someone who switched from a degree in chemical engineering for St Patrick’s College and the teaching life and he hasn’t looked back. He has never hidden the fact that he has other interests and managed to moonlight as a DJ even when he was coming to prominence.

He has lost count of the number of concert tickets he has bought down the years that went to waste because of a training session. Now that he has made his mind up to leave, he is looking forward to doing the normal things – seeing a few bands and, next summer, the west coast of America. The speculation that he might return to Croke Park in the sky blue of Dublin is fanciful.

“No, I won’t be playing for any team except Ballyhale Shamrocks,” he says firmly.

It somehow seems wrong, a hurler of such extravagant gifts calling time in his prime years. But when he tells you he is “completely at ease” with his decision, you know he means it.

“I have known nothing but hurling,” he says. “So I’m looking forward to different things now.”

Still, it isn’t long before the conversation returns to hurling again. It’s not as if he is finishing completely: he will still conjure up the stuff to light up schoolboy’s eyes for Ballyhale. But those Kilkenny years were rich and dense. He won’t forget the speeches that Cody made, particularly on those Friday evenings after the team had been named.

“You’d leave with the hair standing on the back of your neck. He’s been there a long time but he is a brilliant motivator.”

He never quite recaptured the giddy delight that he felt after winning his first senior All-Ireland in 2006. And while captaining the county in 2008 was the pinnacle in terms of honours, the game that he will carry with him wasn’t an All-Ireland final at all but his first real season in 2006 and the All-Ireland semi-final against Clare.

It was then that he felt most strongly connected to the sensation that even the very best players only get to experience a handful of times, if at all.

“I suppose captaining the team in the final was a huge honour and it was a childhood dream to do that,” he says, reviewing a career that seems to have passed with the speed of a comet.

“But hurling wise, the game for me was that semi-final in 2006 against Clare. It felt like I was able to manufacture something out of every ball I went near. So that game . . . it will always stand out in my mind as a kind of hurling perfection.”