Fitzgerald defends his record

HURLING:DAVY FITZGERALD has launched a passionate defence of his record in charge of the Waterford senior hurlers and insisted that the 2010 season was an "unbelievable" one for the Déise.

In a wide-ranging interview with local radio station WLR FM, Fitzgerald responded openly to accusations that have been levelled against him since the All-Ireland semi-final defeat against Tipperary.

Fitzgerald’s team captured the Waterford Crystal Cup and won the Munster SHC last season but the former Clare goalkeeper still ended the season with heavy criticism ringing in his ears.

Fitzgerald admitted he may “get a slating” from Dan Shanahan in the retired star’s forthcoming autobiography, having already received criticism from the Lismore man. But Fitzgerald insisted anything in Shanahan’s book, or material contained in RTÉ reporter Damien Tiernan’s forthcoming account of Waterford hurling over the last 10 years, will not bother him.

Fitzgerald said: “I hope he makes a good lot out of it. He had some good times and bad times. I’ll probably get a slating in it. If I do, I do and that’s it. I’m not going to worry about it too much. Whatever is in them, there’s nothing I can do about now.”

Fitzgerald said: “The season that we’ve had is unbelievable. The highlight for me would have to be the Munster final. To beat Cork at any stage is great but to beat them in the Munster final, in the circumstances we did, is fantastic. With the semi-final, to say we were disappointed was an understatement. Did we expect to win it? We did, we went out to win it. Have we examined it? In detail, we’ve gone over different things.

“You’d be told that the tactics went wrong and this went wrong. I don’t believe we stuck to the tactical game that we had in the Munster final. I believe certain fellas went back to their own thing but could I say anything against the lads? No, I wouldn’t say one thing against the team. These lads worked so hard and battled so hard. Some of them were so used to playing in a certain way for so long and had to adapt to a different way of playing.”

Fitzgerald added: “We didn’t play well in the semi-final; we gave up too much space in the middle and didn’t stick tactically to what we should have done. If you play open hurling on these days, and leave everything open, that would not be good for us. But any day we can play and score 19 or 20 scores and defend really well, we have a great chance of winning. I’d be very happy with our style of hurling. I think we’re playing lovely, good, attractive hurling. We score some great scores at times and we try to play to our strengths.

“I can’t promise that we’re going to win Munster again or win an All-Ireland but I can promise that we will work extremely hard as a team and a backroom team. I might have made one or two mistakes in my backroom team last year but I have that rectified for the year coming. What we need in Waterford are genuine people who care about the team, the management and will work hard for Waterford.”

Shanahan and Ken McGrath have both publicly criticised Fitzgerald’s tactics and the manager responded: “I suppose it did hurt a small bit but at the same time, there’s not a hope in hell that I’m going to say a bad thing about Dan and Ken, no matter what they say about me. These guys have been incredible for Waterford.

“The one thing I keep saying to myself is that it must be so hard for these guys to sit on the sideline. You’re the main man for so long and it must be just very hard. They’re entitled to their points of view . . . maybe in a few years time, when they go managing, they might see things in a different light.”

Fitzgerald also denied there has ever been a problem with communication within the squad, insisting his door is always open. “Am I going to keep 32 people happy? Not a hope. They could bring Brian Cody or Liam Sheedy down to Waterford and he won’t keep them all happy either. That’s the nature of it. You get criticism, it’s not nice but you have to accept it. But I’d love people to have come into our camp because it’s a very happy camp. I would not have come back otherwise.”

Fitzgerald also rejected “crazy” suggestions he is being paid huge money to manage the Waterford team. He laughed: “My God, I’ll put it this way, I’ve heard figures of 55, 65, 75, and 80,000. I’m not going into what expenses I get, that would be unfair but those figures are crazy.”