Two championship games in October and November gnaw away at him.
Davy Fitzgerald has been tossing and turning. Galway beat them by 13 and Clare beat them by seven and Davy Fitzgerald has taken those beatings personally. The Wexford manager has been in overdrive since.
In five years, he’s won a Leinster championship and changed the mindset in the south east and and there’s no fear of the Clare man letting it end this way.
In this Covid shaped time warp, he’s had lots of time to think, twist and think again, but time is one thing he did not need. He has unfinished business in Wexford and he’s been planning rather than deliberating.
“To be honest, I haven’t had too much of a breather,” he says with a laugh when asked how he’s spent the last two months away from hurling.
Hurling is on the brain.
“After our beating (against Clare) I took a week or two and then I started planning for the season coming ahead, because I knew it would be coming fairly quickly. A week off was the most I had, trust me, there’s an awful lot of pre-planning that needs to be done. When you’re over a county team, it’s absolutely crazy. There’s six months of action ahead so that’s what we’ve been focusing on.”
To plan for the future, you must learn from the past and the winter of 2020 has left Fitzgerald restless.
“The two results we had would not have been the way for me to finish here. Wexford are a lot better than that. I know that. I said there’s no point in dwelling on this, I have a job to finish off and I’m going to finish it off. I can take being beaten. But I just know…normally, we’d get 100 tackles in a game, we were only at 44.”
“You get up and you fight, get your act together, don’t be waiting and just get stuck in. – That’s been my attitude since. Those two games didn’t sit right with me.
“I’ve been trying to wreck my head over the last few weeks, thinking, is there one or two small tweaks we could make to give us more of a goal threat? You’re always thinking, is there something different I can do to bring us forward.”
"If I told you what I put them lads through, you wouldn't believe it"
"Whatever's to come, I haven't a notion of worrying about it, we're going to enjoy this one tonight"
Davy Fitz at his brilliant best
— GAA JOE (@GAA__JOE) June 30, 2019
That’s how Fitzgerald’s mind works. The Ireland’s Fittest Family coach went onto explain the method to the madness, as well as some of his tactical thoughts for 2021.
“I’d be writing things down. Drawing up a few things. I’d have my sheets out in front of me, I’d be looking at different formations, different things. You’d be looking obviously at Limerick at the moment – how do they set up, where do their players end up, where are they crowding, where are they getting possession, how can we break them down?
“I won’t change all the stuff we’ll do. But there are one or two small little things I’m excited about trying. Will it work? I don’t know. But it’s something a small bit different that we’ll be looking at. I had a meeting with our backroom staff already and we’ve talked about it. Will it be a big change in style, no, but for example, we need to get that tackling back up to where it should be. Otherwise, we won’t be competitive.”
“You have to keep tweaking it. There’s loads of different variables, who you are playing and that kind of thing. Is it always right? It can go horribly wrong on you but you’re trying to see how can I bring our strong points into play.”
You can’t keep a good one down
Davy Fitzgerald is pictured at the launch of Londis’ sponsorship of Ireland’s Fittest Family. Londis will sponsor RTÉ’s hit TV show for a second year in a row, which returns to our screens on Sunday, January 3rd in a new 6.30pm slot for its 8th season.
