Davy wants no special treatment

Newly appointed Clare hurling manager Davy Fitzgerald’s relationship with the county board is going to be very open he said and that he will not be looking for any special treatment.
“A lot of people here will probably say ‘because he is Pat Fitz’s son he will get what he wants’, this that and the other thing. I have made it quite clear to Michael [O’Neill] that I am prepared to work on the same parameters as any other team manager has worked in over the last few years, prepared to look for the same things that they have looked for, the same amount of money to be spent on the team.
“As for my Dad, the amount of respect I have for him is unreal. I know that he mightn’t be all yer cup of tea at times. He has his ways and he can be pretty dogmatic. Trust me, I have fought with him enough myself. I am very proud of him and whether ye like him or not doesn’t bother me. I know he is very honest and straight and the one thing he has in his head is Clare GAA and there are no favourites in that,” Fitzgerald said.

No grudges
“There will be no grudges, no anything, no reaction to any media criticism I get. I am going to do my job to the best of my ability and all I ask for is your support as much as possible,” he continued.
“If any club has anything they want to talk to me about, anything with regard to their players, I am willing to talk to anybody. I don’t believe in talking behind people’s backs. If a club has a problem we will sit down face-to-face and we will have a chat. I will have my opinion, you will have yours. We will come to a compromise. All of us working together is the most important thing,” he said.

Clare must be more competitive
The initial target facing the Clare senior hurling team is to become more competitive, Fitzgerald says.
“We are not competing with the top six or seven counties at the moment. It will take a small bit of work to change that. Our strength and conditioning has to be better, our play has to be faster and we must be a bit more aggressive in the tackle,” he said at the October meeting of Clare GAA on Tuesday.
The Sixmilebridge man was unanimously appointed as the new manager and given a three-year term at the helm. Fitzgerald named Mike Deegan (Cratloe) and former St Joseph’s trainer Louis Mulqueen as selectors, before confirming the remainder of his backroom team will be appointed in consultation with the board executive. He confirmed there won’t be any more selectors but in the coming days, he will be finalising the appointment of a physical trainer and a strength and conditioning coach.
“We were very unlucky in the last two league finals as we could have won both. In the first round of the Munster championship in both years, they played ok but we have to be better than ok. As I said to last night’s meeting, I am making no promises other than I will work extremely hard for Clare hurling,” Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald and his selectors will meet an initial panel of players on Friday week. “Training panels will be given their programmes then. I don’t envisage collective training until January but the players will be given work that they will have to have done before then.”
According to the new manager, he still has to find out about players. “We still have a few guys we want to see. The older lads will be given a chance as well. It will take a big of sorting out. We will be trying to win every league game but it’s a good bit tougher now. Wexford, Limerick and Offaly are in our group and they are supposed to be ahead of us. It’s no longer a league that Clare are meant to come out of automatically.”
While he readily acknowledged there are a lot of good young hurlers in the county, he argued it has been proved that doing well in minor and U-21 doesn’t guarantee success, as has been shown in Galway and Limerick.
“They have to perform at senior level. We have to work on that and it won’t happen overnight.”
Asked for his view on the standard of Clare hurling at this time, he replied, “People will say the standard has dropped. Where were we before ’95?” he asked. “I still think we have a competitive championship. I don’t buy into what other people are saying. That’s a matter of opinion.”

Dual player issue
WITH regard to dual players, Fitzgerald said he won’t be pushing them in any one direction. “It’s very hard to do both. Players are only going to do three or four sessions a week. I don’t believe in flogging a player to death; a sensible approach must be taken. They will be made aware that they won’t be over-trained,” he said.
“One guy should look at the strength and conditioning of all teams. It’s very important that one guy does this. We are not physically as strong as the others. We must be able to compete in the tackle and not be blown away. I have suggested to the county board that one guy would look at strength and conditioning of all the teams.
“I have seen different things in papers for the last few weeks about trying to run this team or that team. My suggestion to Michael [O’Neill] is that there will be communication between all teams. I will never tell an U-21 manager or a minor or U-16 manager how to run his team. That’s his job but I think we must all have communication and be on the same wavelength about what we do. That’s the one thing that I will ask for, that we all are working together,” Fitzgerald said.

Club vs county
ON the question of club versus county with regard to fixtures, the new manager said, “There is ground in between the complete shut down we had in 1995 and now. I have had to deal with this issue in Waterford where we normally got three weeks coming into the championship and one needs that. I have also served as a club manager and I accept there are two sides in every argument. I will have no problem with players taking part in club games but there might be times when I will say to a player not to play. It will be in the best interest of the player,” he said.
The former All-star goalkeeper added, “It’s a great honour to accept the position of manager and it’s great to be back home”.
He recalled attending his first Clare match in Thurles in 1977, which he watched while sitting on the shoulders of his uncle, John. After that game and particularly watching his hero, Seamus Durack, all he wanted was to play for Clare.
“That was my dream back then and I was very lucky to get my break and play for Clare and achieve what we did. The reason we achieved was the great people we had around us, the great management and the great players. There was no one individual, there might have been certain players picked out at times, but it was the characters we had around us and the team ethos. The support from the county board and the clubs made that a very special period and it’s something I hope we go back to,” he said.

A team effort
Fitzgerald acknowledged all who rang him and asked him to allow his name forward for this job. It meant a lot that so many clubs actually rang and asked me and I was delighted with that,” he said, thanking the clubs “for showing their faith in me”.
“There is no one man going to make Clare a success. It’s going to take a team working together and working in different areas. We will work very hard on that. We all know that the last few years haven’t been fruitful for Clare. I won’t promise a quick fix. I can’t tell you I am going to turn things around and that we will go back to the glory days but the one thing I will tell you is I am going to work as hard as I possibly can. Everything I can do for Clare I am going to try and do it to bring us back up to where we need to be. That’s all I can promise,” he said.
Fitzgerald also praised the work of his predecessor Ger O’Loughlin. “I think Sparrow did a great job in the last two years. It wasn’t an easy job to come into after what had happened. He came in, he rejigged it and he started to build again. My own personal view is that the rebuilding is still far from finished. I am going to be straight about it. I think there are more players needed to be brought in and they are going to get a go. I think you have to be patient for a small bit. We all want the same thing but we have got to find out what is what and to me, character is very important. It’s important we get a bit of time. We are going to have a lot of young players in.”
With regard to Clare’s recent success at U-16, minor and U-21 levels, Fitzgerald singled out former Bord na nÓg chairman Sean O’Halloran for special mention. “There is one man that I don’t think has got much credit for it. I shoot from the hip all the time and I think the job Sean O’Halloran has done is absolutely fantastic. I know it and I have been working with him for a long time. The 21 and minor successes we have had over the last few years is down to Sean and his committee,” he said.