Davy Fitzgerald's decision to retire from intercounty hurling ends the illustrious career of one of the most passionate figures in the modern game, writes Keith Duggan
The retirement of Davy Fitzgerald from the Clare hurling panel brings to a close the elite hurling life one of the great eccentrics of modern Gaelic games. In Ireland, it has always been dangerous to dare to be different and that remains particularly so in the heavily conformist culture of the GAA. Simply wearing extravagant football boots or paying visits to the hair salon guarantees a player plenty of public comment and, more often than not, the accusation of being a Fancy Dan - which is GAA code language for what the Harlem brothers would dismiss as "a punk".
Nobody could ever accuse Fitzgerald of lacking in either moral or physical courage, although he has probably been called every curse word in the English language and has possibly had a few foreign expletives hurled his way also. The fascinating thing about the Clare man was that while he never set out to be counter-establishment or in any way different, he simply was. People who loved Clare loved Davy Fitz. People who hated Clare were driven to distraction by the antics of their goalkeeper, the ultimate small man who carried a big stick.
The successive seasons of excellence Fitzgerald maintained were ample proof of his flair and bravery in what must be the most thankless position in any ball sport, that of hurling goalkeeper. But Fitzgerald was both honest and immodest enough to declare his belief that he was the best during an era glittering with audaciously talented goalkeepers, with Damien Fitzhenry, Brendan Cummins and Donal Óg Cusack often spoken of as the leading lights of a cast that included players like James McGarry and, after a stunning debut season, Brian Mullins of Birr.
Fitzgerald never bothered with the old GAA guff of being in the right place at the right time: he was desperately and passionately helpless about his place in the Clare hurling adventure and, once established as their premier goalkeeper, about his team and his county. It is impossible these days to discuss hurling goalkeepers without reference to Christy O'Connor's definitive book, Last Man Standing. There is one passage concerning Fitzgerald that is, in a peculiar way, absolutely chilling. It concerns the Sixmilebridge man's formative days as a senior goalkeeper when he was vying for a first-team place with Leo Doyle, the Bodyke goalkeeper. Knowing that Doyle drove the same road to work in Shannon every morning, Fitzgerald would get out of bed early, cycle several miles down the road and make sure he was pucking a ball against a particular wall every time that his competitor would drive by. He would retire as soon as Doyle had passed and cycle back home, happy that he had given the other man something to think about.
The image in itself is amusing: one young hurling talent flicking through the radio channels and having to rub his eyes in disbelief at the sight of his team-mate/adversary diligently belting a ball against a wall at what, half past eight in the morning? But when you think about the fact Fitzgerald did this repeatedly, it ceases to be amusing and sits somewhere between the admirable and the downright menacing. It is one of those anecdotes that illuminates perfectly why some individuals succeed in their chosen sport: because they have to. Because they simply could not contemplate failing.
When the Clare team of 1995 began branding themselves into the national consciousness, Fitzgerald became the chief cult figure on a team that happened to be choc-a-block with them. Perhaps the seeds were sewn with the famous penalty he struck against Limerick in that famous championship, when the sight of a goalkeeper coming up the field to strike for goal was so rare as to be considered exotic. It wasn't so much he nailed the goal that made the moment as the manic sprint for home, the pure adrenaline and rabid self-belief and the madcap buck-leap as though the huge roar of the crowd had created a gust of hot air which lifted him clean off the ground.
After that, you couldn't but be drawn to him; the pale glint in the eyes, the non-stop jawing at players, umpires, the crowd, anyone who would listen, the way he would raise the roof of the stands with the sweeping arms of a conductor. And mostly because he clearly did not give a flying **** for what the world thought of him.
You could call him a little bastard for all you were worth but, sooner or later, you would have to bow to his brilliance as a goalkeeper. He could make his worst enemy acknowledge that much.
It helped Fitzgerald played behind a back line that was as taciturn as Fitzgerald was extrovert. Brian Lohan, the great full back could use words as judiciously as Clint Eastwood in the westerns and laid waste to just as many assassins on the hurling field. The Lohans, Michael O'Halloran, the Quinns; they just got on with it, leaving Fitzgerald to whip himself and the crowd into a frenzy.
Over the years, you got used to seeing Davy Fitz' coming close to tears in his passion for Clare and in the summer television interviews he would occasionally give on RTÉ, his voice always seemed to be quivering with genuine intensity at the prospect of the weekend's game. It was hard to imagine him in civilian life, as if he walked down to the post office or headed to the cinema holding the hurl and wearing the Clare shirt. That is not to say he became a caricature, it was just difficult to picture him engaging in the lower-register pursuit of simply living. But then that is true of auteur performers across sport in general.
You think back now to the immortal moments in the Clare hurling journey and Fitzgerald, their little general, was at the heart of so many. You could pick so many but who will forget the climactic moments of the 1997 All-Ireland final, Clare and Tipperary hammering away at each other and the broken ball that fell to Johnny Leahy, the cavalier natural who could not have taken the straightforward option of a match-saving point when the goal chance was so clearly on. Leahy struck low and Fitzgerald met it with a deft riposte memorably depicted by Tom Humphries in this newspaper as the moment when Davy "scoops the ball fastidiously away from his right side, as if Johnny's impudence was an insult to his housekeeping".
A bunch of us were in Donegal that day, beering, and it was true that for those few summers, hurling took a hold on the nation in a way that seems unlikely to be repeated.
Great teams splinter.
Perhaps the most fiercely united team of modern times proved as fractious as any other group once the need to be unbreakable was no longer a dynamic. We have lost count now of the number of times we had heard that so-and-so was not talking to such-and-such and that none of them are talking to Loughnane and Loughnane is talking to anyone and so on and so forth.
The squabbles hardly matter for the record remains as an abiding testament. And the news that Davy Fitz is signing off, on his own terms, will give pause for the thought it was the small man's force of will and that touch of folly in his behaviour that helped the best of Clare's hurling matches seem, in retrospect, coloured by magic.
