Don’t talk to Davy Fitzgerald about pre-season, Davy Fitzgerald doesn’t do pre-season
Davy Fitzgerald goes hard from the get-go, or Davy Fitzgerald goes home.
The Davy Fitzgerald era began for Wexford in Gorey on Sunday afternoon and it is fair to say the Davy Fitzgerald era got off to a rip-snorting start.
The callow students of University College Dublin had their asses handed to them by a rabid Wexford team, hopped up on the competitive juices that everyone’s favourite ‘Ireland’s Fittest Family’ mentor has flowing through their veins.
Wexford have not won the Walsh Cup since 2002 but, if we learned anything from Davy Fitzgerald’s time with Clare and Waterford it is that Davy Fitzgerald takes every competition he enters seriously.
So it was that UCD were smoked, 5-31 to 1-8. A preposterous scoreline that had Davy Fitzgerald speaking about “appetite” and talking down the hopes of escaping a Division 1B that includes Limerick and Galway.
Matthew O’Hanlon at centre-back, Lee Chin on the edge of the square and 13 different scorers made this an interesting outing for the Model men, who are out again in Carlow next Sunday.
But if you wanted to sum up what Sunday said about Davy Fitzgerald and Wexford hurling, you could look at this picture…
Or this moody effort…
This determined one…
This classic one…
Or even this nostalgic one with Nicky English…
But they all fall short of telling you what Davy Fitzgerald has brought to Wexford hurling.
Wexford fans are not in need of hope – the foolish bastards (of which I am one) always have a bit of hope stored up at the start of the season.
What Davy Fitzgerald has brought is expectation – a far more rare, far more dangerous thing. It was plain to see in Gorey on Sunday in the thousands who turned up on a January afternoon to see Davy Fitzgerald’s hurlers open for Banty McEnaney’s footballers.
Big crowd here in Gorey enjoying the Walsh cup wexford now up at halftime 4-12 to 1-5 pic.twitter.com/430fI0rEjB
— Wexford GAA (@OfficialWexGAA) January 8, 2017
The Davy Fitzgerald era has begun.
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