Davy Fitzgerald has a book out this year, an autobiography entitled At All Costs. It is ghosted by Vincent Hogan of the Irish Independent, and it is in that paper that serialised extracts of the book appear today.
Among the extracts is Davy's rationalisation for his infamous incursion onto the Nowlan Park pitch during a league quarter-final between Wexford and Tipperary in 2017.
Davy stormed on the field to confront referee Diarmuid Kirwan, and then clashed with Tipp players Jason Forde and Niall O'Meara as he left the pitch. He was subsequently given an eight-week ban and was forced to watch Wexford's famous championship victory over Kilkenny from a bespoke box in a Wexford Park stand. Forde, for his part, was given a one-match ban and missed the subsequent Munster hurling clash with Cork.
In today's Indo, Davy explains why he felt he had to storm onto the field and confront the referee, saying that he "had to do it" as the referee had not whistled for what Davy felt were two clear fouls in the lead-up to a Noel McGrath goal. So, with Wexford losing by six points after 20 minutes, Davy took flight.
Self-pity, as I know from experience, is no defence against a goal-hungry Tipp. They're programmed to destroy you...
..So I basically went to war. I had absolutely no interest in making any contact with a Tipp player, but I did want to get my own players' attention. All our work in the previous few months was about to come undone here if we fell to a 20 or 30 point hammering.
And there was a real danger of that happening, of our confidence being torn to shreds.....
...I had to change the energy of this game.
There is much more besides this yarn in the serialisation in today's Irish Independent.
