Waterford legend John Mullane was surprised to hear that his former manager Davy Fitzgerald was departing from his native county after only his second season in charge.
Fitzgerald, who was in his second stint as Déise manager, left after failing to qualify for the Munster round-robin for two years in a row.
With the news that Austin Gleeson is set to return in 2025, it feels like this is the last dance for the golden generation that won All-Ireland minor and U21 medals with that senior medal still a distance dream, and with many heading towards or hitting 30, it feels like another talented Waterford group are failing to win the big one (which sounds pretty familiar).
Speaking on the Irish Independent's Throw-In podcast, the De La Salle legend felt Fitzgerald was planning for 2025 and even 2026 after blooding so many players in the league campaign.
“This has come as a massive surprise,” Mullane said.
“Now, look, you would have been hearing rumblings. The fact that it broke last night, I was going, Jesus, wow, that is a bit of a surprise. Only time will tell what the reasons for it were. Was it Davy wanting to step away? Did he want to take time out from inter-county management? Did the county board want change? Did the players want to change?
For me, it was disappointing for Waterford as a whole because we’ve seen during the Munster campaign that he was building something nice. There was something to build on going into 2025, and who knows, even in 2026, would I have said that after the league campaign? Absolutely not, would I have said after last year's championship campaign? No, I wouldn’t, but maybe what got lost in the league campaign was he was down an enormous amount of bodies. One thing to his credit is he blooded an enormous amount of players in that league, and I say he blooded an awful amount of players in the league with the view to 2025 and maybe 2026, so yeah, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher.”
Waterford hurling is at a crossroads
Mullane is now worried about the future state of Waterford hurling. With the poor performances from underage teams in recent years and the dominance of Ballygunner at club level, things don’t look to be getting better any time soon.
“The killing thing from a Waterford point of view now is that we're not getting any continuity,” Mullane said.
“The next manager that will come in will be the fifth manager within six years, and that’s not good. Whatever manager comes in now, he's going to be starting from scratch. What type of style is he going to bring to the table? Davy was pushing a few more bodies forward after breaking away from the sweeper system, which was great to see.
It’s a big one now for the county board because of the lifespan of this team. There is one, maybe two years max left in this team when you see the state of Waterford hurling at the moment; from underage to our club competitions, they are lacklustre and not great from a club point of view. Things are struggling as well. You have the Ballygunner dominance, so Waterford hurling is definitely at a crossroads, and the county board needs to step back. We have to get the right appointment in the future for the next couple of years that’s going to marry everything together and try to put something in place that will put a pathway to allow Waterford to improve over the next few years and leave us in a good place in the next five to six years and that’s going to be difficult trying to find the right person to do that.”
It’s a big couple of weeks for the county board.
