Having added consistency to his exceptional skills and athleticism, the Clareman has become the outstanding player in the league
YouTube is the flea market of the internet, teeming with retro stuff you never knew you needed. Patrick Kelly said you will find footage from the 2016 league quarter-final betweenand Tipperary, and there it is, eight hectic minutes, with the commentary replaced by Beethoven’s Symphony No 9 in D minor. Shazam knew the tune.
“He kept his place for the semi-final against Kilkenny and I remember in the team meeting the manager saying to him, ‘You’re not going to be catching puck-outs today over this lad. Don’t be trying to go up and catch with Walter .’ The first Kilkenny puck-out, Eoin Murphy landed it down on top of them and he caught it. That’s just the way he is.
How he got to this point is a different story. When his club, Inagh-Kilnamona, reached the county final in 2021 Fitzgerald said in an interview that his Clare career “didn’t have the trajectory I’d have liked”. He was 25 by then, and out of favour. “I suppose he just had a look in the mirror. In these things you can be blaming management, you can be blaming this and that. He had to get his confidence back first of all, then he looked at himself, ‘Am I performing to the level that I’m able to?’
“He’s different,” says Patrick Kelly. “In Clare, in the past, we had big men in the backs. In the forwards, we weren’t overly blessed with big, tall, athletic men. The game now is more of a possession, retention, running game. It suits Fitzy. He’s able to get around, he’s able to link it, he’s able to break the line.”
“When he was in the forwards he was a target ,” says Tomas Kelly, the club manager. “They would be looking to zone in on his temperament and see could they get a reaction out of him.
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