Wexford hurler Lee Chin has said that the team will simply have to get on with things in the aftermath of manager Davy Fitzgerald's eight-week suspension.
The Clare All-Ireland winner picked up the punishment after incidents in the hurling league semi-final against Tipperary earlier this month.
On reflection Fitzgerald decided not to contest the ban, issued for entering the pitch in protest at Tipp's second goal and tangling with a couple of opposing players, and will have to back away from team involvement during a period that includes Wexford's first championship match and possibly their second, a prospective Leinster semi-final against Kilkenny.
It is a general suspension, which, as Chin hesitantly accepts, will keep the manager off the training ground as well as out of the dug-out and dressing-room.
“I think technically no, he’s not allowed be part of training. I think that’s what’s in the rulebook, that he’s not supposed to be involved with us so we haven’t really been in contact since we’ve been back in with the club championship back in Wexford.”
After such a successful season to date, which has seen the county regain its place in the top tier of the league and reach the semi-finals, achieving a first competitive win in Kilkenny since 1957 in the process, having to function in the lead-up to the championship without their manager puts Wexford in an unusual situation.
“Yeah, I suppose it’s something that we as players never would have really faced before,” said Chin. “But look, I suppose we’ll just have to deal with whatever is there, Davy’s backroom team is very good and they’ll pick up the pieces from here. I think in my own opinion it was harsh, but you’ve just got to accept what’s happening at the moment.”
The Wexford star, who is the hurling ambassador for the John West Féile, which was launched for 2017 in Croke Park on Thursday, also has sympathy for Jason Forde. The Tipperary player is facing a two-match suspension for his physical confrontation with Fitzgerald, who has offered to support the player in his disciplinary hearing.
Helping hand
“Yeah, of course I would feel sorry for the player and I know Davy has put out a helping hand as well. But look, for any player I think it’s just a heated moment ... and Jason was just the closest player to it at the time. If it was me that Jason Forde hit on the field this wouldn’t happen, so for the player I would feel sorry for him.”
He says that although he hardly noticed his manager's incursion when it happened, the gesture meant something in the aftermath of Tipperary's 18th-minute goal in the lead-up to which Wexford defender James Breen was clearly fouled.
"I suppose we were all frustrated with what happened down in the corner. I think we all know that it was probably a free-out in that case and I think there was two or three points in the game at that stage and it went back to five or six after Noel McGrath got the goal.
“With Davy’s incident we were all frustrated but I think he kind of dealt with it for us all and in terms of our own frustration ... when you look across and you see Davy and his passion and just the way he approaches everything, when I looked across and I seen that, it kind of lit a little spark in me again, just not to give up.”
The controversy that raged after the match obscured the unpalatable conclusion to the game in which Tipp scored 3-6 in little more than 10 minutes at the end of the semi-final. Just before that barrage, Chin had struck a wonderful point – one of three from play that afternoon – to reduce the deficit to two and apparently set the scene for a thunderous finish.
Five-point barrell
“I suppose the game started shifting at that moment,” he says, “even five minutes earlier we started clawing it back point by point. When I got that score I thought that’s us back in the game and we can kick on from here but from their next puck-out they went down and got a goal and put us back on our arses.
“We were clawing back five and six points throughout the game at different phases. It was tough enough in terms of facing down another five-point barrel and it was hard to see where we were going to pull the next couple of points from.
“After that a couple of us maybe dropped the heads which Davy wasn’t too happy about. All in all for 60 minutes we were well in the game but being beaten by 11 points in the last 10 minutes isn’t great.”
That defeat was put in an unexpected context when Tipperary were in turn trimmed by Galway in last Sunday’s league final. Chin thinks the semi-final had an impact on the All-Ireland champions, who although they eventually won well had to compete for an hour.
“For 60 minutes it was a real battle. I don’t know if that took its toll on the Tipperary guys going into a game the week after. But you have to credit Galway; they can really turn it on at times, on any given day.”
Regardless of the semi-final, he says the campaign was a success: “At the end of the day one of our main goals was to get out of Division 1B. When our league campaign ended you’d be proud of that even if you wouldn’t be happy with the way you went out.”
