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Davy Fitz - time for a bit of respect as a manager?

O Riain · 2010-07-22 01:49:33

When Davy took over waterford, everybody and their granny had already made up their opinion, they hated him, he was useless and had no clue of the game or how to train a team. 2 and a half years on he has got waterford to one (forgettable) All Ireland Final appearance, 2 Munster final appearances with 1 Munster…

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#32 23-07-2010 11:36PM

Daysha

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At this stage I'm probably one of DF's biggest fans. So much so that, barring a 2008-esque capitulation in the semi finals, I'd happily sign him up for another 2 years tomorrow morning.

The fact is when he took over the squad was in turmoil. We had lost in the 1st round of Munster, shipping 2-26 against Clare....2-26!! The squad needed freshening up and as a guy who the players could seem to relate to more than Justin, it looked like he was the right man for the job. In the meantime we've lost 3 Championship matches. 2 of them were against the best team ever to play the game, the other we gifted them 3 goals because of a full-back performance that wouldn't be good enough for a junior game.

In every other Championship game we've played, if we were still within a chance of winning with around 10 minutes to go we've gone on to win the game, either in that original 70 minutes or the resulting replay. That is a never-say-die attitude that was non-existant under Justin. You'd lose count on the amount of games we lost by only a couple of points between 2002-2007 because of slack defending in the final quarter.

Granted, when we played well under Justin we were near-unstoppable. The 2002 Munster final, the 04 game against Clare, to a less extent the 07 Munster semi-final against Cork, those were days when everything just clicked. Unfortunately those days weren't near consistent enough for an All-Ireland title.

One of the Sunday Game lads put it well when he said Davy Fitz has done one of the toughest jobs in management, making the transition from one team to another almost seamless. Tipp went through a few barren years before showing their full potential, Galway are still waiting for their underage wins to translate to senior success, but we've gradully brought in those successful minor and U21 players into the setup while still keeping that same consistent level in the Championship.

That is in no small part down to Davy strifing for a competitiveness within the panel none of us have seen in Waterford for a generation. He used 40-something players in the league yet we only lost 2 games. Last weekend a large reason why we finally beat Cork was because of the strength of our subs bench, something that would've been almost laughable under Justin.

In the end of the day, we are 70 minutes away from reaching our 2nd All-Ireland final in 3 years. For a team in such disarray just over 24 months ago that is an unbelievable achievement.

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