IRELAND’S Fittest Family is must-see TV in our house on a Sunday evening.
If you’re not familiar with the show, it features families from around the country competing against each other over a series of gruelling physical activities including wading through bogs, jumping over round bales and dragging themselves over walls.
Coaches like Donncha O’Callaghan, Anna Geary, Sonia O’Sullivan and Derval O’Rourke are all good craic but Davy Fitzgerald – who actually dreamt up the popular RTE show - is always the box office draw.
A tightly-wound ball of competitive energy who always wants to win, he pushes the families he is in charge of relentlessly. And they love it.
A friend of mine and his family took part a couple of years ago and Fitzgerald was their coach.
“I can see ye have grit,” he said before he started training them.
“I like that.”
My daughter still comes out with one of Davy’s lines which he said while one of his team was ‘Hanging Tough’ onto a bar high above the River Liffey.
“10 more seconds, gimme 10 more seconds or I’ll kill ya,” goes Davy.
“Right 10, 9… Hang in there, come annnn, keep goin, dig deep… 8, 7… Great, ye’re doin brilliant, hang aaan, look at me, keep yer eyes an me, keep goin, 6, 5… That’s it, there’s more in ya, come aaan…4, 3…”
SPLASH… The man, woman or child lost their grip on the bar and fell into the water but Davy had got those 10 more seconds out of them before they hit the water.
The day before the All-Ireland football final I heard Antrim were in negotiations to bring the Clare native up to the Glens. My journalistic reflexes went into overdrive because you could see immediately what a coup he would be for Antrim.
Yes, there were Antrim natives in for the job and they would have poured heart and soul into it and, yes, the resources required to bring the man who won All-Irelands as a player and manager with the Banner County could have been spent elsewhere, but Davy Fitz! Come on, when a man like that knocks on the door you’ve got to welcome him in.
His arrival has switched the eyes of the hurling faithful to the north-eastern corner of the country. Antrim is in the spotlight, the county’s stock has soared and you would imagine – although no-one has come out publicly to say it – that the hurlers in the Glens will be falling over themselves to get to work with their new bainisteoir.
This is the toughest challenge of Fitzgerald’s managerial career and he will need everything from the squad he picks. He isn’t all about blood, sweat and tears, he is technical, tactical and well-organised too, but the players had better be ready for plenty of good, old-fashioned hard work.
His first goal will be to get his players super-fit, get them organised and absolutely committed and you would back him to do that but is he going to win the Liam MacCarthy Cup with Antrim?
You’d love to see that happen but at the minute you have to say the answer to that question is probably not. Antrim didn’t win a game in Division One bar the relegation play-off last year but Antrim did beat Wexford in the Leinster Championship and that result, and the win over Carlow, means Fitzgerald has something to build on.
When he stepped down as Waterford manager he kept the door open on a return to management: “Never say ever…”
He’s 53 now and late 40s/early 50s seems to be when inter-county managers reach their peak these days.
Clare manager Brian Lohan (a former team-mate of Fitzgerald of course) is 52 and Armagh boss Kieran McGeeney is 53.
John Kiely, the man who has inspired the Limerick hurlers to so much success is 52, Jim McGuinness is in his 50s as is Dessie Farrell and Padraig Joyce (Galway) and Derek Lyng (Kilkenny) aren’t far off it.
So age will not weary Davy Fitz and there was no doubt that the passion for the game and for winning is still coursing through his veins in the way he reacted to Waterford losing a pulsating game against his native Clare (who of course went on to win the Liam MacCarthy) in Ennis last year.
Under Fitzgerald, Waterford failed to make it out of the Munster Championship group stage but it certainly wasn’t for the want of trying.
In the past big-name managers have been parachuted into counties and it hasn’t always worked – there’s no guarantee of success.
Joe Kernan went to Galway and it didn’t pan out the way he’d have hoped, Jack O’Connor had a spell in Kildare and wasn’t able to turn them into contenders and there was a fella called Harte from Tyrone who went to Derry…
But there have been unexpected success stories too.
Mick O’Dwyer also went to Kildare and he took them all the way to the All-Ireland final in 1998 and of course the late Paidi O Se took over the reins at Westmeath and inspired them to the Leinster Championship crown.
Do you know how many counties, apart from Dublin, have won Leinster since? One – Meath in 2010.
So these things do happen and Fitzgerald will come in and get a bump out of the Antrim players. That’s what he’s always done.
In his first year with Waterford, he took them to the All-Ireland final. In his second year back in Clare, the Bannermen won the Liam MacCarthy, Wexford made it to their first Leinster final for nine years when he went there.
So he’ll be targeting the same with Antrim and building his panel through the National League and then targeting a breakthrough in the Leinster Championship and an appearance in an All-Ireland quarter-final.
He has a lot of work to do and the Antrim boys will have to buy in totally. You can see them now at the bottom of a hill somewhere up in the Glens, covered in gutters and gasping for breath.
You know what Davy Fitz will say?
“10 more seconds, gimme 10 more seconds or I’ll kill ya…”
