GAA folk routinely belittle soccer fans, particularly people who support English teams. Supporting a team of mercenaries, a lot of them spectacularly horrible and all of them completely willing to abandon you if they receive a better offer from someone else. How could you give your affection to such a horror?

Well, here’s hoping that Waterford fans of all stripes will discover the joys of all of the above. Our new manager, David Fitzgerald, has not got the most spotless of reputations. Part of that is pure Waterford bigotry, a product of the fallout from the 1998 Munster final replay. But part of it is based on observation of a man who took every defeat personally and reacted accordingly, best exemplified by his incendiary reaction after Clare were narrowly beaten by Tipperary - the true bête noire of Banner hurling - in the 1999 Munster U-21 final. And we all know where his true loyalties lie. The playing days of Gerald and Justin McCarthy were so far in the dim and distant past that it was easy to put the Corkness to one side. It won’t be so easy with Davy Fitz, a man who didn’t so much nail his colours to the mast as be nailed up on the mast alongside them.

None of this means he can’t be a fine Waterford manager, and should he deliver the goods on the first Sunday in September it won’t matter a jot. Just remember this the next time you airily dismiss the mercenary nature of professional soccer.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Football News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.