Playing in Croke Park during September Now that would be nice for the Limerick hurlers and the highly talented Shane Fitzgibbon He walks in through the front door of the hotel. A well-dressed, dapper figure. Progressive, upbeat, and fit, very fit looking. Handshake firm and eyes direct. He looked the part of a sportsman at the height of his powers, writes Jimmy Geoghegan. Shane Fitzgibbon's enthusiasm, no love for hurling is clear and unambiguous. It is most definitely his game, although he is no mean badminton player either. But it is easy to see that hurling is where his sporting ambitions lay, where he would most like to achieve something. The 28 year old Adareman thinks deeply about the game, musing on the direction that it is taking. Fearful at times about how it is going to compete with other sports for the attention of the nation's youth. He is also concerned that approaching his thirtieth birthday he appears as far away as ever from fulfiling a long cherished ambition. Winning an All-Ireland. Now that would be sweet. Not that there has been any lack of effort on his part. For eight years now Fitzgibbon has been playing senior inter county hurling. Competing at the highest level at any game, he contends, requires as much commitment, effort and dedication as any other sport where amateurs are the chief protagonists. "It is like a second job really. You are giving almost as much time to it as you are giving to your real job. So it is not just the top players in other sports, such as rugby who devote so much time. We train just as hard as any of them." Not that the Bank of Ireland official minds too much. When you are engaged in a labour of love, sacrificing time is something that is done willingly. But the rewards for eight years of travelling miles to functional training sessions and winter hurling in the mud and cold has been scanty enough. No Munster championship. No All-Ireland honours. Just a single National League medal won in 1984 when Fitzgibbon was launching his career with Limerick. This is something that rankles and perplexes him. There has been many disappointments and near misses. The '84 Munster semi final still stands out. Leonard Enright scoring an O.G. - "how unlucky can you get". Tommy Quaid, normally the most dependable of goalkeepers, dropping an easy shot that ended up in the net. "That year we performed very well up to the league final and when we won the league we felt that we had arrived. The attendance at training sessions fell and instead of building from there we lost our way. At the end of the day you get what you deserve." It has taken Limerick hurling longer to recover from that shock against Cork than Shane Fitzgibbon and his colleagues would have hoped. The road back has been littered with difficulties and obstacles. There has been many changes in the line up since then. Gone are the likes of Paudie Fitzmaurice, Quaid and Enright, Mossy Carroll, Liam O'Donoghue, Joe McKenna, Paddy Kelly. They have been replaced most recently by a newer crop of players. This year they have won their way to the semi finals of the National League. Hope begins to grow once again in the early spring. "This season we have been doing very well in the league. This is good because winning can become a habit even if some of the teams we played were under strength. But when we get to the semi final situation when we are playing in front of a big crowd in a pressure situation people can judge how good we are. We are training regularly now and we are looking forward to the challenge." From experience Shane Fitzgibbon knows that the timing for any training schedule is crucial. It needs to be carefully measured and controlled in order to get it right. "It's no good running out of your skin in the month of January. You want to keep your best for May, June and July. It's almost like being an Olympic swimmer but the difference is that if you are an Olympic swimmer, you are performing maybe one or two days, but to win an All-Ireland, say, you have to peak at certain times. You have to maintain a high standard of fitness for up to nine months of the year. But it is a problem that I wish to heavens I had to deal with. Doing well in the league is fine but the championship is what it is all about." Limerick hurlers haven't won an All-Ireland since 1973. The victory that year still casts a shadow over the county as the Cregan's, Hartigans and the rest await for their successors. Shane Fitzgibbon is well aware of this shadow. Aware that one single All-Ireland success in over fifty years is a wretched record for a traditionally strong hurling county. With disarming honesty he admits that in recent years the team just has not been up to the mark. "If you are good enough, you will win it, as simple as that." He takes considerable encouragement and comfort from the fact that Limerick are one of the longest surviving members of Division One. But somehow when the championship comes around they have not been able to get it together. The answer, he feels, is not a straight forward one. It is instead a slow process beginning with the juvenile teams in each and every club. Making sure that the youngsters get the proper technical coaching. "There are people doing great work in some clubs but they are, perhaps, coaching in different styles, different ways. What we need is everyone coaching the same way so that when the better players come up to the county level, it's only a step up from what they have been doing, not something radical or completely different." Fitzgibbon contents that he has been lucky. Attending Adare CB he came under the influence of Brother Duane, "a great man" who knew all about hurling and who was only to eager to coach youngsters who were willing to listen and learn. Young Fitzgibbons' game greatly improved. But despite this early guidance, he did not start playing inter county hurling until he got called into the under 21 team. When he made it to the senior squad it was not a very encouraging start. "The first game I started in was against Wexford in New Ross. It was not a very memorable occasion. They took me off at half time. I would safely say that I was so light I was being thrown around the place. That was in January 1985. The conditions were very heavy and I wasn't physical big enough at the time. I had to build myself up but when the summer came around I was fine. I just had to adapt." He helped Limerick beat Clare in the League Final in Thurles. Since then his club has been the only course of honours. He has many underage honours with Adare, but the county senior champions still eludes them. The last time they reached the decider was in 1990 when they were defeated by Patrickswell. "That defeat was a great disappointment to us all," he painfully recalls. In other ways though, there has been compensations. Fitzgibbon was chosen as a replacement on two different All Stars tours to the United States and Canada, playing in that remarkable hurling match in the Skydrome in Toronto. "It was an unbelievable stadium to play in. Really fantastic. The game itself was shown across Canada and there was a great deal of interest in it. Many people thought that it was a fine sport." Fitzgibbon believes that the GAA have a very marketable product in both hurling and football but there needs to be better marketing skills applied. The media more subtly used. "If the GAA is to grow, especially in the weaker counties, they are going to have to start to make it more appealing to the kids, by publicising it more in the print and visual media. Alternatively the kids are looking at the Arsenal's and the Leeds United's and looking to emulate them instead of Colm O'Rourke or Nicholas English or someone like that." One aspect of the game that the Limerick man would like to see changed is the present day system of whereby Galway and Antrim automatically progress to the All-Ireland semi finals. The set up as it stands is not, he believes, a fair one. Instead what should happen is that both the Munster and Leinster champions would be seeded while the runners up play Antrim or Galway in quarter finals with the winners in turn going into the open draw for semi final pairings. "So you could have a situation that if Cork and Limerick were the two best teams in the country, they could meet again in the All-Ireland final. I don't see anything wrong with that. If at all possible the two best teams in the country should get into the final. There are too few big games in the summer anyway." Especially for those who are knocked out in the early rounds. Something that Shane Fitzgibbon has seen happening to Limerick all too often in recent years. But now there is the later stages of the league to look forward to and then the championship soon after that when the Adareman should be taking his customary position in the forward line. The thought cheers him as he makes his way out through the hotel doors. Playing in Croke Park in September. Now that would be nice. Taken from Hogan Stand magazine 17th April 1992 Tweet

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