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*Éire Óg captain Aaron Fitzgerald accepts the Jack Daly from Clare GAA Chairman, Kieran Keating. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
CAPTAIN for Éire Óg’s three-in-a-row success, Aaron Fitzgerald has hailed their “surreal” dominant spell and said there is a strong desire for the Ennis club to push on in their Munster campaign.
For the third year on the bounce, Fitzgerald walked the steps of Cusack Park to take the Jack Daly from Clare GAA Chairman, Kieran Keating in front of a sea and red.
No Éire Óg team has ever enjoyed as much success at senior level. “It is a bit surreal, I’m not going to say we didn’t expect it coming into the game, we were all going for it, we thought we had the ability to win it, other than a cagey twenty minutes in the second half I thought we were comfortable throughout,” Aaron remarked of their historic win.
Not alone does he captain the side but from full-back Aaron has led by example as the Townies maintain a firm grip on the Jack Daly. Hunger and drive has been to the heart of their championship glory, he said. “To be honest we don’t really look at other teams, we look at the video a small bit but we try and concentrate on ourselves, that is all you can do. We’ve got great talent but there is great drive there especially from the younger lads coming through, there is a hunger there and it is unbelievable”.
Part of the Éire Óg side that competed in a relegation play off in 2016, Aaron admitted that the win over St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield was a turning point for the club. “It was a stage for myself when I transitioned from being one of the bold younger lads to well one of the bold older lads, you are either in or out. I wouldn’t say we decided that we were going to focus everything on it but to be honest this is my whole life, I sacrifice a lot well herself sacrifices a lot at home because I’m tunnel vision on sport at the moment, eventually that will give in but I’m lost for words really”.
One of the “bold other lads” he is and any of the 4,239 spectators who purchased a match programme will appreciate the humour of the blocklayer. Particular highlights include labelling thirty six year old netminder Bernard Power as the manager’s pet “because he’s around the same age”, quipping that Manus Doherty and Ikem Ugwueru would last the longest of the panel on a desert island “because they would be late arriving in the first place”, calling out Ronan Lanigan’s “shocking” fashion sense for “the white chinos/jeans or whatever they were” and remarking that the question asking for his ‘favourite position’ was “very inappropriate”.
Club football necessitates having some element of fun in the dressing room, the former county defender said. “If you can’t have a bit of craic what can you have, it is club football, you’re trying to have as much fun as you can while winning, we’ve managed to do that over the last six years”.
Éire Óg are making the most of their golden generation, he noted. “Seánie Buckley always says you have to cash in when things are going well, it is a good thing that a lot of the boys in the dressing room are listening to him because we’ve cashed in with five in six years which is surreal, madness really”.
There is a strong appetite for the club to kick on in Munster, Fitzgerald stated. “.For most of us a lot of our regrets would be in Munster, looking at the game last year against Finbarrs we were comfortable enough until seventeen or eighteen minutes, we made some mistakes, goals went in and we went flat after that but we were comfortable enough in that game looking back on it and I wouldn’t have thought it at the time. When we watched the video, we definitely could have won that game. We’re going to give it a good rattle but you can’t look past Clare and your next game, that is all we’ve been doing all year”.
