6/26/2023 0 Comments Peter still from typ o![]() In a way he was a cross between the evangelism and eloquence of Liam Griffin and the charisma, athletic frame and shorts of John Maughan like the Crossmolina man, Fitzpatrick spent some time in the military, serving in the 27th Infantry Battalion stated in Dundalk. That summer of 2010 he’d perform some miracles of his own, masterminding the defeat of Kieran McGeeney’s Kildare en route to the Leinster final, while emerging as one of the most riveting figures of that championship. Now every time I see her I feel so lucky.” “It’s an awful shock when someone tells you your daughter isn’t going to make it,” he’d recall to Ewan MacKenna of the old Sunday Tribune in the summer of 2010. She entered a coma, was administered her last rites and Fitzpatrick was told there was no hope for her.īut yet he stayed by her bedside for nine days without leaving her once. Fitzpatrick raced home, carried her in his arms into the A&E in Louth county hospital where he was informed she had an extreme case of meningitis. In September 2003, just a couple of weeks before he’d win that maiden county with St Patrick’s and a future collaborator called Mickey Harte won a maiden All-Ireland with Tyrone, Fitzpatrick’s then 16-year-old daughter Daramay had collapsed in their family home. ![]() Portlaoise beat them by 25 points.įitzpatrick though knew from personal experience there was no such thing as lost causes. The first week he got the job he went to watch county champions Mattock Rangers in the provincial championship. ![]() They had just managed to avoid relegation from Division Three on scoring difference and had been knocked out on the first day of that year’s qualifiers. Taking the county team at some point had long been an ambition of his and in the autumn of 2009 the opportunity finally arose. In 2003 he led St Patrick’s Lordship to their first Louth senior championship after making that breakthrough the club won a further six titles over the subsequent 12 years. In 1985 he won a senior county title with his home club of Clan na Gael, a victory he’d credit less to his role at centre back and more to the sweet left foot of a future soccer international by the name of Steve Staunton.Īfter his playing career he fell into coaching. He’d get his hands on some silverware in those years. For the next 16 years he’d played senior for the county and feature in six provincial semi-finals but each time Louth fell short. He had won a provincial medal before for the county alright back in 1981 but that was only at U21. Instead of being his most painful day in football, it should have been his most glorious, the culmination of a life highly devoted to Louth GAA. What happened after the game should never happen to any referee.” “I wouldn’t like that to happen to anybody. “He was really shook up in fairness,” Fitzpatrick would recall 10 years on from that day. That he had the grace to allow Fitzpatrick into his dressing room to raise his objections that he would later accept he had made an “awful mistake” that ultimately it was the GAA’s fault for not acknowledging the gravity of that mistake and ordering a replay and for how rattled Sludden was in that immediate aftermath. But either side of that comment Fitzpatrick also felt and expressed a degree of sympathy for Sludden. In his first post-match interview he described Sludden as “Dick Turpin without a mask” for presiding over “pure daylight robbery”. Although Croke Park stadium director Peter McKenna disapprovingly questioned why the Louth manager had entered Sludden’s orbit, the Irish Independent at the time viewed his intervention as “a remarkable display of composure from the Dundalk man who had every right to be spitting feathers”.įitzpatrick was indeed seething over the decision and the result.
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