Clare legend Brian Lohan has described former team-mate Davy Fitzgerald’s sideline antics as “not great”.
Fitzgerald was sent to the stand during his Wexford side’s draw with Galway last Sunday having served a four-week ban earlier this year for clashing with a referee as well as being suspended for eight weeks in 2017 following a pitch incursion.
Lohan played in front of goalkeeper Fitzgerald at full-back when Clare won All-Irelands in 1995 and 1997 and, when asked about his sideline demeanour, said: “I don’t know if it’s genuine passion. We’re all passionate about the game. We show it in different ways.
“So, you know, he has the way he does things and people have to kind of fit into that. But I think some of the antics, they’re not great.”
Relations have soured between the pair in recent years with Fitzgerald writing in his autobiography last year that they had “fallen out big time”.
He was unhappy that Lohan had called for a review of Clare hurling while he was managing the senior team but the tipping point, as Fitzgerald saw it, was a Fitzgibbon Cup tie in 2014 between his LIT side and UL, managed by Lohan at the time.
In his book, Fitzgerald described how there were “a few jostles exchanged” as his side warmed up in the area where UL had set up but Lohan insisted: “That’s his version of events but, I don’t know. There was no run-in that day.”
Fitzgerald claimed he called Lohan months later to try and smooth the waters but that the conversation turned sour.
Lohan said: “I don’t know whether that was the last phone call that was between us. It wasn’t. Look, I suppose, I don’t know. I don’t have anything really to say about him to be honest.”
With the 25th anniversary of their 1995 triumph approaching next year, Lohan was then asked how relations are among the players from that era.
He replied: “Generally relationships are very good amongst everyone, bar one player.”
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