Davy Fitzgerald has apologised to Wexford supporters after claiming his players putting up “the white flag” in this evening’s Leinster semi-final defeat to Galway.
“I suppose for the first time in three and a bit years I’ve been with Wexford we didn’t fight. We threw in the towel and that’s the bottom line. I have to apologise to the Wexford people because we’re not like that. We let them down today, we didn’t perform and we hold our hands up ‘cause we were absolutely terrible.
"We were shocking. Any team you are over you want them to fight and do whatever. We didn’t do that today and that’s not good enough as far as I’m concerned.
“The first 20 minutes we were in it, we probably had two or three goal chances. We retaliated when we shouldn’t have retaliated but they’re small things. As the game went on, they won the 50-50 battles more and the thing that annoys me more was we didn’t push in the last 15 or 20 minutes.
“We just put up the white flag and saw the game out and that is very disappointing. There is no point hiding when you have a performance like that; you man up and you say it as it is and that’s how we were and that’s the end of story.”
With the qualifier draw due to take place on Monday morning, Wexford now hope to navigate a path through the back door but Fitzgerald says his team have to realise that what they produced this evening was unacceptable.
“Look, other teams have got the same thing. I think Tipperary got beaten in a Munster final last year pretty well. I’m not really worried what the result is the next day; what I’m worried about is will we come out and will we fucking fight. That’s the fucking name of the game.
I’m involved in hurling to compete; I’m not involved in fucking hurling to go out there and put up the white flag and hand Galway a game like we did tonight.
"It’s absolutely horrendous and I’m not happy with it.
“I’m disappointed for the lads because they actually worked hard. I absolutely adore them lads, I have unbelievable time for them but that’s not acceptable what we did tonight. They’re a great bunch but it’s not acceptable.
"You feel like that sick in your stomach it’s incredible. I can get over being beaten but we’re a lot better than that.”
Fitzgerald didn’t want to take away from Galway’s deserved win.
“I thought we found it hard to win frees in the first 20 minute - we were fouled, I thought, two or three times going through and didn’t get the frees we deserved. That’s fact.
"Did it make a difference in the game? No way, Galway were the better team 110% but you would like a break or two at the start when you know you’ve got inside.
“I think you’ll see we did create three or four goal chances at the start which we needed to take. We created very little in the second half, maybe one or two. The boys were telling me inside Galway had 40 scoring opportunities, we had 37 and you’re saying to yourself, ‘Jesus, it doesn’t feel like that’.”
The Clare native added: “It’s important we hurt after this. It’s one of the worst feelings, trust me, you can have. We’ve over 50 something games and we’ve won the majority and this hurts.
A defeat doesn’t bother me but by Jesus you fight until you drop. And it didn’t happen.
