Fitzgibbon Cup: Mary I boss Jamie Wall looking forward to tilt at UCC

It’s been a January with more than a few postponements.

This slot was supposed to be filled with a report from the Limerick-Cork game in the Co-op SuperStores Munster Hurling League but the game was postponed – for the third time.

Also falling foul of the weather was last week’s Electric Ireland Fitzgibbon Cup clash between Maynooth University and Mary Immaculate College of Limerick. The teams share a three-team group with UCC and it means that Wednesday’s clash between Mary I and UCC will start things off.

Mary I’s manager, for the eighth successive year, is Kilbrittain man Jamie Wall. He reached the final with the college as a player – losing to UCC in 2013 – and then served as a selector Eamonn Cregan for the 2016 win before taking over as manager as they retained the trophy the following year.

Though now based back in Cork, working with solicitors Ronan Daly Jermyn, he continues to give his time to the Shannonside institution.

“I love it,” he says, “it feels like a club.

“You either connect with it or you don’t and one of the main reasons I have a strong connection with it is probably 2013.

“It was our first year playing in it in a long, long time, we had a lot of good results that year and we got to the final.

“We actually drew with UCC at home in the group stage, a last-minute goal from Luke O’Farrell, and that was probably when the bug bit about third-level.

“Ever since then, I’ve been hooked. There’s lots of people don’t have that connection and that’s fine but those that do have it feel it very strongly.

“It’s something that’s very evident in UCC as well – you see the guys that come back for more, like Tom Kingston, Tom Kenny, John Grainger, then Keith Ricken in CIT.

“It’s a community in and of itself – we’ll be going to war over the next couple of weeks but we’re all banging the same drum a lot of the time.”

For the last four years, Wall was also in charge of Kilbrittain, taking them to the final of the Co-op SuperStores Lower IHC (now Premier JHC) in 2021 as well as reaching two semi-finals and a quarter-final.

He was living in Limerick most of that time, so he’s well-used to traipsing up and down the N20 – “For a man who prides himself on his organisational skills, I really didn’t do that one correctly,” he laughs, “managing the home club from Limerick and now managing Mary I from Cork!” – but, while he feels that managing a club is something with a shelf-life, a longer stint is possible with a college team, due to the natural turnover of players.

“You look at the management jobs in top levels of sport,” he says.

“The managers that stay for a long time have cycles because they change the players out and that’s how they stay there for so long.

“You probably wouldn’t stay in a club job for so long but the automatic changing of the players in a college team helps to keep things fresh.

“Obviously, there’s no player there from when I first started and only three there for six years.”
Longevity is an advantage in terms of knowing exactly what resources are available. The challenge then is to mould them into something that can compete with the big boys.

“One of the huge disadvantages of the Fitzgibbon is that access is diminishing every year,” Wall says.

“That’s a conversation for another day – we’re not going to launch a broadside about it this week! – but an advantage with Mary I being a small college is that you’re broadly aware of everyone.

“You’re there for a while, so you have experience of the guys from the previous years and the only ones you have to run the rule over are the incoming second years.

“In that sense, you’re starting the race a step or two further ahead – now, our limited numbers mean that those steps are, at the very least, brought back to level.

“There are pros and cons with everything. If you were in charge of a big college, you might miss out on someone. We’ll get everyone and then it’s a case of whether they’re good enough.”