Waterford joint captain Jamie Barron says that his red card against Tipperary last month was tough to take.
“Obviously, disappointed. Your heart sinks a bit. Look, these things happen. It was spur of the moment, there wasn’t much in it. The linesman obviously flagged something and I had to go. Disappointed and you’d be hoping that it won’t be happening again. Going into the championship, we’ll be making sure to keep a lid on any red cards for any players. It’s detrimental to the team and it’s just not what we need going forward.”
After the first sending off of his inter county career, he watched Liam Cahill’s side take over. “You never want to have a feeling like that. When I got the red card, the game swung Tipperary’s way. They got a few goals straight away and it just showed the margins of error. When something like that happens, another team can just click into gear and that’s it, game over. Lessons learned anyway!”
The 29-year-old is now the longest serving player on the Déise panel. Fitzgerald is the fifth Waterford manager he has dealt with. The new bainsteoir chose Barron and Stephen Bennett to lead the team in 2023. “He just called in a few of the elder players that have been around the panel for a period of time and he picked myself and Stephen. We’ve Tadhg De Burca and Conor Prunty as vice-captains. Look, there’s a lot of players that have leadership roles, it’s not just myself and Stephen. There’s seven or eight of us there that chat a lot and discuss a lot of things that need to be fixed or if things are going on in the background, how we can sort them.”
His mother Siobhan was the first person to find out the good news. “My mother would always text me late after a training to make sure that I got home safe. I told her then. She was delighted and she passed around the message and I got a few more messages then. Family, at the end of the day, is everything. When they’re happy, you’re happy.”
Listen back to the full interview with Jamie Barron from WLR's Lár Na Páirce show.
