Pride and frustration for Joe Baldwin after nurturing Fermanagh hurling's green shoots
After six highly successful seasons in charge of the Fermanagh hurlers - they won three trophies and two promotions - the man from Kilkeel, County Down spent the last two matches of their Nicky Rackard Cup campaign watching from a distance, before confirming his departure as manager yesterday.
Baldwin maintains leaving had always been the plan - "Six years is a long time" - but that was hastened because he had upset some of the panel by calling out players missing training ahead of a 7-20 to 2-18 home loss to Sligo on 26 April.
"We have boys that only completed one pitch session this week," he told the Fermanagh Herald after that stinging defeat.
"It's really impossible for us to manage and coach boys if they're not going to put the complete shoulder to the wheel all the time.
"Inter-county hurling takes full commitment and we didn't have that today."
A breach of the apparent unwritten rule that Gaelic managers should keep criticism of individuals in-house? Almost a month on, Baldwin tells RTÉ Sport that it was an attempt to motivate gone awry, but that he also "hadn't said anything that I didn't say privately a hundred times in the changing rooms.
"Just because you're small… there are certain standards need to be adhered to. This is the point that I was trying to get across.
"We had players that week who didn't complete one pitch session in the middle of championship. That would be totally unheard of.
"I don't want to be seen to be criticising the players, because a lot of the players have given me so much over the last six years... [for example] John Duffy and Caolan Duffy were traveling back from England.
"This year, for some reason, maybe circumstances, I think we found out just how small we are. There were boys working away, boys travelling. We picked up a few injuries.
"You've only got two [adult] clubs and it is very small. But at this time of year, you need everybody to put their shoulder to the wheel. We just weren't getting that and it was deeply frustrating.
"We tried to create as professional a set up as we possibly could, but every single night that I'm driving down the road, my phone pings five or six times with excuses.
"It was one of those things that I said in the spur of the moment. It's said now, I can't unsay it.
"But one pitch session a week and no strength and conditioning is not going to win you a match at all, at any level. Even at club level.
"If I was a player, and I was listening to what I had said, even though you knew it was true, you still would have been pretty annoyed at me"
"Maybe it was wrong [to say it], but it was said. If I was a player, and I was listening to what I had said, even though you knew it was true, you still would have been pretty annoyed at me.
"I understand their frustrations. I was trying to say it from a player's point of view, it just didn't work out the way that I thought it was going to work out."
Baldwin says he knew he had "lost the changing room" after that but didn't want a dramatic departure to overshadow the last two games of the Nicky Rackard campaign, which selectors Conor Tinnelly and Seamus Breslin agreed to stay on and oversee, so stated that he had temporarily stepped aside instead.
"The players had to come first because they still had a chance. The week of the Roscommon game, all the info that I would've had on Roscommon, I would've still been liaising with Seamus and Conor.
"Because at the end of the day, of course, I still wanted the team to win and wanted the boys to qualify.
"This is the frustrating thing about it. If they had put their shoulder to the wheel, they could have been sitting in a Nicky Rackard final. I honestly believe that. They played five Nicky Rackard games, 10 halves of hurling, and they were leading in five of the halves.
"I felt, for the good of Fermanagh hurling, the best thing for me to do was just to step aside quietly, let the year pan out, and then I was finishing up anyway.
"This was year six, so it was always going to be my last year. Obviously, what happened with my health last year and where I live [Coleraine] and the toll that it takes, I decided that this was it."
It's hard to question Baldwin's commitment to the Ernesiders cause. He was making a nearly five-hour round trip to each session from his home in Derry, something that must have made players missing training harder to stomach.
What happened with his health last year was a stroke, in January, which he, incredibly, took only three weeks away to recover from, returning to lead the county to his second and their third Lory Meagher Cup with victory over Longford at Croke Park last June.
"I've recovered maybe 90%, but it was a full on-stroke," he says. "I probably should have took more time away, but I love the game and I felt the best place was to go back on to the hurling field.
"My partner Frances is a nurse and she was there all along. She would sort of guide you on what to do and what not to do. And I'm a lot better placed than I was when it happened.
"I'm gonna take a wee bit of time off now. I'm still doing quite a bit of club coaching up here in Derry [with Liskea camogie] but I certainly would have ambitions to get back into the game again.
"You can say it's all about playing, but for me nothing beats winning."
Fermanagh lost to Roscommon and drew with Mayo to finish bottom of the fourth-tier Nicky Rackard group. They will contend for the Lory Meagher Cup again next season.
However, they will also compete in Division 3 of the Allianz Hurling League, having finished runners-up to Louth in the reorganised fourth tier this spring.
"For the amount of work that me and my management team put into it over the last six years, to be judged on the last three weeks, it's not very nice," reflects Baldwin.
"We've been in six finals. We won two Lory Meaghers, we won a National League [3B in 2022], we gained promotion this year. I don't think it's a bad record, you know?
"This year, I felt we probably could get promotion, which we did, and then things really unravelled really in the championship."
Despite the manner of his departure though, Baldwin still sees a bright future for hurling in the county, which is growing again after almost a decade of only having one adult men's team.
"When I first started, I was dealing with just Lisbellaw. Now you've got four guys from Erne Gaels who started in that [county] team, which is brilliant.
"Fermanagh now have six, eight juvenile clubs sustainable at Under-16 level. They've just got a couple of Ulster College titles there this year.
"I have no doubt that [new head of hurling] William Maher will do a marvellous job. I know there was a road show up here last weekend that was very well attended. The more you can play hurling and the more that you can expose hurling to children, if you can see it, you can inspire to be it.
"It's not easy. It takes a lot of work but Fermanagh can certainly continue to grow. I wish them all the best and all the players all the best.
"Hurling is a gift from the gods given to the Irish people and it's something that you've just got to continue to do as often as you possibly can."
Watch a hurling championship double-header, Dublin v Galway (2pm) and Cork v Waterford (4pm), on Sunday from 1.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player.
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