Waterford GAA Discussion Thread 2011-2012

Very positive game for us, even if I felt me might have gotten caught by not putting enough daylight between ourselves and Clare when we had the chance.

Overall, a lot of green shoots, and am more and more happy about the way we are going, the more I think about it. The league is firmly behind us now, and I think this team will grow stronger as the year goes on.

Winning on Sunday was just what we needed, and guarantees us a Munster final spot, as well as at least an All-Ireland quarter final. For that, I am quite glad, as I felt the qualifiers could have been quite hairy with us still finding our feet.

The thing I am happiest most about from Sunday is the way we went about our business. No more do we have to grimace at the way we have laid out our stall for the last 3/ 4 years, and despite whatever successes it brought us, I feel the way we went out on Sunday is a better fit with the players and skills we have at our disposal.

Key positives for me would be the distribution of scorers, the openness of our game plan, and the spread of substitutes used. Strong performances all over the pitch, regardless of experience, were a sight for sore eyes, and can only imagine we feel in Waterford now how Cork may have during the league in relation to their own team.

It was a very direct gameplan on Sunday, with a lot of high ball into our inside forwards, one could see the intent was to open up Clare for goals, which I think was the right plan given their clear frailties at the back in the last few years. I feel however had we mixed high ball, with some nice low ball inside, I think we might have been more effective in getting the goals we were obviously targetting, and suspect the game would have been dead before the 70 odd minutes. This is more something to take away for the next day though, as opposed to criticism, as I think we all know we won't be reaping dividends from raining that sort of ball down on opposition full backs later in the year.

Delighted to see us get into such good goalscoring positions, and think with a little more work, we will make better use of them. Several times we had men in better positions, but that awareness will come, and before we can be more clinical, we need to be getting into those sort of dangerous positions, which on Sunday we were. I have no doubt O'Brien and Ryan will come on an awful lot in light of the experience on Sunday, both in terms of decision making and execution, and very happy to be in a position where we are talking about tweaking our play, as opposed to wholesale changes.

Once again, a very positive overall team performance for me. Only players you could say that didn't have such a great day also happened to be those with very little hurling played due to injury. This is a very positive place to be in, in my opinion, especially with so many new and young players given their championship debuts on Sunday.

Hopefully this will all help to spread back a little buzz around the city and county, which was noticeably absent on Sunday (at least in the city). I fear its too much for the Munster council to get sense in time for the Munster final in a few weeks, with regard to ticket prices, but hopefully the fact its the Munster Final may draw a few more from the county than on Sunday.

Cork or Tipp then in a few week, and even if Tipp, feel oddly more optimistic than last year

Up the Déise!

EDIT: shout out for the poor refereeing on Sunday. Thankfully it didn't influence the result in the end for us, but almost pulled my hair out with some of the calls against us in the second half on Sunday, which seemed to take any momentum out of our play just when it looked like we were building any. In fairness, Clare probably fell afoul of the referee in the first half, especially with the penalty awarded to the bauld Kelly, but when you see such poor/ soft calls against you as the game is reaching its conclusion, it never looks so good..

club deise also have a facebook page!

senior championship weekend again gentlemen/ladies, could ballygunner and mount sion be thrown into relegation? will de la salle turn on the style against roanmore? will fourmile keep their 100 per cent record against dunhill? name ur winners for the weekend

deisedude wrote: »

You dont need a facebook account to access the page

Yes, I see that now. Oddly it did when I first clicked on it. Not sure what is going on..

Can't believe that there isn't a double header in Walsh Park this weekend. The Ballygunner v Passage and DLS v Roanmore games would have drawn a great crowd.

I think the Friday night game Ballygunner v Passage won't suit a lot of people, and then I expect DLS to beat Roanmore fairly handily so probably won't attract many neutrals.

Unless there is a very good reason that a double header cannot be played, this would appear to be a no-brainer.

hardybuck wrote: »

Can't believe that there isn't a double header in Walsh Park this weekend. The Ballygunner v Passage and DLS v Roanmore games would have drawn a great crowd.

I think the Friday night game Ballygunner v Passage won't suit a lot of people, and then I expect DLS to beat Roanmore fairly handily so probably won't attract many neutrals.

Unless there is a very good reason that a double header cannot be played, this would appear to be a no-brainer.

Championship games involving Intercounty players playing the following weekend (footballers v Wicklow) are usually on Friday nights. JJ Hutchenson plays for Ballygunner.

egpower wrote: »

I don't agree with Hardybuck's statement at all and I think he is being incredibly harsh on him. Tommy Ryan is a short a few things (bit of physicality and a bit of craft maybe) for inter county hurling, but two things he has in his locker are pace and finishing (goal v Galway last year and v Clare in the U21 MF 3 years ago).
I would have staked all my money (admittedly that's shag all...) on his finishing that shot to the roof of the net, but as another poster said he was expertly hooked. The point I am making is if you are Tommy Ryan and you come on - you are in there to do just that. It was worht a try. If it had been saved, we might have scored from the rebound. It's very easy be wise afterwards lads....

You are so, so wrong. He should have known there was a man behind him and that he was too close to keeper. You (he) need(s) selflessness.

egpower wrote: »

I don't agree with Hardybuck's statement at all and I think he is being incredibly harsh on him. Tommy Ryan is a short a few things (bit of physicality and a bit of craft maybe) for inter county hurling, but two things he has in his locker are pace and finishing (goal v Galway last year and v Clare in the U21 MF 3 years ago).
I would have staked all my money (admittedly that's shag all...) on his finishing that shot to the roof of the net, but as another poster said he was expertly hooked. The point I am making is if you are Tommy Ryan and you come on - you are in there to do just that. It was worht a try. If it had been saved, we might have scored from the rebound. It's very easy be wise afterwards lads....

"Expertly hooked"? He was hooked...I'd expect a defender on his back to do that. Ryan had at least one player who would have had a straightforward tap in if he had held on a split second longer and then passed. Same goes for Gavin O'Brien but it wasn't as blatant.

I've played and lost a couple of tight games in this scenario, each time it was one of the fairly unintelligent players on the team responsible. On each occasion they got a massive boot up the arse from the rest of the players in particular and they didn't make the mistake twice.

The two lads saw their name in the headlines and almost cost us a win. I'd rather not continue to make a big deal about it, but the "isn't it great that they had the confidence" attitude drives me mad.

hardybuck wrote: »

"Expertly hooked"? He was hooked...I'd expect a defender on his back to do that. Ryan had at least one player who would have had a straightforward tap in if he had held on a split second longer and then passed. Same goes for Gavin O'Brien but it wasn't as blatant.

I've played and lost a couple of tight games in this scenario, each time it was one of the fairly unintelligent players on the team responsible. On each occasion they got a massive boot up the arse from the rest of the players in particular and they didn't make the mistake twice.

The two lads saw their name in the headlines and almost cost us a win. I'd rather not continue to make a big deal about it, but the "isn't it great that they had the confidence" attitude drives me mad.

I think there is for and against on this to be fair to the two lads. Both could have passed but would you call it wrong decision making? A forwards instinct is to go for goal and in split seconds have to make up their mind on what they think is the right option.Lets say both players messed up the passes would we be on here slating them for not having the b##ls to go for it themselves?
Look at flynner in the 04 munster final and that goal from the free he scored,if that went wrong can you imagine what he'd have been called? You need players to have the confidence to try these things but i can see where people come from when these things don't work it looks awful

deisebhoy17 wrote: »

On another note anyone know when Paudie Mahony is due back? Or even if hes due back,... u21 game v Clare next month hed be massive for that

Thought he was out for the season tbh.

Black Suir wrote: »

I gave up on them a long time ago. Have serious doubts about some that were involved on the committee (or at least were), and their alegiences to the G.A.A.

Hi,

I'm PRO for Club Déise and I'd like to respond to this comment.

We have been in existence since 2008 and in that time have raised over a hundred thousand euro, every cent of which has gone back to the county teams.
We have a very hard working committee who donate their time and money freely. We have zero tolerance on freebies and are independent of the County Board.
This year alone we funded the gym program for the senior hurlers and the Fota Island Resort intensive training weekend, which Ken McGrath in his post match interview on WLR thanked us for as he said it made all the difference. Neither of these projects would have happened for the senior hurlers without the funds from Club Déise.

We have also supported the Minors and U21s preparation and are the main sponsors for the Tony Forristal U14 All Ireland tournament.

We are finding it incredibly difficult to raise funds in the current economic climate and ill informed comments such as this are not helping matters.

Anne Ryan was mentioned in the thread of this discussion and she is a wonderful woman who has always had her heart in the right place, Anne and her brother Tommy McCarthy are very active members of our Committee.

We recently set up a facebook page for all like minded Waterford GAA fans that might like to get snippets of Team info and photographs - the link to the page is https://www.facebook.com/ClubDeiseTheWaterfordGaaSupportersClub
Please show your support by clicking 'Like' on the page.

Our goal is to help a Waterford team to win an All-Ireland and if you would like to help us do that, please join us.

We have reduced membership to €10 and every cent will go to the County teams.

Regards
Karen Dempsey
PRO Club Déise