Waterford GAA Discussion Thread 3 ***Updated Mod Note Post 1***

culbaire wrote: »

Derek knows it all. It seems he is now working on a seven year plan judging by his comments in relation to Tipperary. I suggest that you attend a few matches at Senior and Intermediate level this year. You seem to have a closed mind! There are some fine hurlers who are being ignored. They are not Vauxhall Conference either. But then again it seems you have a closed mind.

I have been involved in Waterford club hurling for many years at management level. In the west of the county. I have not missed a match at county level at all grades for close on thirty years. I have a club season ticket this year, I did not need it in previous years because I had free entry for most games. Is that enough for you. Now like I said before, name the players or stop talking nonsense. And while you are at it, take the chip of your shoulder.

List of the sub's from.last Sunday please?

culbaire wrote: »

Derek knows it all. It seems he is now working on a seven year plan judging by his comments in relation to Tipperary. I suggest that you attend a few matches at Senior and Intermediate level this year. You seem to have a closed mind! There are some fine hurlers who are being ignored. They are not Vauxhall Conference either. But then again it seems you have a closed mind.

Hopefully, the longer Mcgrath stays in the better.

We're making considerable progress

cornerboy wrote: »

The most heartening thing for me last week was that we went to Nowlan Park and stood up to KK physically and psychologically and came out with the win. We were not intimidated by them......we had the right level of aggression too, we didn't overdo it, so credit to all.

Just had a conversation with a Kilkenny woman who was outraged at the thuggery of the Waterford team. Tipperary will show us what's what in 'Semple' on Sunday. The Big Three - they don't like it up 'em, eh?

buck65 wrote: »

Why is Connors overweight? Was he out injured/ sick or something?

Overweight? The man is a walking pile of muscle. Nothing overweight about him in the slightest.

I do wonder if all the gym work works against him sometimes though when his lack of pace is exposed.

danganabu wrote: »

Apologies meant Coughlan, Liam Blanchfield apparently has a broken jaw for his troubles following an off the ball belt.

Regarding Connors, he actually played it perfect, right in Hogan's face the entire game and if anything Hogan was lucky to stay on the field for reacting.

Coughlan is always driving full forwards mad - was watching him closely on Sunday and he wasnt doing anything obvious but he was certainly getting a reaction from Blanchfield, to me it looked like he is just always annoyingly pulling dragging and holding - i didnt see the last incident but Blanchfield did look badly hurt

Was really happy with result on Sunday because KK lose very few games at home and are specialists at winning tight matches. Not too worried about rucks etc because cold day with a soft pitch and two teams who are fast becoming experts at getting the Hurley in when guys trying to pick the ball. Summer hurling should be an entirely different proposition for both teams but then you know our summers.

On negative side thought once again we retreated into ourselves and invited KK on to us and nearly cost us a game we should have won comfortably. Likewise very slow from management to act on line, Shane Bennett was starting to have a mare, his confidence was disappearing by the second and rather then give the lad a break we left him on making mistake after mistake costing us scores. by the time they took him off his confidence was shot, his head was on the ground and he was practically pleading to be taken off - young lads like this need to be protected and some times that means taking him out early when things are going badly for him. He needs reassurance that days like that will happen but you don't lose the class that he has overnight.

Have to say i am fed up reading about the physicality of Waterford and how so many players could have gotten the line. Paudi Mahony swung back a bit blindly as he fell over having being blatantly being pushed and elbowed in the back by T J Reid, who had run 15 yards to join the "ruck" some might say if it was rugby he was merely "clearing out" but the momentum of the push had in my view as much to do with Paudis' swing back as anything else.

De Burca's challenge on Richie Hogan - i had a perfect view of it, Hogan was on the sideline he dipped his shoulder and head and went to barge through and there was a coming together with no where to go for either man. was it high, i don't think so because De Burca is about five inches taller than Hogan and that is before Hogan dropped his shoulder and head, the only way it could not have been anyway high was if De Burca kept his hand down by his side and it is not possible to tackle like that. You can be guaranteed if the roles were reversed KK would not let you travel down the line unchecked

On Coughlan, don't know what he done or what happened, i do know that of the many people i spoke to, nobody seemed to see it, and despite what we all like to think from time to time you cannot send off a man for something that nobody saw. If he did hit him off the ball and hit him hard enough to break his jaw, Coughlan needs to have a serious look at himself no matter what the provocation - but i will refuse to judge something or somebody on hearsay and speculation.

Daniel's tackle yes he was late and could have landed in trouble but no later than Hogan had been on Connors some minutes earlier, fortunately for Hogan hitting someone like Connors is likely to do more damage to yourself. Once the ref had only issued a yellow for that it left it as open season for others to follow suit. Listening to griping comments after the game about those hits is sickening from supporters who like to pride themselves on telling us all it is a manly game and how Cody dosen't even use a whistle during training matches. Genuine hurling folk in KK had no complaints


As regards the newspaper journalists. all of a sudden this physicality is not acceptable and they are trawling out the injuries KK lads have sustained in recent time, but these self same journos never once had the bottle to challenge Cody when the shoe was on the other foot. In fairness to Cody, his attitude is just that KK will have to up the physicality come Summer and you can be sure they will, but if you want to compete with them you have to match them or out muscle them.

Looking forward to another seriously strong challenge on Sunday when I feel we will see plenty more physicality and tempers flare.

It was good to get the win over the Cats last Sunday, but at the final whistle my immediate emotion was not one of joy but of concern that we had made such heavy weather of it and were lucky enough to win in the end.

This was possibly the weakest Kilkenny team I have seen in nearly sixty years of following hurling. Their defence was strong enough, with six regular first teamers (including the goalie), while the newcomer at corner back, Conor O’Shea, looked handy enough. Of the remaining eight, three (Lyng, Morrissey, Blanchfield) are under-21 this year, JonJo Farrell has been in the senior panel for three years without establishing himself, and Ollie Walsh is a relative newcomer, leaving just Conor Fogarty, TJ Reid and Richie Hogan as regular first teamers. Of the five substitutes used, three were unknowns (Paddy Deegan, Conor Martin and Richie Leahy, who is only 19). Most of these fringe players lacked the physical conditioning for intercounty senior hurling.

Apart from Pat Lyng (10 possessions during his 56 minutes on the field, although he did little enough with them), the Waterford defence gobbled up most of these tyros without salt. Farrell and Blanchfield, who played almost the entire game, got just six possessions between them. Morrissey got two possessions in the first half; his replacement Walter Walsh got just one in the second half. Paddy Deegan played the ball just once in 22 minutes on the pitch. Forwards Blanchfield, Farrell, Lyng and Morrissey scored two points between them, with Richie Hogan and Walter Walsh adding just one each. Iggy Regan never had a shot to save during the game.

Waterford obtained a majority of possession (115 possessions to 102 for Kilkenny). Nevertheless, Kilkenny had more shots at goal (including frees) – 29/28. Waterford were clearly the better team for the first 40 minutes, with 19 shots to Kilkenny’s 13, and were unlucky not to be further ahead, with Eoin Murphy making two snappy saves and Mikey Kearney’s shot going inches wide. Waterford continued to dominate at the beginning of the second half, with four shots (and two scores) in the first six minutes to none for Kilkenny.

Then everything changed. Waterford only managed five shots in the remaining 33 minutes to 16 for Kilkenny. The wind only partly explains this turnaround. Kilkenny obviously upped their game, led by Conor Fogarty who had an outstanding second half. Waterford, true to form, became increasingly defensive as the half progressed. In particular, Tadhg de Búrca was withdrawn to sweep in front of the full back line, even though this was never under threat from the Kilkenny full forwards. His opposite number, TJ Reid, moved out to midfield where he won a lot of ball.

This has happened before, where the withdrawal of de Búrca to an ultra-defensive position has given an opposing forward a free hand, and when that player is a scoring forward, he can do a lot of damage. This happened in 2015 when Richie Hogan scored five points against us with nobody marking him. We can’t just withdraw de Búrca like this without assigning somebody else to mark the loose man.

Waterford also gave away a lot of unnecessary and careless frees, and some of their decision-making was poor. Shane Bennett tried two shots from midfield which had no hope of reaching the target. How he keeps getting into the team ahead of Brian O’Halloran mystifies me. Tom Devine tried a low-percentage shot under pressure when he had the unmarked Mikey Kearney behind him available for a pass. And Austin Gleeson’s attempt at a miracle score over this shoulder from the right sideline near the end of the game was precisely the wrong thing to do with Waterford defending a one-point lead. He should have taken on his man, running down the clock and perhaps earning a free or getting into a better position to score.

Another problem for Waterford was their inability to win puckouts. Of their own 25 puckouts they only won nine while of 23 Kilkenny puckouts, they only won ten, for an overall balance of 29/19 in favour of the Cats. In the first half, Waterford won six of the first seven Kilkenny puckouts and then just one of the next ten, as Eoin Murphy changed his puckout strategy.

In the end, it was only a late series of uncharacteristic bad misses by Kilkenny (especially by Reid and Hogan) which allowed Waterford to win a game which they should never have been in danger of losing.

On the positive side, I reckon last Sunday was Jamie Barron’s best game yet in a Waterford jersey. He had 16 possessions in all, and generally used the ball very well. Tadhg de Búrca actually had more possessions (17) and also had a fine game. The evergreen Brick Walsh (to whom we should also be ever-grateful) was the only other Waterford player to make double figures with 11 possessions (seven in the second half when the going got tough). See the team list below for the full possessions count.

Of course, in a tightly-contested game like we had last Sunday, possessions were not the only measure of performance, and there was also a lot of hooking, blocking and tackling by most of the Waterford players. Also, very often when a player got possession, he was unable to make use of it due to being bottled up by multiple tacklers.

I have been going on for some time here about the need for Waterford to make more creative use of sideline balls, and it was great to see a new departure in this respect last Sunday in the form of short taps to team-mates which worked out in most cases. Hopefully this will not go out the window with the return of Austin Gleeson.

It was good to see Stephen Daniels back on the field last Sunday and, although his man did get a fair bit of possession, I thought he had quite an effective game. He looked to be in fine physical shape, and his strength and aggression were just what were needed against the Cats. Once he sharpens up his hurling he could be a major asset.

Finally, a predictable feature of the game was the high number of rucks, and there was a bit of a debate after the game about how well Waterford did in these. I counted 23 rucks in which one or other team finally won the ball (before the referee intervened). Of these, Kilkenny won 12 and Waterford 11.

Possession count: Regan, I (1); Fives S (6); Coughlan B (3); Connors N (2); Gleeson C (6); de Búrca T (17); Daniel S (5); Barron J (16); Moran K (9); Kearney M (3); Mahony P (8); Walsh M (11); Bennett S (8); Devine T (5); Curran P (8); Gleeson A (2); O’Halloran B (2); Dillon J (2); McNulty S (1); O’Brien G (0).