Waterford GAA thread - mod warning post #1 and #51

thesaturdayman wrote: »

Most of ye know who i am, so it makes no odds, ill speak candidly & wont hide behind an anon name.

JeffKenna wrote: »

Has Giveitfong given his analysis of the match yet? I always find it insightful and look forward to reading it after matches.

Not yet.
Plenty to analyse for sure.

:rolleyes:

Gardner wrote: »

as in how many possession each player had. its basic stuff lads

Great so. I'm sure you'll be able to provide an even better analysis if his is so basic.:rolleyes:

thesaturdayman wrote: »

Taken from Twitter - WP clearly is significantly smaller overall more so 8-10 metres tighter then the other grounds.

Wrong. Same width as Thurles.

thesaturdayman wrote: »

8-10m tighter depending on the pitch

if someone more tech savvy then i please cut the image into a post as opposed to the link that would be very much appreciated - thanks

The dimensions for Semple are wrong. Tipperary GAA list it as 80m width and....

thurles.JPG

seemingly the sidelines were brought in by H&S in Walsh park - so the 80m isn't actually 80m could be something like 76m or 78m which would partially offset the discrepancy with Thurles if all is true.

Damn it, time to bring the measuring tape to Semple on Sunday and sort this out for once and for all

Looks like no S Fives and no N Connors for Sunday's trip to Tipp.
C Gleeson back in defence and J Prendergast into midfield?

DLS2THECORE wrote: »

Looks like no S Fives and no N Connors for Sunday's trip to Tipp.

Not good at all

I think Brick and Maurice Shanahan need to start in the half forwards. We absolutely need ball winners and ball breakers in that line. If we don’t and we’re relying on smaller players who aren’t strong enough to tackle that Tipp half back line we will be eaten alive. If that half back line gets on top, ball after ball will be arrowed down on top of Callinan, O’Dwyer and John McGrath. Look at the damage O’Dwyer did on Sunday against Cork. If he gets anywhere near that kind of space and time again on Sunday he will do damage. Now imagine he gets space, time and a good delivery of ball from the half back line. They could do an awful number on us I fear, unless there is some competition for high balls in our half forward line.

Motivator wrote: »

Limerick finished on 5 points but Tipperary finished with 2 and Waterford with 1. This year 4 points could be enough to finish third but scoring difference would come in to it then more than likely. On local Cork radio the other morning they were discussing last year. Cork finished unbeaten and top of the group but their scoring difference was only +8. That will tell you how close these teams are to one another. Tipperary finished second bottom last year and their scoring difference was -8. Limerick finished third with +8 points difference despite beating Waterford by 13 points.

Last year the Munster Championship started with Limerick beating 6 points and Clare beating Waterford by 9. Then the real drama started in the second round of games so things aren’t over yet but this year feels different for Waterford after last Sunday. We have the experience of last year to reflect on and everyone knows how tough it is where last year it was unknown. There’ll be drama yet and I hope it starts on Sunday with a good Waterford performance and I get the feeling a scrappy win will set the year up for us. Getting a scrappy win will be the hardest part.

Very much doom and gloom down here in Cork all week. Lots of people think their year is done already.

Well limerick are certainly building themselves up for a fall....stuff like ‘Kyle Hayes ready to walk all over cork’ being said.......it will probably be a tight game and a narrow cork win is possible which may suit w’ford....? The Media and a certain amount coming from within the limerick camp that they will have it easy on Sunday and a second all Ireland title is theirs cone August......? Not sure what to wish for......da langers getting their season back on track (along with their cockiness) via a victory or limerick getting carried away with themselves and being way too over confident in their next game v Waterford and Waterford ambush them in Walsh Park....?

Waterford’s defeat to Clare last Sunday was largely self-inflicted. Clare did play some good hurling at times, but if Waterford had played at anything near the level of which they are capable, they would have won comfortably. That they did not do so I would attribute principally to the team management, partly because of their failure to get the team in the proper frame of mind required by the occasion and some poor selection decisions, but mainly because of their adoption of a new game plan which was unbelievably ineffectual. These problems were compounded by some poor onfield decision-making and execution which one would not expect from a team with so much skill and experience. This was a sure sign of a team whose concentration level was well below where it needed to be.

Clare brought nothing new to the table in terms of setup and game plan. They contested fiercely for primary possession and put a huge effort into turning ball over, routinely devoting two or more players at a time to these tasks. Once they obtained possession, they used short passes and hard running to move the ball through the lines. Once they got a player into space in the midfield area, they pursued two main options. One was to send a long ball into their dangerous full forward line; the other was to give the ball to Tony Kelly whose ability to shoot accurately from distance was one of the main nails in Waterford’s coffin.

There has been much media focus on Waterford’s failure to man-mark Kelly, but he is basically unmarkable in situations like this, using his pace, footwork and skill to, firstly, get into position to take the pass and, secondly, to get into space to shoot (or, on occasion, set up a team mate for the shot). The key to minimising Kelly’s influence is to stop Clare from getting possession at source, and Waterford didn’t work hard enough to achieve this last Sunday.

Clare’s other main attacking option was the high ball into the full forward line. John Conlon was clearly the prime target for these balls, but a key tactic in this respect was to always have either Shane O’Donnell (normally) or Podge Collins in close proximity to pick up breaking balls. Conlon is usually good to catch a few of these balls, but Conor Prunty did a very good job in preventing this (Conlon only got the ball in his hand three times during the game), mainly by forcing a knockdown. The natural tendency for the corner back in these situations was to move in behind Prunty, in case a ball broke through. However, this left O’Donnell/Collins free to pick up breaking balls, which occurred seven times during the game.

Waterford’s game plan was simplistic, predictable and ineffectual, and yet was persevered with right to the end. This involved sending long balls up the line from the back to the Bennetts, Stephen on the right and Shane on the left. Playing the ball up the sideline meant that the intended recipient had very little space to work with. Even if he got the ball in his hand, he had his back to the goal with a defender right up his rear end. If he then managed to get past this player he was a long way from goal and invariably had another defender blocking his way. I counted 21 instances of this kind of ball during the game, of which Waterford won just six. Shane Bennett in particular had problems getting any possession from these balls – he only got the ball in his hand three times during the 60 minutes he was on the pitch.

Waterford played just one decent diagonal ball – the kind full forwards really like – during the game. It was ironic that, in their lead-up to the Sunday Game Live, RTE showed several examples of the excellent passing movements which Waterford produced during the league; yet these were abandoned for last Sunday’s game. The RTE pundits also unanimously identified Jamie Barron as the key player in the Waterford setup, yet the Waterford game plan virtually took him out of the equation, as the ball repeatedly sailed over his head on its fruitless journey to the inside forwards. The game plan also involved withdrawing Peter Hogan to what was effectively no-man’s-land out the field where the game completely by-passed him. Yet he was made the fall-guy by the selectors, being replaced at half-time.

Some of the selection decisions made by the team management were hard to credit. In Jamie Barron and Kevin Moran, Waterford have had the foremost midfield combination in hurling for the last few years and the main driving force behind the team. Yet Moran was placed at wing back last Sunday, and when he was moved to midfield for the second half, Barron was moved to centre forward. The placing of Pauric Mahony on the wing would make you wonder about the basic competence of the current management. With his lack of pace and physicality, Mahony will never make a wing forward of intercounty standard. What he is very good at (as pointed out by Blueflame in an earlier post) is drifting across the half forward line into positions to take off-load passes and shoot for goal. He was never given the opportunity to play this role last Sunday, where just a single extra point would have made all the difference.

The mentors’ game management was also very poor. They left Tadhg de Búrca, one of our top players, sitting in the middle of the half back line throughout the first half, where he was totally by-passed by the Clare game plan. It was only when he was given the job of man-marking Peter Duggan that he stormed into the game. I was surprised that Maurice Shanahan did not start the game, amazed that he did not start the second half and absolutely astonished that he was not introduced until the 65th minute. I was also gobsmacked when Jamie Barron was replaced – one of the few Waterford players capable of the bit of magic that might have saved the game. Meanwhile, the ineffectual Mikey Kearney (just two possessions in the second half, one of which ended in a bad wide) was left on the field.

Probably the biggest error of all made by the selectors was to start Stephen Bennett on the frees and then to leave him on them. Pauric Mahony has been one of the most reliable freetakers, from all distances, in hurling for a number of years now. Bennett showed his fallibility in the league final with, we assumed, normal service being resumed when Mahony took over the frees. Last Sunday Bennett hit two frees wide and dropped two short. I am confident that Mahony would have nailed at least two of these which would have won us the game, other things being equal.

And what was Bennett thinking of when he passed a 65 sideways to Tadhg de Búrca in the 69th minute? If he was trying to engineer a goal then he should have hit the ball to the edge of the square. There was no way de Búrca was going to run through a massed Clare defence, and in fact he lost the ball about 50 metres out from the Clare goal. If Bennett had put that ball over the bar, we would have had a different result.

Another poor decision by Bennett was to try to first time the great pass he got from Kevin Moran early in the game when he should have taken the ball in hand. He also missed a great goal chance in the league final by shooting early rather than bringing the ball closer to goal. But Bennett was not the only player guilty of poor decision-making. Another case in point was the very last play of the game. Stephen O’Keeffe took a backpass from Conor Gleeson and then lashed a long ball down the left sideline where Maurice Shanahan knocked it over the line under pressure from his market. Even if he had won the ball he would have found it difficult to do much with it from where he was. If O’Keeffe had looked up he would have seen Shane McNulty totally unmarked outside him with half the field in front of him completely empty. McNulty could have made ground before either having a pop himself or try to find a player in a better scoring position close to goal. That’s what Kilkenny would have done in this situation.

It should be said that Waterford were also the victims of a fair amount of misfortune during the game, although I have always found that the team with the better attitude always seems to get the breaks in hurling games. John Conlon’s goal should have been disallowed as he took at least seven steps before finishing to the net. The irony of this is that referee John Owens was very strict on even fewer steps later in the game. Then there was the sideline incorrectly given against Waterford in a key position late in the game. Also Clare got at least two points from balls breaking very kindly to unmarked players in the second half, while Kevin Moran’s misplaced pass to Tony Kelly in the 64th minute was an absolute gift.

While Waterford should have won last Sunday, we know they are capable of much better. Remember last year after the defeat, and all the injuries, in Ennis Waterford came out the following week and played Tipperary off the park for most of the game, and were robbed in the end by a disgraceful umpiring decision. Cork never put an ageing Tipperary team under pressure last Sunday, and that is what Waterford have to do next Sunday. They need to revert to their passing game and stretch the Tipperary defence. We need to start Maurice Shanahan, or get him on the field earlier, while there also should be a place for Jack Prendergast who, in his brief cameo last Sunday, showed his ability to get on, and hold up, the ball. Above all, in my view, we need to restore the Barron/Moran midfield and give them the ball to drive at the Tipperary defence.