Waterford GAA Thread - Mod note post #1

We really missed a big chance this year to make the All Ireland Final , think we would have beaten Wexford and would have been in with a good chance of also beating KIlkenny. If buts & Maybe’s . Good Luck to Clare.

Watching the matches yesterday I just felt this Waterford panel should be still in the championship. On form, a match for all of Cork, Galway and Wexford I would think and while Clare are a cut above those surely playing to potential Waterford would be close enough to them too.

so yeah I would like to see an official comment on what happened and why.

my preference now is for Clare to win it out

Yea hard to disagree that has we got our s**t together we’d be as good as what’s been on show bar Limerick. That Cork Galway game was fairly poor and while full credit to Clare there’s no reason why we couldn’t where they are now, flying it. While they have the mercurial TK if Aussie was wired differently he’d be right up there with him.

Now we just have to make do with listening to Dalo on his podcast playing down their chances playing the poor mouth the same fellah who was predicting them to go along way at the start of the year. Cute hoors sicken me but fair play to Clare I hope they go and do the business that we couldn’t

For all those unhappy with the inter county season being over, Mt Sion play Ballygunner in the county league final on Friday night in Walsh park at 7:30. 5 euro in.

Watching a mediocre Galway outfit being gifted an All-Ireland semi-final place by a misfiring Cork must have been galling for Waterford hurling supporters. Despite conceding two soft goals, passing up three straighforward goal chances themselves, and missing a series of handy point-scoring opportunities (including numerous frees), Cork were still only a point behind at the end. It is hard to avoid the feeling that if Galway’s opposition had been Waterford, operating at anything near their normal performance levels, we would now be looking forward to a big day out in Croke Park the weekend after next.

The big question, of course is: why were Waterford not there? A satisfactory answer to this question has, so far, not been forthcoming. One widespread view with which I do not agree is that Waterford peaked for the league campaign and went downhill thereafter. The way it worked out, as I see it, the league actually provided Waterford with the perfect run-in to the championship.

Waterford made a very slow start to the league. They were very lucky to get a draw in their first game against Dublin, thanks to two handy penalties. Laois provided no opposition in their second game, and they only got out of Corrigan Park with a win thanks to Antrim missing a last-minute penalty. In their fourth game, they started out very slowly against what we now know is possibly Tipperary’s weakest team ever, but once they moved into a higher gear halfway through the second half they blew the opposition away.

Results elsewhere meant that Waterford were now, almost by accident, in the league semi-final. This allowed them to use the two-week break before their next game to get in some heavy training, and they essentially went through the motions in that game against Kilkenny. They then had an easy win over a poor Wexford team in the semi-final before moving up a couple of gears with a good performance in the final against a full-strength Cork, despite being short Austin Gleeson, Jamie Barron, Iarlaith Daly and Ian Kenny.  Those two extra games, and especially the step up in performance level against Cork, provided the perfect build-up for the championship.

Some people have suggested that Waterford’s sloppy performance against Tipperary was the first sign of their decline, but I do not buy this. While Waterford allowed Tipp to dominate the first half, once they raised their game there was only one team in it, and were it not for a series of poor wides Waterford would have won comfortably. It is noteworthy that Limerick’s game against Tipperary followed a similar pattern, except Limerick waited until the last ten minutes to turn on the gas, winning in the end by seven points. Nobody would say now that there was evidence here of a long-term Limerick decline.

There has also been some rewriting of history regarding the Waterford/Limerick game, with some people suggesting that the three-point difference at the end of the game did not reflect Limerick’s superiority. I found this to be a gripping encounter, with Waterford dominating the first twenty minutess, Limerick then working their way into the game and having their period of dominance in the third quarter, and then Waterford coming back into it with their late goals. If Waterford had repeated their level of performance from this game against Cork, I have no doubt they would be in the All-Ireland semi-final next Sunday week.

Thus, for me, whatever went wrong occurred in the three weeks between the Limerick and Cork games. This unusual three-week break in the middle of the round-robin Munster championship seemed to be perfectly set up for Waterford. In my view, Waterford should have taken a break in the first of those weeks, seeing as they had played five games (including two league play-off games and two championship games) in the previous five weeks (and nine games in all in the twelve weeks since the league commenced). In fact, it might have been an idea to have a few pints to celebrate the league victory on the day after the Limerick game.

Instead, all the reports are that the team were put through another bout of heavy training in the week after the Limerick game under the tutelage of Jim McGuinness (whose knowledge of the training needs of elite hurlers in the middle of the championship season is, I suspect, very limited). The conventional wisdom is that, for hurling and other summer sports, the work required for building strength, conditioning and stamina is done during the winter and spring and, once the championship season approaches, the focus is switched to honing skills and developing pace and power. The greatest hurling coach of them all, Brian Cody, is celebrated for conducting summer training sessions with hurleys in the players’ hands.

Reports indicate that at least some of the players rejected the demands placed upon them by McGuinness. It has also been suggested that the quad injuries sustained by several players emanated from this source. It is impossible to say to what extent the flat performance against Cork was due to the consequences of physical exertion on the training field or player discontent, with both probably playing some part. Whether or which, in a game which remained salvageable until the dying minutes, we were all looking for the kind of surge which had become a recurring feature of games in the Cahill era, and it never came.

Liam Cahill’s response to the Cork defeat may have done even more damage to his standing and credibility. I have been told that the players were flabbergasted when the team to play Clare was announced. Dropping Stephen Bennett for a must-win game was one thing. Removing Austin Gleeson from the forward line made no sense, especially as we had on the bench one player (Shane Bennett) who had filled in quite effectively at centre back in last year’s championship, and another (Michael Harney) who had been brought into the panel on the strength of his displays at centre back for Dunhill in the Munster intermediate club championship.

The oddest move of all was selecting Pauric Mahony at midfield. Mahony had very little competitive hurling under his belt and was not even on the match-day panel the previous week against Cork. I had never seen him play before in midfield, a position for which he is patently unsuited. And with Clare running riot in the middle third, why was Darragh Lyons (who was having a very successful season) completely ignored?

The selection of Jamie Barron at corner forward (itself bizarre) also raises the question: where was Michael Kiely? No one, that I am aware of, has mentioned the fact that Kiely – an increasingly important member of the full forward line – was not even in the match-day squad. His place was taken by a player (DJ Foran) who has been given numerous opportunities to stake a claim for himself and has repeatedly failed to do so. This was the case again when he was introduced against Clare with fifteen minutes left.

It has become increasingly apparent that Liam Cahill and Mikey Bevans have a very limited tactical compass and are very reliant on obtaining high-octane collective performances from teams under their command. Combined with high individual skill levels, this has proved quite a successful formula for Waterford. However, their continued ability to generate such a response from the players is now subject to serious doubt following the events of the last few weeks.

I'm not sure if anyone listens to the GAA hour hurling podcast? I can't say I'd recommend it in it's current guise but they did have Christy O Connor on this week and he brought up Waterford in a fair manner and said his understanding is we treated the time between the Limerick game and the Cork game almost like another pre season as Giveitfong suggest above. O Connor suggests the same approach was taken as was taken last year when it was assumed we'd beat Laois (and almost didn't) and then that would prepare us for the Clare game and subsequent games.

Personally I haven't heard anything about that time period but I'm sure I'm not alone when hearing of a fight between two players on the panel and how a small group of the panel wouldn't travel by bus to the match in Ennis. Then again I also heard that one member of the panel who was stated as injured had left the panel but there hasn't been anything to confirm this.

To be fair to Cahill, his most recent post match interview showed that he was willing to reflect on his and his backroom teams roles in the championship to determine if they dropped the ball. He had not shown any sign of self reflection prior to this. I've also been told that the majority of the panel want him back, though there is a cohort that don't. That cohort is very similar in make up to the ones who made it known to Derek McGrath that they wouldn't play for him if he was made manager in 2020.

The twiceasnice97 is on Twitter, a bitter yoke

Patrick Fitzgerald is a class act. We need a few more of his calibre to reach the holy grail.

How long until someone comes after David Frank's?

he was 2 years younger than a lot of the bigger palyers and got pushed around, he looked a monster at minor and a mouse at u20, he still need 2 or 3 years to fill out but whatever it is he has it