The quality of hurling produced by Waterford against Clare last Sunday was no surprise.
For several years now the Déise have been playing the best hurling in Ireland. Remember the second half comeback against Kilkenny in the league in 2001 and the first 25 minutes against Limerick later that year? Then the following year we had the last 25 minutes in the Munster final and the first 25 minutes in the All-Ireland semifinal against Clare. Fast forward to last year and the brilliant first half spells against Limerick and Wexford…
The problem for Waterford up to last Sunday was not so much their inability to maintain this level of performance for seventy minutes (nobody could do that) but their inability to defend their lead once the opposition came at them, and in particular their inability to pick their game up again once things started to go against them.
So what was different about the match against Clare? Perhaps they are an older and wiser team which has learned from its past mistakes. Perhaps they are fitter than they were before. Remember that the Tipperary team which was swamped by Waterford’s late surge in their recent league encounter is being trained by Colm Bonner, who was Waterford’s trainer for the last three years. Or maybe Clare were just so bad that Waterford never had to face the kind of comeback surge which caused them to wilt in the past.
Justin McCarthy made the interesting point in his post-match interview that he was glad that Waterford hadn’t built up a massive halftime lead (which they could have were it not for some terrible first half shooting) and that Clare had made some kind of recovery before the short whistle. Otherwise, there was a danger of Waterford falling into relaxation mode – a condition from which they had been unable to reawake themselves before. Instead, it was easier for McCarthy to keep them on their toes during the halftime talk, and to send them out in the second half full of desire to finish the job.
An Moltóir’s view that Waterford were only shadow boxing in the league final was certainly vindicated by this performance. There has been a lot of talk about Galway or even Clare being the form team of the national league. Yet Waterford edged out both of last year’s All-Ireland finalists away from home in tight finishes, came back from eight points down away to Tipperary to get the draw they needed, and played some superb hurling against Limerick, Laois and Dublin. And, while keeping a little in reserve, they also played well in the league game against Clare. Nor did the final score against Galway in Walsh Park truly reflect the real differences between the teams, as three of Galway’s goals came directly from uncharacteristic errors by Eoin Murphy, while the Galway backs were allowed to get away with the blatant tactic of holding back any Waterford forward who seemed on the verge of breaking through (a tactic which they repeated with considerable success in the league final).
It should have been obvious, then, that Waterford’s performance in the league final was an aberration, and not a sign of their true merit. Liam Griffin also made the telling observation in the Tribune on Sunday that, apart from Kilkenny, Waterford are the only county which has not been cleaned out in the championship over the last six years. So any talk about the Déise being a side of brittle temperament which would fold before the Banner steamroller really had no basis for it. Waterford came to Semple Stadium last Sunday with a strong and experienced team which had been playing well since the beginning of the year and which was likely to be well fired up for this encounter.
A lot of the post-match wisdom has been as far-fetched as the prematch punditry. All this talk about Waterford’s tactics and strategy is pure poppycock. The fact is that any good team with so much good possession is going to put a lot of good ball into their forwards, and is going to earn a lot of scorable frees against opposition under pressure. The previous Sunday, when it was Waterford who were under pressure, their forwards were at a severe disadvantage scrapping for the high balls which was the best that the outfield players could manage most of the time. Waterford did not suddenly come upon some new magical formula for success in the intervening week. The simple fact is that they were able to marry sharp focus and edge with passion and fire. And, despite Davy Fitzgerald’s trademark attempt to cut down a goalpost with a slap of his hurley as he took up his position between the posts, Clare simply lacked both fire and focus.
The match statistics tell it all. Whereas Waterford made 150 plays during the course of the game (defined as situations, apart from free pucks, where a player intentionally propels a ball in a certain direction to some effect by hurley, hand or foot, or where a player is fouled in possession), the figure for Clare was just 99. Waterford’s busiest players were Ken McGrath and John Mullane, who both made 18 plays, followed by Dave Bennett (14), Paul Flynn (13) and Tony Browne (12). The only Clare players to get into double figures were Colin Lynch (12) and Tony Griffin (11). Even these did well to reach these figures, as neither made a play of any substance in the first twenty minutes.
A lot has been written already about the new role assigned to Paul Flynn last Sunday. In the first half he was one of the most hardworking and effective players on the field, being second to Mullane in the number of plays made. Apart from an early smashing point, his influence declined after the change of ends. An Moltóir has never understood why the Waterford selectors allowed Flynn to take long range frees, from which his success rate has been poor, and certainly no better than Dave Bennett’s and Tony Browne’s. Even on close frees his record has not been spectacular, and has sometimes been atrocious when the humour wasn’t on him. Eoin Kelly’s single miss last Sunday was certainly on a par with Flynn on his better days, and if Kelly shows himself to be less temperamental, then Flynn’s high-scoring days could be numbered (unless he chooses alternative routes to make up the difference).
There were some other interesting statistical titbits from Sunday’s game. Brian Quinn drew a lot of ire on his head with one poor second half clearance which went straight to Dave Bennett who promptly drove the ball straight over the bar. However, Quinn could perhaps be forgiven, for this was not just his FIRST time to play the ball, but in fact it was the ONLY time he played the ball in the entire game. Outside him, while Sean McMahon made a few innocuous enough plays in the first half, 31 minutes elapsed after the change of ends before he played the ball again. This in many ways was a tribute to Michael “Brick” Walsh, whose ability to get in a physical challenge under the dropping ball may mean he is particularly suited to the centre forward position.
One of the key topics in the prematch media coverage was the prospect of the Waterford fullback line being taken to the cleaners by the Clare inside forwards. However, if the latter were to do this, they would have to get the ball first. In fact, 28 minutes of the game had elapsed before ANY of the Clare full forwards played the ball, which is a tribute to the work being done by the Waterford players further outfield. After that, the Clare inside line saw a fair bit of the ball, with Frank Lohan doing quite well to nail three points from play. However, a lot of county managers will have noted the way, when presented with a clear goal chance in the first half, Lohan turned back onto his right side to shoot when a shot off his left was by far the better option.
While there was talk of a total Clare collapse in the second half, in fact some of their players fought on to the end. Chief among these, not for the first time, was Colin Lynch, who played the ball nine times after the change of ends. Others to fight the good fight to the bitter end were Brian Lohan, David Hoey (who did a good job in containing Paul Flynn) and Tony Griffin, who got a lot of good possession. Incidentally, Ger Loughnane’s complaint on the Sunday Game that Brian Lohan was the only Clare player to field a high ball during the game must have come as something of a shock to Griffin and Diarmuid McMahon, both of whom made some excellent fetches over the 70 minutes.
One final point about Waterford’s second goal, which Ger Canning attributed to the ball falling fortuitously into Dan Shanahan’s path. In fact, close study of the video shows that the ball was played into Shanahan by a one-handed flick by Seamus Prendergast. But one wouldn’t expect this to be noticed by a commentator who was probably the only person watching the game who didn’t catch Sean McMahon hopping the ball on his hurley before striking a second half free. It certainly wasn’t McMahon’s day…
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